Friedrich Nietzsche, that great sage of despair, asked, “What if some day or night a demon were to steal into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it…?’” Nietzsche called this idea of eternal recurrence “the heaviest weight.”

In the wake of the slaughter in Orlando, Fla., where 49 people were killed and even more injured during an attack early Sunday on a gay nightclub, it seems many are all too eager to carry a similar load. As soon as news broke, pundits and politicians returned to dog-eared scripts to repeat lines memorized long ago.

President Obama, who has spent his presidency yearning for the reality he wants, rather than the one he has, once again downplayed any suggestion that this was another battle in the war on Islamic terror he does not want to fight.

“Over the coming days, we’ll uncover why and how this happened,” the president promised, referring to a killer who called 911 to proclaim his allegiance to Islamic State.