What do we do now? Open thread.

So I keep thinking about the dad. He runs the Boston Marathon. Obviously, he trained hard, put in mile after mile and looked forward to it. I have no idea if this was some sort of life-culminating dream or his fifth one or something in between. I haven't seen that detail in any of the stories I've read. Maybe you have.

And because he's in that race, his family is there. And while they're waiting for him to finish, his 8-year-old son gets killed by a bomb. And his wife and daughter are severely injured. It's not his fault at all, of course. A monster, or monsters, planted those bombs. I doubt he's taking any solace in that.

But, honestly, I have no idea what he's going through. I can't even begin to imagine what that's that's like, to be crushed under an avalanche of tragedy like that. I hope I never, ever know. And chances are, I won't. Terrorism is jarring but rare. The fear still feels real.

So what do we do now? I'm trying, probably like a lot of people, to balance that hope for my family's safety with a hope that we don't turn understandable grief into unwarranted new security measures. I think the New York Times' Ross Douthat summed it up well:

Today's attack, on the kind of event that countless cities hold and that even the most omnicompetent police force couldn't make entirely secure, could easily lead to a further ratchet, a further expansion of preventive (or preventive-seeming) measures, a further intrusion of bureaucratic and paramilitary rituals into the rhythms of everyday life. Or it could be an opportunity to recognize the limits of such measures, the impossibility of achieving perfect security, and the costs of pretending that an extra ring of barriers and inconveniences will suffice to stop a determined evil from finding its way through.

The whole "Keep Calm and Carry On" thing has been reduced to a T-shirt cliche, unfortunately. But I think the original sentiment fits. We can take reasonable precautions, remain vigilant for things that don't look right and plan for how to respond, but ultimately, we can't stop all determined evil. And trying to stop it all would diminish our lives and reward the monsters. And that's absolutely the last thing I want to do, at this point.

Enough from me. Maybe you have thoughts.