Just days earlier, a talented University of Chicago doctoral student who was about to shine for the world had died under the guns of a stranger. The incident was almost a textbook tragedy: his killer did not know him and did not kill him for any real purpose, but simply to take a reckless revenge for his own grievances against society. As everyone mourns and laments his passing, it may be hard to imagine that it was a political lobby, immediately bankrupt and headed for oblivion, that shaped the circumstances that made him a victim of madness.