Nurse the Hate: Hate the Boston Marathon Bomber
The senseless bombing in Boston yesterday once more proves
that there are some scary people that live amongst us. Bombs that appear to have been intended to
maim normal people supporting the solitary challenges of distance running are
difficult to get your arms around. There
is no political agenda of the Boston Marathon.
It is a large gathering of people from many nations celebrating individual
athletic achievement. As there has not
been a wildly nonsensical video released from a Muslim extremist group, perhaps
this is a fucked up individual from our own country. Who the hell knows? There are damaged crazy people everywhere. I am not sure how someone comes to the
conclusion that detonating explosive devices designed to maim strangers at an
event designed for distance runners is a good idea. It is in the same family of thinking that
goes into movie theaters with automatic weapons.
I would imagine there will be an almost unprecented amount
of law enforcement resources devoted to catching the person(s) involved in
this. That area of Boston must have a
stunning amount of security cameras on a normal day much less a public event as
large as the Boston Marathon. I feel
confident that someone will be caught. While
most people will actively scream for the death penalty to be applied to the
perpetrators, that seems too quick and somehow merciful. I would argue for life imprisonment with the
caveat of first performing amputation surgery on select limbs in “field
hospital conditions” on the guilty. 35-45
years of living in a surgically reduced body to provide limited movement and
flexibility is a start in the right direction.
Then again, I have always been and eye-for-an-eye type of guy.
In my city of Cleveland today the mayor had a press
conference that interrupted all regular scheduled broadcasts to address security
in our town as we also have a marathon later this Spring. This is, of course, totally fucking
ridiculous. We have as much in common
with Boston as we do with New York, LA, Chicago, or San Francisco. We all have Applebees, Shell Gas Stations,
and Subway. That’s about it. They are world class cities associated with
America. We are a second rate backwater. Terrorists attack London, not Leeds. Whatever
asshole(s) did this crime didn’t do it because of an intense hatred of distance
running. They attacked the Boston
Marathon because it is a world renowned race in a huge well known population
center with a kazillion people in attendance. It is
an event in the world’s spotlight. I
have my doubts that some nefarious criminal syndicate is traveling around
causing mayhem and destruction at track events in general. My head almost explodes when I think of how
stupid that whole line of thinking is on it down at City Hall.
After we get past this kneejerk reaction phase, I hope we
all get back to doing our normal routines.
Our country is built on freedom.
That’s what drives these kooks out of their minds. Fuck 'em.
Let’s get back to the business of doing our own thing, bring whoever did
this to light, and hopefully head the next possible event off at the pass. The twisted thinking on these horrible acts of random violence is to intimidate the normal population. Create fear. Once again, fuck those people. I'm going to go where I want and do what I want. Right now? I'm going for a run.
posted by Greg Miller @ 5:57 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
As much as you think we live in a backwater town where incidents like this don't occur, let me remind you of Oklahoma City in 1995with 168 people killed in their federal courthouse. I normally don't think of Oklahoma City as a major cosmopolitan area but due to that terroist act security was beefed up in federal buildings all across the country. Or how about the 5 nut jobs from northeast Ohio who tried to blow up the Valley View bridge where definitely more than a few people would have been killed if their plan worked. It does not matter that we don't live in a high profile city, stark raving lunatics don't care about that either, they only care about killing alot of people in high profile fashion. The Cleveland Marathon does have 20,000 runners...if they did not react to the Boston Marathon bombing and work to make sure something like this does not happen here than they would be fools. Unfortunately as Americans, we are all targets regardless of your zip code.
I agree with the fact that Oklahoma City is a backwater (though I think they have more population than Cleveland proper), though that incident is certainly more exception than rule. If you do a quick scan in terrorist activity, cities like London and New York come up with much more regularity than LIttle Rock and Tampa. While I am not suggesting that we are not as vigilant as possible with security measures, I am saying that we cannot let it become the overriding fear. One has to live life within reasonable probabilities. What are we going to do now? Spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on increased security on a foot race in Cleveland OH that is about the least likely target and also lest defendable event from terrorism in NE Ohio?
Off the top of my head, in the unlikely event an extremist group wanted to do something terrible to a large group of unsuspecting people in NE Ohio there are much more likely targets like 10 Browns games, 82 Indians games, 41 Cavs games, the St Patrick's Day parade, New Year's Eve, County and Street Fairs, concerts, high school sporting events, shopping malls during holidays, etc etc etc. The common ground isn't track events. "Holy fuck! They bombed the Boston Marathon! They'll bomb our marathon!" That's crazy. I think we can roll the dice on the Cleveland Marathon with some confidence.
The bottom line is that if someone wants to do something terrible, you aren't going to be able to come up with every eventuality. There will always be terrible people doing terrible things. It sucks, but it's the way of the world. I just don't think we can let it totally dictate our lives.
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