There's a fortune-cookie-style proverb that sounds like a blessing but, legend says, is really a curse: "May you live in interesting times." The saying is usually attributed to ancient China, but it is, by many indications, entirely American. Which makes it particularly suitable as we pause, on the weekend, to consider the past week — an extremely violent, chaotic, anguished and, yes, horrifyingly fascinating week in our 231-year-old republic. Ugly things. Violent things. Elemental things. Epic things. The forces of nature and human anger unleashed in concentrated form across the land. Water and fire, gun and sky, bringing destruction, death...