There has been a horrifying terror attack in Magdeburg, Germany, today. Two are confirmed dead — one a small child — and at least 68 wounded after a man plowed through the city’s Christkindlmarkt in a car at terrifyingly high speed. (The video is horrifying, and I wish never to see it again.)

The perpetrator — a man currently identified as a “Tlaeb A.,” a 50-year-old Saudi doctor — was captured alive. He emigrated to Germany in 2006 and obtained refugee status in 2016. This is not a new form of atrocity in Europe; an even more horrifying attack took place in the south of France in 2016, in Nice, when a self-radicalized Tunisian swearing allegiance to ISIS drove a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day, murdering 86 people. You may draw all the obvious conclusions about Europe’s immigration and policing problems that you like. Believe me, I probably agree.

But for now I think about the dead and wounded. For those unaware, Christkindlmarkt is a holiday tradition in Germany, one where families brave the outdoors in a plaza while their children enjoy holiday treats and fun. Instead, families were torn apart and terror inflicted on what is specifically meant to be a winter wonderland for children. I also cannot help but think about how tomorrow, in theory, I’m taking my son to the Daley Center Plaza here in Chicago . . . for Christkindlmarkt.

There is no such thing as a terror attack that is not hideous. But there is something uniquely hateful about mowing entire crowds down at high speed in a car. A gun is willfully aimed; a bomb is nihilistically random. But the automobile as a purpose-driven weapon of terror is somehow more depraved than either, veering this way or that by the sheer velocity of guided hatred: a killer who wants to rack up the highest possible body count by personally participating in it. And who survived to celebrate it all.

As a Christian, I seek to keep genuine hatred out of my heart. But I fall short — I cannot help but hate this man with every shred of my eternal being. So I ask you to forgive me if, in cases like these, I take consolation in my genuine belief in the existence of hell, and my private certainty that this man is destined for it.