Terrorism

Cleveland kidnapping house.

I am fascinated by the difference and similarity in media between their reaction to the Boston Marathon bombing and their reaction to the Cleveland abduction case. While the Marathon bombing was portrayed as an unquestionable atrocity by media through interviews and reports, the Cleveland case is being treated with prurient curiosity and reservation by the male establishment. The similarity in coverage is giving law enforcement a free pass on its dereliction of duty to the individuals affected.

 

Just what is terrorism in the U.S.? I commented yesterday to Peter, as we were passed on our neighborhood sidewalk by a young man who appeared enraged and deranged on drugs, that I felt terrorized frequently in a society where there is inadequate mental health care, rampant illegal drug activity untouched by policing, and uninhibited armed gangster activity aided by the government's lack of sane gun control. But this is not new for me.

 

When I was a young gay man, I felt terrorized by police and by gay-bashers who were given free rein by the society to beat me up and perhaps even to kill me. I was threatened by police for being in the vicinity of a gay venue many times. I aided the repelling of violent gay-bashers with other gay men several times. The media was silent about this terror. In fact, the media aided in terrorizing gay men by publishing their pictures and names in the newspaper as a way of shaming whenever a gay bar was raided or when any gay meeting place was busted. Suicides of those exposed often resulted.

 

Homeland Security is an establishment to prevent losses from political terrorism. Yet, through its insistence on corrupting the privacy rights of citizens, it also terrorizes. The general social response to this terror has been wishy-washy at best. The media have been quick to present the upside of losing personal rights in favor of government surveillance or 'lockdown' as we experienced here in Boston after the Marathon.

 

I will speculate here that the prevailing terror here in the U.S. is the terror of the haves in the conventional male-dominated social paradigm of capitalism as they look at spiraling overpopulation of the poor and devastating, now inevitable, climate deterioration. I speculate that this terror lies deep at the back of the minds of most of those who live privileged lives in comparative global terms. This group encompasses most Americans by far.

 

If my speculation is accurate, the trigger for response and outrage to terror is more sensitive when the prevailing establishment is attacked than when fragile female children are abducted, imprisoned and raped.