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1. The media note that M was galvanized by reading The Turner Diaries. They mention that its author is a Nazi, but one wonders what that means now to an increasingly illiterate public. The book's exhortation to genocide (of Jews and all non-whites) is not discussed; the only issue mentioned is gun-control, having one's guns taken away by a (therefore) repressive government. 2. When Terry Nichols raised the objection that innocent people would be killed, M countered by saying that Luke Skywalker killed non-combatants on the Death Star, but the mission - destroying the evil Empire - required it. Postliterate images of history, choice, and life as a whole are provided by media, and are respectively contentless, binary, and violent. 3. Cheapening and narrowing of language is both a cause and symptom of fanaticism. M internalized military discourse - "the mission," "collateral damage," etc. He appears to have found complete satisfaction in fulfilling orders - even when those orders were insane and self-generated. Not only poetry, but the entire imaginative, reflective aspect of language is reduced to the level of "Invictus." And in this respect, McVeigh may be the bellwether he believed himself. Who would not want to be the "captain of his soul" if the alternatives - tolerance, sensitivity, ambivalence - mean nothing but being a loser? 4. E. M. Cioran, the Romanian aphorist: "The average person of the next century will make Hitler and Stalin look like choirboys." I think we have glimpsed him.