NY Times/Bruni: The Lesson of Boston

[markpkessinger]

Note: Frank Bruni is not my favorite Times columnist, but this piece is perhaps one of the most insightful I've seen to date concerning the Boston bombings and our myriad reactions to them. I will post an excerpt, followed by the text of my own published comment to the article.

[font size=4]The Lesson of Boston[/font]

< . . . >

Our insistence on patterns and commonalities and some kind of understanding assumes coherence to the massacres, rationality. But the difference between the aimless, alienated young men who do not plant bombs or open fire on unsuspecting crowds — which is the vast majority of them — and those who do is less likely to be some discrete radicalization process that we can diagram and eradicate than a dose, sometimes a heavy one, of pure madness. And there’s no easy antidote to that. No amulet against it.

There’s also a danger built into the American experiment, the very nature of which leaves us exposed. Our rightly cherished diversity can make the challenge of belonging that much steeper. Our good fortune and leadership mean that we’ll be not just envied in the world, but also reviled.

< . . . >

While we can and will figure out small ways to be safer, we have to come to terms with the reality that we’ll never be safe, not with unrestricted travel through cyberspace. Not with the Second Amendment. Not with the privacy we expect. Not with the liberty we demand.

That’s the bargain we’ve made. It’s imperfect, but it’s the right one.

And here is my published comment to the article:

Mark Kessinger [font color="gray"]New York, NY[/font]

Mr. Bruni gets to the core of the matter as no one I have read to date has managed to do. In the wake of the Marathon bombings, we have seen everything from predictable, reactionary xenophobia and sectarian bigotry, to opportunistic political posturing from both ends of the political spectrum, to well-intended (and mostly hopelessly ineffective) suggestions for new security procedures in the hope that we can ward off the next incident. I saw one suggestion that all trash receptacles and mailboxes be removed during public events. And today it was reported that Mayor Menino is seeking surveillance drones for next year's marathon. (Mayor Menino failed to explain exactly how surveillance drones would accomplish any measure of increased protection against an unhinged individual or group bent on sowing mayhem. I mean, what do you do: program drones to track all young men carrying backpacks in a crowd of hundreds of thousands?)

I submit that all of the "enhanced security" procedures we have put into place since 9-11 -- from removing belts and shoes at airports, to confiscating toiletries that are half an ounce over the 2-ounce limit, to random bag checks at subway entrances, to virtual strip searches and intrusive patdowns at airports -- all of them fail to make us one iota safer. Collectively, they amount to an elaborate game of security Whack-A-Mole, each one aimed at the _last_ incident, and each of which will be factored into the plans of any future would-be 'terrorist.'

[link:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/opinion/sunday/bruni-the-lesson-of-boston.html?comments#permid=30|April 28, 2013 at 2:57 a.m.
]

[randome]

2. So...do nothing? Learn nothing? Business as usual, let's see who gets killed next week?

All security measures are 'whack-a-mole'. Nothing is foolproof. But trying to make it harder for an event like this to happen again seems prudent. The alternative is for everyone to stay at home and rarely venture outside.

Surveillance drones? Excellent idea. Better than having a helicopter hover over a crowd.