The middle-class teenagers are educated. Well provided for. Some might say, privileged. But, something about their lives drives them to a desperate nihilism. Their ideology? One person who has observed them closely puts it like this:

They think and act as though it's an extremely late hour in the day, and nothing much matters anymore. ... This may be hard for some people to swallow, I guess, but they talk about their crimes almost as if they were acts of faith.

And their last best hope?

The goal for the bright ones is to truly mesmerize the middle class with violence. They've been transfixed with disaster themselves ... They've come to feel that there's nothing out there for them. And so they know exactly the effect they're looking for. ... The details of their crimes are always covered with the tightest possible focus, as if meaning might be found there. The result is just what they'd been hoping for: terrifying, mesmerizing violence and no context.

The carnage is mounting. Innocent people have died. What will the civilized world do about suburban white kids in Vermont?