They call themselves Aldean’s Army, fiercely devoted fans who buy country singer Jason Aldean’s albums by the millions. ADVERTISING They call themselves Aldean’s Army, fiercely devoted fans who buy country singer Jason Aldean’s albums by the millions. Sunday night, many
They call themselves Aldean’s Army, fiercely devoted fans who buy country singer Jason Aldean’s albums by the millions.
Sunday night, many of them flocked to hear him perform at a fall festival on the Las Vegas Strip. That’s where a sniper, firing from a 32nd floor hotel room, rained a fusillade down on the Army.
By now we’ve all seen the shaky smartphone videos, heard the harrowing accounts of eyewitnesses who watched fellow concertgoers cut down beside them.
If this episode echoes others, we’ll learn a motive or two in the days ahead.
Those who painstakingly plot to cause carnage tend to have their grudges, their hatreds, their righteous reasons that can’t possibly justify their dark acts. Learning their motives does, though, assuage the human curiosity that overcomes the rest of us in these moments — it fleetingly lets us bring the illusion of order to the senseless.
But it is only that, an illusion.
A normal mind will never fully understand the workings of a twisted one.
Motive is one thing, meaning is another.
Often these killers seek to rally others to their clique or cause. But these incidents achieve nothing except widespread loss and anger.
After the barrage of bullets comes a blame game, a burst of political opportunism — and little else that qualifies as constructive.
As the back story unfolds, let’s not look for deep meaning in this madness. There can be none, even after the painstaking Las Vegas investigation that Sheriff Joseph Lombardo vows. That investigation should guide discussions about what occurred and what should be done in response.
Until we have that information, let’s focus instead on the many lives that ended on the Strip, and on the hundreds of people who tried their best to help one another as bullets and blood flew. That is a far more compelling story than how the shooter evidently assembled an arsenal of weapons at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino.
Surveying the scene, we were struck less by the detritus of a massacre site — water bottles, backpacks, drink cups — than by small scenes of people pushing back against an onslaught.
The strangers shielding one another from shrapnel, the locals guiding refugees in shorts and blue jeans to escape routes, the man gamely transporting a wounded victim by wheelbarrow.
All remarkable, all to be honored.
If there’s meaning in what happened Sunday night, it’s in the selfless acts of music fans and first responders.
There was heroism in Aldean’s Army.
— Chicago Tribune
