I was working for a friend this week and wasn’t able to blog as much as usual; the first instance of blessed relief for y’all. I followed yesterday’s events via live blog on the Guardian, which spared me the teevee hype although NBC did a good job last night. And Pete Williams rocked the media universe all week long with his calm and factual reporting.
I was struck by the way President Obama and Gov. Patrick approached the crisis in contrast to W and his minions with their fear mongering and colorful alarm charts and shit. No drama Obama and calm Deval didn’t whip up hysteria or militarize the crisis, instead they let law enforcement do their job and they did it well. Remember when W and Vice President Duce mocked John Kerry for stating that terrorism was primarily a law enforcement issue? Big John was right and his views were vindicated in his home town this week.
I assume that little Lindsey, Walnuts, and the usual suspects will be on the Sunday shows frothing at the mouth and whinging about how the suspect should be tried by the military, yadda, yadda, yadda. It’s past time to stand up to them and try the <sigh> American citizen who is in custody in Federal Court regardless of whether or not there are links to furrin bad guys. It worked quite well with Timothy McVeigh and a host of others, thank you very much.
I’m dreading the politics of fear entering into this. If the goal of the attack was to terrorize and cow the people of Boston, it did not work. They’re battered and bruised but very much standing upright and proud. The wingnuts are the ones who get terrified by terrorism and arm themselves accordingly. They will, of course, whip up hysteria over changes to the immigration laws and, hopefully, it won’t work but they thrive on shit stirring and fear mongering so we’re in for it, alas. As for myself, I’m just hoping for some blessed relief:
Oh, right, let’s tighten up the immigration laws. Because we can predict when an 8-year-old kid is going to grow up and do something terrible 10 years later.
I guess the solution is just not to allow anybody to cross our borders, ever.
No, Patrick and Obama did not militarize the crisis. Our police forces apparently did that on their own, going house to house in Watertown with assault weapons at hand. Where I live (Somerville, which borders Boston but not Watertown), I received a robo-call at 7AM from city government informing me that even though Somerville was not on actual lockdown, like Boston and Watertown were, it would all go so much more smoothly if we all stayed indoors and didn’t let anyone else in, other than of course police officers.