Perspective

The metropolitan Boston area was subjected to a military-styled "lockdown" all day yesterday. It was largely a voluntary process, encouraged universally by a police-controlled media. There was no visible or audible objection to this appropriation of the news media by government forces. Thousands of police rushed to the Boston area. While some claim to have been driven by a sense of duty to the public, I am quite sure others were driven by testosterone. Unrestrained bullying of the public in the public and private space occurred. This surfaced in radio reports I heard in which police voices were  recorded as they yelled roughly at private citizens to go in their houses, leave neighborhood streets and lock their doors.

 

The object of all this government-induced hysteria was an armed and wounded nineteen-year-old bombing suspect, whose 26-year-old brother had already been killed by police. Many media interviews of people who know the hunted suspect indicated that he was a perceived as a decent young man prior to this incident. He is a suspect, yet to be questioned or indicted. The public has determined him to be guilty at the urging of an opportunistic media.

 

The "lockdown" of the area where the suspect was most likely to be found was actually called off at 6 PM. The police had not found the suspect. They had raised public awareness and a great deal of fear. A homeowner found the suspect after the "lockdown" was cancelled. The bleeding boy was found in a stored boat in the homeowner's back yard. Police apprehended the weakened suspect and sent him to the hospital, where he is in serious condition.

 

I may be alone in my opinion that this event displays more fear and dysfunction than great police work. I feel this way because a pressurized, drunken mob, not unlike lynch mobs of another era, gathered on Boston Common last evening. Celebrating. Celebrating what? Celebrating their participation in mass hysteria?  Police officers who arrived at the mob scene were lauded and embraced. Whether any of those police officers had been involved in the actual apprehension of the suspect is questionable.

 

There are congratulatory kudos going to police for their handling of this incident in the media. I find this rather disconcerting. There is no voiced skepticism. There is no questioning of the impact this process had on a civilian population of a large city. There is no consideration of the thousands of commuters who were inconvenienced and treated roughly by police as they were ejected from train stations. No transportation alternatives were provided for these people. They were left to their own resources. Cabs were even told not to pick up fares in Boston and other cities.

 

Yesterday metropolitan Boston turned into a police state at the blink of an eye with the full cooperation of the population at the urging of all media outlets. All this to apprehend one wounded 19-year-old. Previously there have been group executions in Boston's Black community. In recent years, an execution occurred on a public street after the murder of a mother and baby in a nearby home. There was no "lockdown" for the pursuit of drug-dealing killers who were suspected. The public and media would not have tolerated it, I'm sure.

 

The attack on the Boston Marathon was an attack on the white middle-class masculine paradigm. It was an attack on the event-obsessed and alcohol-intoxicated  life of a media-driven culture. It was an attack on American materialism and American commercialism. The response, fueled by full support of a media which is also driven by commercialism, is not  surprising. What is surprising is that Bostonians, once a skeptical and thoughtful bunch, have become a complacent population who bow to police authority without rational protest.