In Ireland, the sectarian murder of three Catholic children by arson is viewed with alarm -- is considered, perhaps, a pivotal event in a process of reconciliation. But in the U.S. (Texas), a black man is dragged to his death behind a pickup truck driven by Klansmen, and the guilty are cast by the racist media as mere individuals; their acts cannot figure in analyzing or reforming, in revising, re-imagining a collective political agenda. Their murder, an anomoly. Portrayed as an act of a loner psychotic, the story leads inexorably to the mounting asocial emphasis on incarceration. The nation's money should read: "In imprisonment we trust." This will fail.