Thoughts and Prayers Can Be Meaningful Again

The massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, where 49 people were murdered this past weekend, has prompted outrage at the impossibility of gun control in the United States, memorials at and for gay bars, and sharp debates about whether the shooting was primarily a hate crime, an act of terrorism or both at once. And in a sign that people are sickened by the rote responses to horrors that have themselves become frighteningly routine, many are rejecting one of the rituals that follows such tragedies: the offering of “thoughts and prayers” to the bereaved.