Margaret Thatcher’s belief that there is no society, only individuals means that yesterday’s bombings in Boston is relatively insignificant news.
After all, there were more than four thousand times more (4000x) individuals killed last year by terrorism in the rest of the world compared to the United States.
But, of course, Margaret Thatcher’s statement isn’t true.
There is more than individuals. There is society.
And there are societies that, for lack of a better word, are considered more “civilized” than others, where “civilization” includes lack of violence, and most certainly, lack of violence against innocents.
Terror is David’s ultimate weapon against Goliath.
Goliath is an impermeable military fortress. David is the suicide bomber disguised as an immigrant laborer that Goliath needs. Because there are so many immigrant laborers in Goliath’s world, David is relatively meaningless … until he blows himself up and takes down a few “innocent” Goliaths who happened to be wandering near.
That gets attention.
Numbers don’t. It doesn’t matter that it was 15 unnamed adults, children, clerics, wives and pregnant mothers in Garissa, Kenya, but only one 8-year old boy and two unnamed adults in Boston.
It shouldn’t have happened in Boston. It’s no surprise it happened in Kenya. Boston is more civilized than Kenya.
Moreover, as an American an attack on my country is more painful to me than an attack in Kenya. I come to work each morning in part affirming my beliefs and trusts in my society, convinced my society is working hard to be just.
This seems senseless. Weren’t there other ways the bombers could have expressed their dismay and dissolution with what they perceived as unjust?
They feel that way in Kenya, too.
And in Iraq and Pakistan and Argentina and nearly every other place in the world, even Australia.
Something is wrong with mankind and it isn’t with the bombers. There are too many bombers for too many vastly different reasons in too many vastly different places on earth.
Should weapons of any kind be illegal? Can we destroy every gun and bullet and bomb on earth?
What a silly notion. They’d still strangle us.
Should Big Brother be allowed to monitor us all? Do you know how many CCTV surveillance cameras are clicking away right now in London?
Kenya doesn’t have as many. Boston will, soon.
A good Pd.D. thesis for a student of political science would be to show a definite collaboration between the number of CCTV cameras and terrorist killings. More cameras, more police, less killings.
More cameras, more police to enforce a system terrorists feel is unjust motivates terrorists to become even more clever, more deadly. More individualistic.
Maybe Margaret Thatcher was right.
The surveillance cameras in England, which are now everywhere,l something like 5 to each block, haven’t done much to help authorities catch criminals; this is totally contrary to the view given on television cirme shows where surveillance cameras are always being used to identify criminals.
The Boston bombings may well be that of some disgruntled US citizen and could well be the act of a single person. To prevent something like that, one would have to reduce our already threatened civil rights, particularly the now-tenuous right to privacy, even more than it now and that is the price of having those rights. It is a difficult balance, and there are no good or easy choices.
We have 320.0 million people in the United States. And it is very likely that there are going to be a number of people who at any moment could become, either alone or in a group, a bomber or capable of creating a huge amount of harm.
Someone here said that a bomb going off like that must be what it is like being hit in a drone attack. I don’t know if many would agree, but I hope there is a lesson here to be learned.