EDITORIAL: The face of evil

Evil manifests itself in many forms. The world saw it on display this month in the barbarous Hamas terror attack on Israel. Now it has reared its hideous head again, this time in Maine.

On Wednesday, a gunman killed 18 people and injured 13 others in Lewiston. The authorities have identified Robert R. Card, 40, as the suspect. During the rampage, the shooter fired indiscriminately into a crowded bowling alley, leading terrified patrons to seek cover by running down lanes and jumping into pin machines, according to news reports. Patrons at a local bar also became targets, with eight people shot dead.

Las Vegans are all too familiar with this depravity.

“Many people believe evil doesn’t exist,” essayist Lance Morrow wrote for The Wall Street Journal. “That view is especially common among the rational and enlightened, who insist that events always have a scientific, clinical or political explanation. They are mistaken. Evil is real.”

As light gave way to dark on Thursday, Card remained at large, the subject of an intensive police manhunt. Lewiston was locked down, and terrified residents remained in their homes.

Details emerged about the suspect. Card was a petroleum supply specialist in the Army Reserve and a “skilled marksman,” according to friends. But he had struggled of late with his mental health. His sister-in-law told the Journal that he had received psychiatric care last summer after he began to hear voices.

“He started believing he could hear people say awful things about him” through his hearing aids, she told the newspaper. “He was convinced people were saying awful things behind his back. We tried to convince him that was not the case.”

Maine lawmakers in 2019 passed legislation allowing police to temporarily take guns from those a judge deems a threat to themselves or others. Health care providers are supposed to notify law enforcement about patients who may be a danger. It appears that Card — though clearly troubled — slipped through this intended safeguard.

There will be repercussions. But now is the time to pray that Card doesn’t harm more innocents and to mourn the men and women who were senselessly murdered in the nation’s latest mass shooting.

America in some ways is in crisis. We have seen over the past few generations an erosion of family and community, a collapse of social norms and an explosion of aberrant behavior. Partisans will have competing ideas about where to place the blame for this degeneration, but the disease is terrifyingly apparent in the many angry, lost and troubled souls — primarily young males — who believe their only path forward requires mass murder.

This is, plain and simple, evil.