Terror in Manchester Targets Youth and is Immeasurably Disgusting

Islamic State supporters celebrate Manchester attack online, no official claim https://t.co/mY2SzJtMqV pic.twitter.com/djpLb3lEis

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) May 23, 2017

The latest news out of Manchester indicates that explosions at an Ariana Grande concert were deliberate, involved shrapnel bombs, just like the Boston Marathon attack here in the US, and have taken the lives of 19 people and wounded 50 or more others. The people of Manchester have risen admirably to the tragedy as details are still unfolding, which highlights something I have said about the use of terror before, and still think is meaningful--

It's useless. It conveys nothing but the willingness of the perpetrator to kill, and conveys nothing about the hopes, the concerns, the world the perpetrator wants to see. It is a desperate shriek for help spoken in gibberish. It's nihilism, and indifferent from the wreckage wrought by a drunk or a mentally ill person. Whoever had done this attack may have had some ideology in their fevered brains, but what have they accomplished? A terrifying and tragic time for concertgoers and their family and loved ones? But what does it say?

Nothing at all. This stupid wasteful act says nothing, but reminds us all of how precious life is, how much we desperately love those we love, how much we abhor acts of terror and violence. My thoughts are with those affected by this tragedy. This violence is not our humanity, what we do in the face of it is. And I refuse to assign ideology or politics or religion to this senselessness. It remains that: senseless, the self-negating act of people who no longer gave a shit for their humanity, and my agnosticism almost yearns for a hell for them to understand what they have rejected.

A Change is Going to Come in SC

The announcement by SC Governor Nikki Haley, flanked by US Senators Scott and Graham, and backed by RNC chair Reince Priebus, that the Confederate flag should no longer be flown at the State Capitol, was a decision that was some time in coming, but I think it's only right. And I know some might detract from that decision saying it only came about because of the tragic loss of life that just recently happened, but I would say that it happens at all is meaningful.

This comes shortly after a decision by SCOTUS that the state of Texas could not be obliged to have that particular symbol on their license plates. It was followed by an announcement by Walmart that they would cease to sell any Confederate-flag related merchandise, and a statement from a Mississippi legislator that their state should consider also removing that symbol.