Some facts about this latest monstrous outrage are now known. But others remain unknown – and, ultimately, may be unknowable. Orlando, Florida is now a place name that has joined an infamous roster of other place names where the unspeakable has occurred in an otherwise ordinary place that had rarely, if ever, known evil like this previously.

For most people nowadays, Orlando is the jumping off point for a parade of themed amusement parks across mid-Florida. It doesn’t have the rich baroque, tortured history of much of the Deep South, if for no other reason than that it was barely much of a place until the amusement park industry came to town. But now it will be remembered. Differently.

On a late Saturday night, in Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, Omar Mateen, a man who worked as a security guard at a courthouse in another town about an hour-and-a-half’s drive from Orlando, entered this nightclub and began shooting people. By the time he was finally stopped by police bullets, 50 people lay dead and more than that number were seriously wounded by his attack – some so grievously the authorities are afraid these casualties may not survive.

Along the way, Mateen had called 911 (the emergency services telephone number in use across the US) to announce he was carrying out this mission on behalf of Islamic State (IS). And, in the fullness of time, an IS announcement claimed his efforts as theirs – regardless of whether they really had a connection to that group or not. According to some analysts, IS is, in contrast to a group like al-Qaeda, quite happy to take credit for people anywhere in the world prepared to give them credit, regardless of whether or not there really was any connection between the perpetrator and IS.

Mateen was born in America to Afghan immigrants. He was something of a loner, but work colleagues have said on television, while shaking their heads over what happened, that they had found him to be a nice enough guy. Quiet, but conscientious. He was briefly married, but is no longer.

His ex-wife has a somewhat different story to tell about Mateen. She said Mateen had abused her repeatedly and that she thought he needed mental health assistance. Meanwhile, his father, a man who sometimes broadcasts over a rather sketchy, small-scale cable channel based in California, and who often rails at a miscellany of topics, sometimes less than cogently according to those who have viewed his broadcasts – but most have been related to Afghanistan – says Mateen was a good son.

Mateen’s name had been noted several times by the federal authorities that maintain such surveillance, concerning the possibility he had connections to radical Islamicist fundamentalist terror groups. Although his name remained on one list, ultimately they did not regard him as an actual threat to anyone. Until this weekend, that is.

His father has told of how Omar Mateen had been incensed by seeing two men kissing each other (a negative view of LGBTI rights he apparently shared with his father). Meanwhile, a co-worker said he had heard Mateen express support for the Taliban, but neither co-worker nor parent had assumed from such utterances that Omar Mateen’s next move would be to carry out a murderous attack on a nightclub crowd.

As a private security company guard, he had undergone several security checks and was licensed to carry weapons required for work. In addition, however, he had recently purchased a semi-automatic rifle, the kind increasingly favoured by mass killers, one of those AR-15s, as well as a 9mm pistol. This former weapon was most definitively not part of his usual kit for his job, however. And in any case, Florida has no effective gun control regimen that would have precluded Mateen from purchasing or owning such a weapon anyway, almost regardless of his emotional stability, or political and social predilections.

But if what actually happened wasn’t already sufficiently tragic, the way this story has infiltrated the current presidential electioneering may be more unpleasant still. And it may yet turn out to be a transformative moment in the campaign.

First off the mark, Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump started his Twitter campaign with a relatively rational message that there had been a “really bad shooting in Orlando. Police investigating possible terrorism. Many people dead and wounded.” But the devil got hold of him quickly enough as he began to tie the deaths to the more appalling threads of his presidential campaign, saying, “When will we get smart and vigilant?” This was followed less than an hour later by a self-congratulatory, “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don’t want congrats, I want toughness and vigilance. We must be smart!” That, in turn, led to the following rant, “Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn’t he should immediately resign in disgrace!”

Not content to beat up the president for not adhering to a Trumpian zeitgeist and The Donald’s word choice police, Trump went on to spread unsubstantiated rumours that Mateen had shouted, “Allah hu Akbar!”, and then issued a fuller media statement, lashing Obama for having “disgracefully refused to even say the words ‘Radical Islam’,” even before Obama addressed the nation following the massacre. Then Trump called on Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, to leave the general election campaign for the same reason Trump had castigated the president about.

Now firmly in a baroque, full-throttle, self-congratulatory mode, and with a perfect tin ear for the sensibilities of the wounded still fighting for their lives or of the bereaved families, Trump pounded himself on the back, saying, “Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen – and it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can’t afford to be politically correct any more.”

He went on to insist that immigration from the Middle East was the cause of the latest tragedy, adding, with no obeisance to truth in telling, “Since 9/11, hundreds of migrants and their children have been implicated in terrorism in the United States. Hillary Clinton wants to dramatically increase admissions from the Middle East, bringing in many hundreds of thousands during a first term. And we will have no way to screen them, pay for them, or prevent the second generation from radicalising.”

