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Yes and tomorrow, 30 people will die from gun violence. And the day after that, and the day after that. And the day after that. But if we don’t catch the terrorist(s) responsible for this Boston City Massacre, well how can anyone go about their lives and feel safe?
Thank you for the validation, people. Sometimes coming here is a good gauge for rightness, and I hate it when I find out I’m being an asshole way out in left field. Doesn’t happen often, but when it does I think about it long and hard and try to figure out why. Glad I don’t have to do that today! 
Holy shit! Why aren’t bombs illegal? Gotta get the bombs away from everyone! Oh. Wait…
Yup. But the organizers of the Boston Marathon deserve props for planning for something like this in the years following 9/11.
Ezra Klein interviewed security expert Bruce Schneier:
This just in…
More people died or were injured, and magnitudes more property damage was done in the Fertilizer Plant explosion.
And that was an accident.
So far no public rending of clothing or expressions of fear and anquish.
There’s a moronic thing going around Facebook that has a picture of Newtown kids being led out of the school next to a picture of Boston bombing victims. It says, “bomb goes off, bomber blamed; school shooting, guns blamed” or words to that effect. I keep pointing out that bombs are illegal and guns will stop being blamed if they’re illegal too but that’s apparently not the desired message.
Except they don’t stop getting blamed when they’re illegal.
Don’t hijack this into a gun thread, please.
Except on the local Houston news, where there’s a fair amount of it.
But I get your point. It doesn’t count if it’s only local sackcloth and ashes.
+1. Yes I have no heart.
One of the sad part of tragedies like this is how many people come out of the woodwork looking for a piece of the action, a way to fit themselves into the event. This morning I watched one of the CNN guys trying for ten minutes to get an ER doc to say the Boston explosion was “just like Iraq.” Yes, yes we get that you’ve been to Iraq Mr. reporter. You’ve seen the shit.
But the victims are being blamed for living in Texas.
After everybody is through out-caring each other, which will be in another 2-3 days, the media will begin with the inevitable What can we do to prevent this from ever happening again mode.
It won’t be long before some nitwit will suggest video cameras on every street corner just to be safe. Or some equally overwrought solution, you know, to fight TERRORISM.
Hour after hour of coverage with looped video but no new info, only speculation. My heart bleeds into my brain which finally registers I Can’t Take This
Anymore—boredom (Denial.)
I made a really sick joke that assures I’m going to hell. Maybe when it’s not Too Soon, a thread could be started.
You first.
You’re right. I didn’t mean to start that. Sorry.
Heartily endorse. I HATE tragedy porn. I’m as shocked and empathetic as the next guy when something terrible happens, but days later, you should not be publicly rending your garments about it when you were not remotely involved. Yes, yes, we all express grief differently. And some people are emotional cutters and need to STFU. See also: the anniversary of 9/11. GAH.
A lot of what I’ve been seeing (and being annoyed by) doesn’t even fit into the “that’s what terrorists want, for us to scared!” thing. Unless the terrorists also want people to seek attention on Facebook because their cousin’s father-in-law ran the Chicago Marathon two years ago, and they once transferred planes at Logan on their way from St. Louis to London, and THAT COULD HAVE BEEN US, MAN! I have never seen more tenuous connections to Boston and marathons in my life. It’s the impulse to insert themselves into the sad events that I can’t figure out.
A chance to be relevant?
It makes me think how incredibly easy and strife-free our lives are in the modern western world that shit that would be an undetectable blip on the strife radar to almost every other society in history becomes this huge deal to us. The majority of human societies throughout human history if subjected to a day as bad as of 9/11 or the boston thing - where that was the worst thing that happened that day - would regard that day as the best fucking day ever.
It makes me wonder if our society would completely collapse if we actually faced real strife and tragedy, if shit like this which is fucking peanuts on the grand scale of things can so shake our national psyche, would real hardship just break us instantly?
Then I think that perhaps we react this way in a recreational way. Many people in our society seem to take to victimhood as a part of some sort of club, and want to be a bigger victim than everyone else. It was like there was a fucking race after 9/11 for people from Nebraska who never knew anyone living within 1000 miles of New York were trying to scream the loudest about HOW 9/11 CHANGED EVERYTHING!!! and other such nonsense. Recreational trauma. Very weird.
So we’re either the biggest bunch of pussies that history has ever seen, or we are neurotic people with so few real problems that we actually try to work ourselves up into a traumatized state recreationally. Either way, for fucks sake people, grow the fuck up. Shit happens. The Boston thing was probably the 400th worst thing that happened in the world that day, let alone year or decade.
Carlos and his wife Melida are awesome people. I know them from doing peace work up at Crawford during the Bush regime. A kind, compassionate and gentle soul.
A third possibility is that we are civilized, reasonable and compassionate. I don’t think I want to live in a society that accepts mayhem and death as part of the daily grind.