During drinks I had last night with the local writer Ryan Boudinot, a discussion about the relevance or irrelevance of this or that '80s science fiction film sprang into existence. Boudinot explained that he had recently watched Terry Gilliam's 1985 masterpiece Brazil and was profoundly moved by its surreal restaurant-bombing scene.

What happens is this: A terrorist bomb explodes in a section of a posh London restaurant, the music stops, waiters are wounded, there are dead diners on the floor, hats on fancy ladies are displaced. But immediately after the smoke and confusion clears, the music resumes, the dead are removed, hats are corrected, and conversations begin where they left off.

Watch:

Is this not the USA today? And it's not so much about how we respond to terrorist attacks but to mass shootings. It works like this: There's the report of an active shooting, many are murdered and maimed, the news channels report the incident as the dead and wounded are removed, witnesses say something, the police chief says something, the president says something, and it's over. We go back to what we were doing before the shooting: our tasks at a job, chores at home, the drive at a golf course. Nothing changes because everyone is certain nothing can be changed. We have to live this way. It is "the new normal":

With mass shootings, we really are stuck in a place that very much looks like the one in Brazil:

Mrs. Ida Lowry: Sam! Can't you do something about these terrorists?
Sam Lowry: It's my lunch hour. Besides, it's not my department.