In the beautiful way we have seen human life continue to go on after the enormity of violent terror attacks in so many other places, New York, with an of course expanded police presence, enjoyed a Halloween parade, enjoying pretend frights in the face of the real frights that terrorists prefer that people would cower to.
This is because life must go on. With every due recognition of the pain and sorrow of those affected, the families and loved ones of the slain and the living victims of this execrable harm, and the loved ones who stand by them to support their changed lives, I wish you every comfort--including this, that your continued life, and all you do right now, can be the greatest gesture against terror by simply going on. Do you, and be you, and love who you love, and change not one thing, and tell the hate mongers of the world they are not big enough, nor bad enough, nor hateful enough, to make you anything diminished by their disruption. They are the small, the needy, the hateful, the damaged. The terrorist need to see hate prosper, chaos reign, destruction pertain, is the desire of people without the imagination to make, build, or even see a better future. It is for the living to live.
They that gloat over the dead can stay with the graves.
What is more, for me, anyway, is that the US hold fast to our creedal values. It is something of a periodic vogue for Know-Nothings to run down our Constitutional freedoms or even propose that some people deserve to be treated differently because of some quality of their actions that make them differently "personned"--that make them less-than to receive due process, and the full and correct judgment of our US legal system.
We might not ever entirely understand what makes a Sayfullo Saipov. Any number of people of any country of origin or religion might come here to the United States and live completely blameless and productive lives. I do not think that the error of society that created a murderer should be compounded to create a makeshift justice intermediary that condones the lynch-mob instinct and proves that terror can change us. We should be better, and stronger, and less panicked, than this. And no one should be so crass as to try to score points with poor information.
We are stronger for keeping our faith in our system. I do not trust those who choose such a moment to run it down. This is not leadership. It is parasitism.
3 comments:
Hi Vixen, I regret that we will either change our immigration protocols or acquiesce to the periodic slaughter of Americans. I'm afraid the situation is just that stark.
In the ltatest case I was struck by how friendly and companionable this latest terrorist was with Americans that he knew for quite some time. I remember another case where an exchange student from the Middle East actually lived in the home that was provided for him. He was on friendly terms with a number of people for a couple of years, only to turn on everyone and commit a terrorist assault. You will recall that in the San Bernadino massacre the terrorist had worked every day with the people he eventually killed. They had even thrown a party for him and family members – only to find an ISIS terrorist coming back into the office building intending to slaughter his old companions.
Clearly we cannot tell the terrorists by their deceptively friendly relationships with Americans. President Trump is right. We need to rearrange our immigration system with extreme protocols or else just get used to the idea that we are OK with periodic slaughter of Americans. And also get used to the idea that just because we have violent Americans we might as well have violent foreigners stay in our country too.
I don't know, I just feel like this is the "joke" all over--he was so polite and quiet. Nobody ever thought he could do anything like this. It's the universal thing about the potential mass murderer. Until you scratch the surface and the signs show up--screwed up ideologies. Reports of violent leanings not followed up on, etc. Usually some sign of violence towards family members or romantic partners. But this is just as true of our home grown violent monsters as foreign-born ones. The broad majority of immigrants are still mostly just people looking for work, not blood. I don't know if there's any country free of the propensity for producing violent assholes, and I guess it is true there are some countries that produce violent assholes more susceptible to toxic ideologies. It's just that, I don't want to punish people because of their group in advance of what some member of their group might do. I think people who use the term "religious war" are being overblown, but I definitely think there is a war of ideas.
Me--I want equality of treatment under the law, freedom of speech and religion, and also a rigorous dissemination of education about critical thinking and especially ideological and terroristic bullshit-dispelling. I don't know that barring bodies prevents poor thinking from crossing our borders. I don't know if we can be free from terrorism until more people recognize it is only good at destroying, not changing minds. I feel like looking at immigration is maybe going to limit foreign-born terror, but that is all. We still will have home-grown terror. And illegally-entering terror, because people always find a way to do what they are told they shouldn't. We need to do something to make a culture more positive, more creative, less hateful and restrictive and tribal.
To my mind, I want all people to know they are also charged with doing The Great Work, and do their own work on themselves before they think they can change the world, especially by painting it with blood. In Islam, Jihad, despite the way we've come to know it, can mean doing this kind of work. I am not okay with periodic slaughter, but I spend that thought in trying to advance critical thinking and agitate for reduction of instruments of mass killing. A truck, of course, is not ordinarily a weapon. A person should not be seen as one, used as one, rhetorically made into one, given no choice but to become one, either. There needs to be choice.
Vixen, I think you have put your finger on it. They think they are doing The Great Work. Knocking infidels off is an important part of the process.
How can this be?
As you know, in the mafia friends frequently kill friends. Sammy the Bull Gravano explained how he knocked off a relative and was there in a supervisory capacity to make sure everything went right and no undue suffering took place. Nature's nobleman.
But the mob will tell you, “It's not personal. It's only business.”
With radical Islamic fundamentalism, “It's not personal. It's religion.”
As you know I'm a veteran who was forced to get my mind right about enemies and their sensitivities early on in my life. And the thing that is helpful to realize is that Islamic fundamentalism is kind of like a huge organization of the most vicious biker gangs that you can imagine. And they have no concern about killing numbers of people to reach their criminal objectives. Islamic fundamentalism has as its objective either converting you or killing you. It's a hard thing to learn, but it is necessary.
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