April 15/13

My mind is spinning, as is yours, I'm guessing.  The bombing of the Boston Marathon is so shocking.

While the media covers it, it's all coming so fast and furious, and it's hard to know what's real and what's false among the details reported.  Etienne and I caught ourselves updating each other's mistaken reports as we've talked about it.

And yet, without fail, there are people on social media sites pouring salt in the wound by reminding us that violent bombings are happening around the world that aren't getting this much news coverage, and I get a bit ticked because it's all fucking relative.  Today in Iraq, a bomb went off that killed 55 people and injured dozens.  What do you think the lead story is on Iraq's media...the bombing in their own country, or the bombing of a marathon in Boston?  The civil war continues in Syria, and I'm guessing the top news priorities of people reporting in Syria is the violence of the day in Syria, and not the bombing in Boston.  Did the media in Canada cover Boston?  Yes, because more than 2000 Canadians were entered in the marathon, and I'm guessing you could add another thousand or more relatives or friends who are there too to support the runners.  Our media had to cover it because it impacts more than a few Canadians here and in Boston.

Another thing that bothers me is that when people point out that 55 people were killed by a bomb in Iraq today, and yet we're not hearing about that, they start accusing people of being callous, and I don't think that's what it's about.  We're shocked about Boston because it's Boston.  Bombs don't happen in peacetime in Boston.  Very sadly, bombs do happen in Iraq, and though the Iraq war is over, sectarian violence has taken its place.

Many people develop thick skin on repetitive reporting of violence, almost as a coping mechanism, and it takes extraordinary cases to pierce that skin.  For instance, look at the shocking case of the bus rape in Mumbai.  Indians, and a good portion of the world knows that rape is an all-too-common occurrence in India, and reporting of it is disturbingly routine.  But it took this single, horrific, violent, brutal gang rape of an innocent woman on a bus to wake the nation and the world, to pierce that thick skin, so to speak. 

We all know there are still bombings in Iraq, but we're almost immune to the news because it's exhausting to have your heart broken by the devastating news of what people are doing to each other day after day, week after week. What makes something like Boston or Oklahoma City different is the literal shock (many of us jolt as if physically impacted at the first news) precisely because bombings don't happen there day after day, week after week. We are not psychically prepared for when it happens, and because we don't understand it, we seek to consume any information we can get to try to make sense of it.

The heavy reporting of the bombing in Boston does not diminish the deaths of the 55 people in Iraq, or the unknown number of deaths in Syria, or Somalia, or any other countries dealing with violence and strife on a daily basis.  A death caused by unthinkable violence is still a painful thing, whether it's in Boston or Baghdad.  Any person living in a country where a bomb kills people will hear more about that incident than any other because it's closer to home.


Looking at life through other eyes...

...Wish you were here.