The Cost

In  the last 24 hours, the two men believed responsible for the bombing in Boston have been identified and apprehended. Or rather, one of them was apprehended. The other one is dead. It's good that we have the other man in custody, though, I wonder, at what cost. In the process of this manhunt, we shut down Boston. We shut down the smaller town where he was found. We shut things down, ended daily activities, in order to find this man.

Now, did this make it easier to find him? I am sure it made it less confusing. Less people on the streets meant it he couldn't lose himself in  the crowds. No people in businesses meant he couldn't as easily take hostages. There were practical reasons to do this, and I do understand that.

At the same time, it worries me how willingly we accepted that the government could order people to stay inside their homes. Our compliance is disquieting. The fact that this man could bring a major city to a standstill is disturbing. I don't like the implications of it. I don't like the terrorists thinking they have this much power. They should never think they have power.

I'm also rather disgusted by the media's handling of this whole thing. They turned it into a circus. Manhunts are rarely as entertaining as you'd think, so it actually became a deeply boring circus. You know, the kind where you just see the same clown juggling over and over again while another drunken clown rides around in a little car.

When 9/11 happened, it seemed that our media stepped outside of their usual bullshit and really tried to handle the situation with dignity and gravity. The problem is, our media has changed a lot since then. Because we now allow so many sensationalists, real news has been replaced with a kind of badgering faux entertainment. It's sickening and fairly unprofessional.

So yes, we caught the suspects. In the process, it seems like we showed some of the less savory sides of ourselves. It's something we need to think about and try to avoid in the future. We're better than this, folks. We're stronger.