The Simpsons and the Boston Bombings

Oliver cobbled together all of his giftcards and money received for his birthday and bought himself the new Simpsons' Kwik-E-Mart Lego set. He put the whole dang thing together yesterday and this morning, and I have to say it's enchanting. I'm not a Simpsons' watcher, have never really gotten into it, but that's mainly because I've never gotten into cartoons, even as a kid. I do appreciate the humor that I see every now and then, and I still remember the episode when Marge and Homer go to marriage camp and the counselor declares that "it's all his fault" when Homer fails to show up at a therapy session. The other episode I remember is when Homer finds himself on death row and then realizes that he's actually part of a reality show. When I looked it up this morning on Wikipedia, I saw that the title of that episode was The Frying Game, and shortly afterward, I saw on the news that the Russian guy who bombed the Boston Marathon got the death sentence for his crimes. While Oliver screwed together a few more tzotchkes on his set, I told him this news, and his response was Awesome! My stomach curdled, to tell you the truth, even as I continued to read about the verdict, including the words of Sister Helen Prejean who evidently spoke in Tsarnaev's defense. Here's the thing: the institutionalized killing of another human being is nothing but revenge. Let's call it like it is. Strapping a human being to a bed and then injecting him with poison in the dead of night while people watch is more vile than a pathetic excuse of a young man packing a backpack full of nails and dropping it at the finish line of a marathon, blowing off the limbs of innocent people and killing three people. It's more vile because it's a collective effort by an institution and carried out under the guise of justice. It makes me sick, and it's not a reality show.

Just wondering

So, I listened to the POTUS this morning while sitting in my car in my driveway. He was speaking at a press conference about those starving prisoners of Guantanamo and what to do, what to do. I don't really understand why this is such a problem for some -- the holding of hundreds of men prisoner in a dank place somewhere in Cuba without charging them with a crime for years and years and years -- and then I know why this is a problem. It's because we live in a country where it's more like do as I say than do as I do, a country where torture became legal and basic rights of due process were suspended because you don't mess with the United States, where even the most reasonable of the conservative justified crimes of war, absolving them and those who perpetrated them -- look, how cute the last POTUS looks with his new grandbaby! -- where those in power, backed by the inane, let drop the most basic of gun control objectives in the name of our Second Amendment rights and where, I'd say, fear rules the day. What if the Chechnyian American boy and his brother had opened fire at the Boston Marathon with machine guns legally obtained and killed scores of people that morning instead of packing pressure cookers with nails and metal and then setting them off as bombs? Would they have been charged with owning Weapons of Mass Destruction?  Would the entire city of Boston been shut down as the  National Guard roamed the streets searching for the killers? Would the NRA have come out and said People kill people, not guns! And would the politicians and the people that prop them up have bemoaned the lack of proper mental health treatment in this country in lieu of just removing or making more difficult the ability to buy and use Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Just wondering.

A Toe in the Door Kind of Rant

The Grand Inquisitor

So, I've read a bit about the Republican guy who would "be the first in line" to torture the kid who built the bombs and set them off in Boston last week. I read, too, the opinions of those who think the kid should be tried in a military court despite the fact that he's an American citizen and that's against the law. I read that he is charged with using a "weapon of mass destruction" (and can't help but feel the irony of those illusory WMDs in Iraq so many years ago that launched a thousand ships) despite the seeming humble origins of pressure cooker, nails, metal. I have wondered, with others, why the poor souls of West, Texas who disappeared in an apocalyptic explosion and fire, haven't warranted the same amount of outrage and/or horror of those attending the Boston Marathon last week. I flipped through scores of powerful photos on the internet of refugees, maimed children and grieving men and women in the streets of Syria, where scores die every single day. I shrink from the Facebook posts exclaiming over the kick-ass law enforcement of Boston and all the cliches of bravery and fortitude that have followed. I listened carefully to those who are nervous about traveling to big cities with their children. I even argued a bit over on Maggie May's blog with a guy who was carrying a huge stick and swinging it wildly.

I don't know quite what to make of all of this and wish that I could just turn it all off.

Off.

I read this, though, which put my unease, if not to rest, then at least in perspective.

What we witnessed was a tragic — but sadly – too familiar sequence of events. In a nation of over 340 million, we have a few demented or damaged souls with real or imagined grievances that cause them to wish to harm people whom they do not know. We also have good, brave, and competent local and state police forces that are able and willing to solve these crimes. It was true back in 1977 (and long before), and remains true today.

So what in fact did change? We now have a “War on Terror” that permeates every public news event and action. The immediate leap to the familiar “Terrorists In Our Midst” narrative is facilitated and amplified by a bovine mainstream media amped up by endless alerts issued by a Department of Homeland Security and two Presidential Administrations about insane foreigners here, there, and everywhere. In other words, what’s changed is the presence of a fear-mongering narrative of the War on Terror, along with the billions in expenditures that are used to justify it, that reframe a centuries old story about crime.

The rest of the story is here.

I don't know if I agree with the above writer, but it settles my unease a bit. 

Reader, what are you thinking about or turning OFF?

Santa Monica, March 2013

That vague paralysis when there's too much news.

Wandering around, the ineffectual

Two good quotes:

The cure for anything is salt water -- tears, sweat or the sea.

Isak Dinesen

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Issac Asimov