view out our front window yesterday
I write here once a week-- other than when something happens that I really want to write about and don't want it to be one of the weekly posts which I try to keep positive.
When I scanned the news yesterday, which I do on my computer in between working on editing right now, I saw the first mention of what happened in Boston. I turned on the TV which is never on during the day except for such. I went to three of the cable stations and after listening to them for awhile, I turned it off.
Yes, television news can be first with the most but one of their problems with such events is they want to prognosticate with the tiny number of facts they have and they don't remotely have enough. Every American already knows the possibilities that are out there. We don't need commentators with diarrhea of the mouth to keep telling us who could have done it or how many other bombs are out there or anything that isn't confirmed news and is just somebody said to somebody. They could stick to the facts. They could quit putting banners over the top of the images they claim to be showing us. They could but they won't.
My own thoughts on what happened are we just have too many people in the world who don't respect human life-- their own or anybody else's. Sometimes that means whole governments. Sometimes it is political groups. Sometimes it's a loser at life who wants to strike back. I don't know what you can really do when such happens except grieve for those who lost so much and try to come up with better ways to monitor people in crowd conditions; but if we lose our own freedoms in doing that, the terrorists win (and they are all terrorists whether it's using a gun, knife or bomb because they want to scare and intimidate others with violence and fear as their tactic).
In some ways there is no preventing them from winning because they take joy in what happened and nobody sane or with respect for life possibly could. Those few who do gloat over such violence, they are in league with the terrorists no matter whether they would do such a thing themselves. They are part of the deed.
The rest of us just have to realize that these times do pass. Other countries have gone through such periods. We have to be informed, alert, pay attention when out, but not stop doing things out of fear.
I wish there was something I could think of that is positive about such events though-- something uplifting. There was the response of the people there who ran toward the trouble to try and help. For the one person who would do such an act, there are thousands who try to help others and risk their own lives doing it.
But it doesn't really make us feel better because those rare mad dogs, they can hurt so many innocents, and we really cannot stop them every time. As they say, we can stop hundreds of such attacks and do, but they only have to succeed once to win because of how they see life.
12 comments:
Being first trumping accuracy.... speculating with no basis in fact... those damn banners over the view of the street (did you find yourself, like I did, trying to peer over the top of the words to see what was hidden?).... the coverage is awful.
Loving that view from your window... may it bring you peace.
a/b
Not to ignore this tragedy but I too have turned off the television. Your view is always sound . . . calming . . . peaceful. You soothe the soul, Rain.
I'm just so aware that things can change in a millisecond and the tragedy that befalls those in the wake of such insanity---well, their lives and the lives of all who love them and care about them are changed forever, too.
I hate the way the "media" feel they must fill every second with SOMETHING!!! To the downfall of all that these news programs should be and could be. It becomes a terrible circus of mis-information!...
It Is Disgusting!
I turned the news off too. Idle speculation. Makes me want to go hug my grandkids. Love your view, I'm looking out the window behind my PC into evergreens in my yard, hemlock and spruce and up into a heavy gray sky. A little peace.
I do not know why we think it is more tragic or different when it is American children who have there limbs blown off in the middle of the street. Other countries have this happen frequently. I am not saying we should be accepting...just realize we are not special.
I am sick of violence. We have to take measures to reduce and eliminate violence, or it will get worse and worse. We can't throw our hands up and say it's the way of the world. If we do that there is no point in going on.
What I wonder is if our being in a constant war is adding to it here. I recognize it's not all about one answer or another. I think of what it was like in England during the years when they were in conflict with Northern Ireland and terrorist bombings happened enough that they couldn't keep garbage cans in their cities as that was where the bombs would go. The American Indian and they were massacred and massacred. It seems to be the way of mankind when you look at history. We go through more and less peaceful times but mankind does use violence as a way to get their way. You'd think we'd learn but we don't seem to. And we are in a particularly violent time where wives kill husbands and children and husbands kill wives and children. It's just one thing after another and everybody looks for a solution or someone else to blame.
And I don't know how you stop a bombing like this one that can use ingredients anybody can buy. The only thing I come back to is having people respect life itself-- theirs and others-- and not just one nationality or belief system. But respect others. As it stands it seems we see less and less of that.
There is another difference between this bombing and war. I do not believe our military deliberately target civilians and especially not children. They though are targeting areas, some of which are terrorist hot spots and those people may have children who are hit in the process. Maybe I am naive but I think of what i read recently about a young soldier killed because he tried to befriend Afghani children and one of them shot him to death. This is like Vietnam for how it's impossible to figure out enemy from friend. It's why we never should have gotten in there to begin. I thought we had learned from Vietnam but listening to right wingers try to defend it now and justify it, I don't think we did. Maybe where it comes to humans, we just don't learn what matters most :(
Thanks, Rain. Think what good could have been done with the money wasted in the middle east, had we spent it here at home on education and easing poverty.
As to ruing the prognostications: thankfully, the non-profit with which I volunteer teachs and emphasizes that we are to state facts and not pretend that we know what will happen in the future.
Cop Car
I agree with you, and I think of the words Robert Kennedy said after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.:
"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country."
These words resonant within me today and give me hope.
Yes... they only have to win once to know they have won, because the talking heads of the news media trip over themselves trying to analyze every nuance, down to pressing the interviewees into speculating on which particular group is responsible for the mayhem... as if being the first to broadcast a culprit will make them a superhero.
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