The news had escaped me until after dinner. Baltimore was burning. The governor was declaring a state of emergency. The National Guard was moving in.

I have a daughter a dozen miles from center city, so the situation took on a greater urgency. But whose heart doesn’t skip a beat when the streets of a major American city are in chaos, when buildings are being looted, police attacked?

As is so often the case, the “cure” is worse than the disease. Or maybe the cure is the disease. Maybe we can no longer tell the difference.

I remember when Baltimore’s slogan was “The City That Reads,” a slogan too easily mocked with “the city that bleeds.” Now it’s the city that burns. But what city does not have this capacity? I think we’re all asking ourselves that question right now.