Clearly all that I’ve been reading or thinking about for the past few days is the Boston bombers. I had to slow my roll a little bit yesterday when I started convincing myself that the Boston bombings and the Texas fertilizer plant were both connected a group of ex-military homegrown terrorists with PTSD who were out to cause havoc, and make Americans feel unsafe in their own homes. “Life is not a miniseries on FX,” I had to say to myself, although I remained a pretty firm believer in the theory until this morning, when I woke up and saw the news.
There are a lot of things I have to say, all of them which are offensive or idiotic, especially given that many people I know and love are locked in their houses right now, terrified that an armed man will knock on their doors. So I won’t say any of them, except, wow, Boston is crazy diverse, am I wrong?
Also, is it just me, or does Suspect #2 look just like French actor Louis Garrel?
Also, from a historical perspective, the two suspects were from Chechnya, a place where the Russians were committing major human rights violations in the 1990s. While students today might learn about Syria, we learned about Chechnya. We wrote letters and followed the news and mourned for other children who were bombed out of their homes. It’s sad that somehow that hatred got turned around in the suspects’ minds, and turned around back on a country that mourned for them.
And finally, it’s amazing, a human’s reaction to herself (in my case) versus others. I find myself particularly shaken up by the Boston bombing, because it’s so close to my home — I have been to Boston many times, the victims look like my friends and little brothers, and the Chinese girl was like me studying abroad, only her foreign world was Boston. If they had found a local 19-year-old kid with a mental illness had set off the bombs, I would feel sympathy for him. It’s disturbing, but also honest. But the fact that the suspects were from Chechnya makes them a little less relatable. “Catch that motherfucker and give him to the Chinese,” I find myself thinking. Still, when I think of what could possibly make a young guy that angry, it makes me sad for the world.
I hope everyone will stay safe, and that the kid will be taken into custody without taking any more lives — or his own. I want to know why the little motherfucker did it, after all.