This kind of stuff can pretty much stun one into silence, rather like being a metaphorical deer fixed in the headlights of an onrushing rhetorical onslaught.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton and her campaign attempted to achieve a more complex challenge of threading between denunciations of terror, homophobia, gun control and mental health issues, even as she still tried to be in campaign mode. Her campaign communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, speaking for the candidate, said, “Donald Trump put out political attacks, weak platitudes and self-congratulations. Trump has offered no real plans to keep our nation safe and no outreach to the Americans targeted, just insults and attacks. In times of crisis, more than ever, Americans are looking for leadership and deserve better.”

Even before that statement, the candidate herself had tweeted, “Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. –H.”

As the hours ticked by, Hillary Clinton, in telephonic interviews with media, added that the nation’s leaders “have to try to get this out of partisanship. It’s a moment for statesmanship. It’s a moment for everybody to come together and remember those who have been murdered, stand with every person who is suffering and grieving and then try to figure out what we can do.”

Other statements from the Clinton campaign declared the killings to be acts of terror and hate, even as she framed the issue by saying, “From my perspective, it matters what we do, not what we say.” And added, “To me, radical jihadism, radical Islamism, I think they mean the same thing. I’m happy to say either.”

But she went on to argue that her opponent, Donald Trump, simply didn’t understand what was really at stake in the discussion over the tragic events. “All this talk and demagogy and rhetoric is not going to solve the problem. I’m not going to demonise and demagogue and declare war on an entire religion. That’s just plain dangerous and it plays into ISIS’s hands.”

Photo: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally at St Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA, 13 June 2016. EPA/HERB SWANSON

Clinton also urged the nation to reject calls by the powerful gun lobby and push for a ban on assault weapons, saying, “We cannot fall into the trap set by the gun lobby that says if you can’t stop every shooting and every incident you shouldn’t try to stop any. That is not how laws work. It’s not common sense.”

She went on to argue, “We need to get these weapons of war off the streets. We had an assault weapons ban, it expired, and we need to reinstate it. From San Bernardino to Aurora, Colorado to Sandy Hook and now to Orlando, we have seen the devastation that these military style weapons cause. We’re going to try to put a huge coalition together of all the groups, all the individuals who care about this issue, those who have been touched by it, and try to get common sense gun safety reform passed in order to protect the people of our country.” Top of FormBottom of Form

And Bernie Sanders, still technically in the hunt for the nomination, had weighed in on the events, saying on NBC TV’s Meet the Press that the murders were “horrific” and “unthinkable”. He added, “Our – just – hopes go out to all those who were shot that they can recover… 25 years ago I believed that in this country that we should not be selling automatic weapons which are designed to kill people. We have got to do everything that we can on top of that to make sure that guns do not fall into the hands of those who should not have them: criminals, people who are mentally ill. So that struggle continues.”

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama, obviously grown more than weary from having to give eulogies at mass killings carried out by enraged loners at Ft Hood, Texas; Charleston, South Carolina; and Sandy Hook, Connecticut, used his remarks to the nation to highlight the continued need to act against gun violence.

As he said after this latest outrage, “This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship, or a movie theatre, or in a nightclub. And we have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be. And to actively do nothing is a decision as well…. June is pride month across the country. As we celebrate progress made while honouring those who lost their lives in Orlando, let’s also remember what inspires us to keep fighting: hope.

“As LGBTQ rights activist Harvey Milk once said, ‘The only thing they have to look forward to is hope. And you have to give them hope.’ Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right.”

And as for the question that seemingly fixates The Donald, the president had earlier said in an interview with Fareed Zakaria in February on CNN, “(F)or us to be successful in fighting this scourge, it’s very important for us to align ourselves with the 99.9% of Muslims who are looking for the same thing we’re looking for — order, peace, prosperity — and so I don’t quibble with labels. I think we all recognise that this is a particular problem that has roots in Muslim communities. But I think we do ourselves a disservice in this fight if we are not taking into account the fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims reject this ideology.” Until now at least, there appears to be no change in the incumbent president’s word choice, despite Trump’s baiting tweets.

Going forward, the political question for the presidential campaign is whether Trump will be able to skew the shock of this latest tragedy into a simpleminded narrative of (American born) Islamicist terror into an alignment with his pledges to halt any Muslim travel to the US, to carpet bomb IS, and to denounce the president and his would-be Democratic Party successor as Quislings and apologists for Islamic terror – and have them stick in the majority of voters’ minds.

Or, instead, will American voters now begin to become weary – and increasingly wary – of Trump’s one dimensional, cartoon caricature of the type of government action needed? Will this come forward as they read the heart-rending SMS transcripts from the phones of the dying in that nightclub to friends and families; as they hear more of Mateen’s angry denunciations of gay men; or as they learn more about Mateen’s own, lonely, self-induced education and growing emotional unravelling as he moved towards support for IS, from his everyday life as a courtroom guard in Florida? The results of this year’s presidential campaign may depend on which way that particular electoral pendulum swings. DM

Photo: Police and rescue officers monitor the scene of a shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, USA, 12 June 2016. At least 50 people were killed and many others injured in a shooting attack at an LGBT club in the early hours of 12 June, according to media reports. The shooter was killed in the police operation that followed. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA