I hate writing the blog du jour. Everyone and his mother is writing a blog this week about bad behavior, driven mostly by the uber-journalism around Kanye’s interruption, Serena’s threat, and Joe’s outburst.  It’s just too easy—a bit of social commentary that practically writes itself.

I won’t repeat the particulars; there are too many editorials about it already, and you don’t have the time. But I am heartbroken today, not merely because I don’t like my children seeing tantrums by adults, but because I made the huge mistake of reading the bizarre racial ideology of a hundred lunatic Americans hiding out on comment threads related to those very stories.

If our nation is a giant rock quarry, it seems I’ve been hanging out around the visible crust for most of my life. I don’t dig conspiracy theories and I’ve never blasted a hole into the darker layers of racism or hate. It’s not my domain. But this afternoon, while keeping abreast of my nation’s latest conversations, I discovered an entire strata I hoped didn’t really exist. I am not as naïve as I once was, nor do I see the world through an optimist’s lens, yet what I discovered in the comment threads of only three news articles—in phrases I cannot repeat and language I could not imagine—has rattled me today.

The high profile shenanigans-of-the-week weren’t that egregious, really, compared to the unstable, hate-filled speech of internet cowards who weighed in on their actions. I don’t hang out with the American Fringe, and I felt myself dying as I read some of the vitriolic remarks of a subculture I know little about. (I am the person, you must know, who wilted while watching Clint Eastwood’s tirades in Gran Torino.)

The ignorance and hatred embarrassed me first, then grieved me. I felt like a seventh grader seeing a dirty movie for the first time. Is this what the world is like? Is this what people think about? Without any context or personal ownership, the vile comments about monkeys, ghettos, slaves, and guns pile up like so many useless rocks at the bottom of a really deep hole that I’ve never peered into before. Has this layer always been down here? Even more twisted is the realization that some of the posters could be sabotaging their ideological opponents by posing as black/white responders in order to make the enemy appear even more lunatic than they really are.

Out of all the blogs that Kanye’s tantrum might have inspired, this wasn’t the one I wanted to write. My blood pressure rising, I understand why such things might drive me to abandon the Internet forever. When I visited the Holocaust Museum this summer, the experience provided the important space, context, and historical aesthetics with which my family could process the complexity of mankind’s evil and hatred. But on a common afternoon, with no buffer of prayer or even conversation, the disconnected pieces of hate exploded on my computer screen and left me angry, pitted. This is the great empty hole of digital communication.

The big hole in the ground that exposes all the layers of American ideology gets creepier and creepier the further down you go. I sure didn’t like what West, Wilson, and Williams managed to unearth this week, but it was there all along. I’m too old to be having a coming-of-age experience, and epiphany is overused, but tonight I will pray differently for my brothers and sisters. I will share my broken heart with my family, and we will talk about it. I might even have to confess my own sins of prejudice rather than thank God that “at least I’m not as bad as those lunatics.” I will also consider the balance between knowing and not knowing, between exposure to truth and meditating on love, between wise discernment and head-in-the-sand naivete.