Boston Marathon Bombing And Every Day Terror in America
Every year, 4,600 Americans are killed in work place related accidents. Every 28 hours a
black person is killed by police, corrections officers, security guards
or vigilantes. Every year more than 30,000 people are killed by gun
violence in this country. The odds of being killed by a terrorist are
only 1 in 20 million.
These statistics are rarely mentioned
and never had a chance to be addressed after two bombs were exploded
during the Boston marathon. Death under horrific but commonplace
circumstances attracts scant media attention or political action. Acts
labeled as terrorism, which are unlikely to kill anyone, bring an
inordinate amount of hysteria among the populace and cynical attention
from press and politicians.
Just two days after the Boston marathon a
fertilizer plant in West, Texas exploded, killing 14 people, most of
them the much worshipped “first responders.” The risk of dying in an
industrial accident is far greater than the odds of being killed by a
terrorist, but no matter. The people were whipped into a frenzy and told
to cast their eyes in the place where they should pay less attention
rather than more.
It is frightening that the risks which
Americans are subjected to on a daily basis are ignored as if they are
unwanted background noise. Some of the passivity is understandable.
Black people in particular are able to function in large part because
the ever present risk of stop and frisk, false arrest, and police
brutality are difficult to bear. There is a thin line between being
conscious and losing one’s mind.
All Americans’ behavior
is understandable if one acknowledges that we are constantly subjected
to propaganda of various kinds. We have been propagandized to believe
that some lives, white Americans’, are more valuable than others, namely
anyone not white nor from the United States. There is no other way to
explain why the government’s killing of thousands of people abroad is
met with a shrug, if it is acknowledged at all. Americans are like
spoiled children, whining over their suffering, while showing no empathy
for anyone else’s. They feel that only their victimization is worthy of
note, and in fact many of them support their government’s acts of
violence carried out around the world.
That feeling of entitlement is a direct
result of centuries of white supremacy which has never been examined or
challenged. It has been fed as corporate power has grown and corrupted
the media who now aren’t even very good at the basics of their
profession. CNN, NPR, the Associated Press and other supposedly
reputable news organizations reported wrongly on basic facts of the case
such as the number of suspects, whether arrests had been made or not,
or who was or wasn’t a person of interest. A “dark skinned man” was said
to be under arrest but actually wasn’t. An Indian student missing since
March was named as a suspect on social media and his family were
threatened as a result.
After the wave of manufactured hysteria
an easily frightened people were then convinced to accept tanks in their
streets and heed government calls to “shelter in place.” The
nonsensical overreaction was superseded only by the use of Orwellian
jargon used to create an even more compliant public.
The predictably maudlin
moments of silence weren’t restricted to Boston. More than $20 million
in monetary contributions were raised without the donors knowing who
needed it or for what purpose. Tributes flowed along with money and no
one ran a race anywhere on earth without mentioning the bravery of
Bostonians. The president showed up and as always on such occasions
uttered words seemingly written by his worst speechwriters. The full
force of the government would catch the cowards and the people would not
be frightened because they are the best and freest in the world and the
prayers of the nation went out to them because of democracy and the
whole world stood beside them. Amen.
There is another kind of terror that
goes on continually. Most reported terror plots of recent years were
created entirely by government agents. The FBI had some contact with
Tamerlan Tsarnaev who was killed by police in the bombing after math.
It is possible that the FBI moved from creating phony terror plots to
actually carrying one out. The likelihood that there will ever be
impartial fact finding on this and other questions are slim to none.
Dzokhar Tsarnaev now [April 24] lies in a
hospital wounded by police gunfire and questioned without being read
his rights. That treatment is a result of an Obama executive order which
states that in cases of a “public safety exception” we have no such
rights. Now that is everyday terror.
Margaret Kimberley‘s
Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted
elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as athttp://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
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