Boris Nemtsov, gunned down in the heart of Moscow.
The assassination sends a chill into brain, mind, heart.
Reminds us of the paper-thin skin of civilisation.
And not only in Moscow.
Assassinations, alas, are nothing new.
Martin Luther King's, of course. Archbishop Romero.
So many others.
I was in a student hostel in Tubingen, near Stuttgart, when the news of Jack Kennedy's came through; unforgettable the stunned young German faces.
Somehow it's different now, though.
Kennedy's death menaced what then seemed a reasonably intact world.
Isis atrocities, the endless bloodletting in Syria, the skulduggery in Ukraine, mean that Mr Nemtsov's casual elimination scarcely raises an eyebrow today.
Barbarism is our normal diet.
Not in New Zealand, though.
We're OK. Or are we?
I was at Long Beach recently.
Light rain falling.
Three life-saving crews going through their training.
Young folk bouncing over serious surf.
Having a whale of a time.
Learning heaps.
Volunteers giving up their morning to mentor them.
Beach and domain a delight to the eye.
Kiwi heartland stuff.
But for how long will we stay immune, intact, secure from the thunderous surf of global violence?
When, we wonder, will we see the first assassination here in New Zealand?
Our Government is ahead of most of us in being aware that our geographical isolation is no guarantee of immunity and its answer, as we know, is to send off a boutique contingent of troops to Iraq.
But does Prime Minister John Key, so impressive in his command of detail, have any clue at all about the larger issues involved?
I fear he is an innocent abroad.
We are talking, after all, about a grass-roots movement, fired by religious and xenophobic fanaticism.
We are talking about well-geared factories of hate.
Much of that hate is directed against fellow Muslims, but also against anything that smacks of Western values and Western power.
Our teaspoonful of military assistance is risible in such a context.
All it does is draw unwanted attention to ourselves.
Many commentators observe we are entering, globally, a much more labile, potentially explosive international situation.
The Cold War, with its threat of nuclear catastrophe, has been replaced by simmering fires of discontent right across the globe.
These factories of hate are not going to go away.
And we are scarcely the holy innocents, are we?
Look at spiralling world refugee figures, at Australian leader Tony Abbott's vile policies towards the boat people, at 99% of the world scrabbling for the crumbs left the prosperous 1%.
In the light of that, John Key's Goodies and Baddies scenario looks like Boys' Own fantasy stuff.
Its most insidious feature is it persuades us that we are ''doing something''.
If anything, though, we are adding a teaspoonful of oil to the flames.
Our little country has in the past taken independent and courageous political initiatives.
That is one plangent need. Another is even more urgent: to engage with the motivations of the agents of hate.
Not with their fanatical mentors, who are beyond all reason and humanity.
But with the little people who are swept away by a rhetoric which seems to make sense of their frustrations.
What realistic alternatives to the present unjust world order could we be offering them?
What factories of compassion are we developing in this land to body out a different way?
Long Beach in a decade's time?
Still a recreative, peaceful place?
• The Rev Prof Peter Matheson, from Dunedin, is a church historian.
