First, before I get stupid, I’d like to express my most sincere and warmest condolences to everyone affected by the terrorist attacks in Boston. I pray you all find peace.
Now to stupid.
I have a few “real” complaints that the Boston attack made me realize. First is about youth. Second is about the media (surprise!). Oh and articles. Who needs them right? Anyway, these items are more realizations about how I view the world and less about the attacks or attackers themselves. It was however the attacks that made me come to these realizations and as such I use them as a framework for exposition.
Youth
The bombings in Boston are now known to be performed by two kids, one 19 and one not much older. (That’s QUALITY research folks). Ignore their religion. There are statistics that mention the high number of Muslims who think attacks like these are justified. My personal experience is completely different. Every Muslim individual I have had the pleasure to know has been the kind of person that I am grateful to have known. So I refuse the religious angle just as I refuse to believe every Catholic was or is still responsible for the horrors it is blamed, justified or not. No, I blame these kids’ youth. Well, partly. Follow me for a little while through the Mind of Joe.
Young people are stupid. Really they are. Bill Cosby said that children have brain damage, and I’m all-in on that idea. It isn’t the kids fault, this incredible stupidity of youth. The stupidity is natural. Brains take time to mature, to develop empathy, to harden against the injustices in life, and to reject the idiocy of the Democratic party. (Just kidding. I love my libby friends). Basically when we are young, our brains are WIDE open, ready for information and ready for influence. That’s good because otherwise we’d have all gotten eaten by saber-tooth tigers and we wouldn’t have been able to quash the Mammoth Apocalypse (or maybe the Mammothagedon? Oh yeah! I like the so much better. From now on it will be referred to as Mammothagedon. Sh!t. I JUST realized (since I tried to back link) that I’ve never shared my B Movie idea with you people. I promise I will in the future. ) I used to think that around the time of college, we fully mature into who we are to be. Like all young people, I was SO wrong. Really. Think about it. Did you have NEARLY anything figured out twenty years ago? Ten years ago? Last week before you were introduced to the joys of Caramel Mocha Frappes? Pft. If you think so then you’re an idiot incapable of rational thought. You’re also probably my biggest fans.
So now you might be SCREAMING at the top of your lungs about the total insensitivity of my thesis. Literally BILLIONS of young people have gone through their entire lives without hurting a soul. I agree. I don’t suggest youth was the sole reason that these, what’s the right word?, d!ck heads, performed this act of terror. No I just want to complain about young people in general. They dress funny. They listen to weird music. They are prone to buck tradition and authority. And they won’t get off my lawn. Plus in rare instances, they get really stupid ideas that they think are brilliant but end up hurting more people than one could ever imagine. Ideas like “let’s bomb someone” or “I’m going to join the Communist Party”, or “Hey, Che Guevara is cool”. (I’m not apologizing for the last two. I really don’t like Communism, and Che was a mass murdering, homophobic, racist, sh!t who’s only real value is to help people use his image in Capitalistic endeavors (Oh! the irony) and to serve as an example of what a real piece of human sh!t looks like).
Young people also tend to be open to suggestion and acts of stupidity, sometimes horrible stupidity. I’m only sort of making up the “fact” that more wars have been started by kids younger than thirty through history than by people over sixty. If the collective “we” are lucky, the stupid actions of stupid kids only affect themselves. For instance “we” would have been lucky if these kids blew themselves up making their first bomb. We in this case doesn’t include the loved ones of those kids. God forbid my daughter ever does something horribly stupid. If she does I hope it is limited to something like creating a moronic blog, voting Democrat (Sorry. Last one. I actually kind of expect that one though), or becoming a journalist which rolls us into my next set of thoughts.
The Media
At first I really liked the positive stories that were coming out about the heroism of the first responders and basically everyone that ran toward the explosions. I thank God for these people. I thank the media for the stories. We needed that. Eventually however the coverage got a little … comical? no maybe … saturated. Yeah. You ruin something when you produce too much of it. It loses value and impact. I’m going to assume the best, that the journalists are just as horror-fatigued as the rest of us. The scars of 9/11 run deep. But where has the hard journalism been? Well, where was the hard journalism that wasn’t showing people how to create bombs or speculating that maybe BOXING drove the older brother to radicalism. Maybe it just isn’t time yet for that level of analysis. Maybe the media will start asking those questions when the time is right. I know there are several political opportunists out there trying to gain public opinion by saying things that are actually highly insensitive or really, really stupid. More the stupid. Any ACTUAL, VALID criticism that may be made in wake of the bombing is clouded with this asinine BS and the media focuses on what it thinks sells (usually the stupid). I’m going to stop this train of thought. I don’t talk about politics. My blood pressure and faith in humanity can’t handle the stress it causes.
Another thing that annoys me is the lengths to which some journalists exercise “The public has a right to know” excuse to be a$$holes. What about the rights of people to privacy? THE PUBLIC HAS THE RIGHT TO KNOW! Psht! For instance, recently I saw an interview of the mother of the aforementioned d!ck heads. Now to the mother, these guys aren’t d!ck heads, they are the babies she bore, nursed and held. They were the children she spoiled and did everything she could to protect and love. These boys were her hopes, her dreams, and the totality of her love. My heart goes out to her, the boys’ father, and all their loved ones so long as they didn’t help plan this horrible action. I don’t have the right to see her pain, her anguish unless she wants me to see it. Now I don’t know if the interview was the mother’s idea or not. If the interview was initiated by her, then I’m OK with it, but if someone approached her or worse coerced her to have the interview, then I sincerely hope that there’s a special place in Hell for the people who profit off stuff like this. If journalists would follow The Morality of Joe, they would never approach the immediate family of the spouse, parents, children, or other close relation of anyone affected in any way by tragedy or loss. LOTS of religions and philosophies have a rule called something like, “The Golden Rule”. It is a pretty bad ass rule. It IS golden after all. Imagine if you found out simultaneously that the one of the most important people in the world to you did something truely horrible and was dead or imprisoned because of it. Imagine that! How would you feel? If your answer is something akin to “Like sh!t” or “I don’t think I could process it for a long time” then congrats, you meet the minimum human allotment for me to continue knowing you. Otherwise you might be the scum of the Earth. Congrats. I don’t hand that title out lightly. Its like the Medal of Freedom but in reverse.
© 2013, Joe Little. All rights reserved.