Kevin's Watch

As usual there is plenty of heated discussion going on in the the 'Tank about what happened in Orlando. We have spoken before about having a place where a more general, less pressurised discussion about such things can take place, which is why I am starting this thread.

The events in Orlando were horrific and terrifying. As I was after the Bataclan massacre I was left stunned and appalled. How can this happen? Why is this happening? I am slowly coming to terms with it and I am also beginning to realise that I may have to get used to such events ocurring more regularly. I was in Istanbul last summer and one of the squares I stood in (near the Blue Mosque) has since been the scene of a terrorist bomb (ten tourists were killed). It seems that if we are to live in a free and open society we are all going to be, in some way, touched by or exposed to this kind of violence.

I find this frightening and challenging. We live in a world that has never offered more in terms of opportunity and richness of experience, but it seems that there is an unexpected price to be paid for that.

u.

Group hugs seem to be called for.

There have always been atrocities, like there have always been wars. Genocides and death camps and massacres and hostages slain. Has it been so long since The Troubles, u? Israel and Palestine. Charles Manson.

The ones happening now are always the worst, the most immediate. No matter how many times it has been "now" for you. That's human nature. Because, I feel, we have so much hope - we always expect that, after this one, it will be better. And hoping, ridiculous as it sometimes is, is human nature, too.

The immediacy of the communication age, if anything, lets us feel the evil more. But then we can feel the grief more, and feel the healing more, and feel the communion of humanity more. The aftershock brings a crazy cacaphony of voices, blaming and crying and promising and proclaiming. But then they feel that they have been heard, and, eventually, titanically, unity is reached. It's a two-edged network.

We can remember this:

"This, too, shall pass."

Those are the words that the parable says makes happy men sad, and sad men happy again.

Well, we're sad, so.

It's such an awful thing to have happen. As a straight, white man in another country, I've felt it wasn't quite my place to comment (this is the first I've really said), but seeing my whole twitter feed fill up with both grief and support on Sunday got me thinking long and hard about what I can do to put my beliefs in action and more actively support the LGBT community against the prejudice they face.
I'm still thinking about what that means for me, but I did take some action by making a donation to the Pulse Victims Fund, partly because I know how fucked up America is when it comes to medical fees.

And now I feel like I've said "I" far too many times relating to this and will again shut up and leave space for the people who are more affected by these issues to speak for themselves.

Group hugs are always in order. Here, I'll start:

Thanks for starting this thread, u.

Florida is hours away from here, but we've had our share of craziness, too: 9/11, for starters. And then the next year we had that nutcase with a Bushmaster rifle who was driving around the DC area with his 17-year-old protege, picking off random people for the hell of it.

Those guys weren't even terrorists.

I'm not convinced the Orlando shooter was a terrorist, either.

Anyway, as you guys know, one of my kids is gay. The Washington Post ran a story the day after, with texts from people inside the nightclub when the shooting started. Some of them were texting their mothers, and some of them didn't make it. And I said to myself, "Yep, nope, not reading this story -- moving on now..."

Mainly right now I'm frustrated. We have the same arguments over and over about how we need to do something/we can't do anything now because people are too upset/nothing we do will change anything anyway -- and then the news cycle moves on and we rush to be outraged over the next outrageous thing. And in the meantime, gun manufacturers are making more guns, and gun sellers are selling more guns, and none of us is any safer.

We've come so far, yet we still have so far to go.

I feel confounded with this sort of thing because several years ago I decided to switch off. Having the computer I was able to get rid of the TV. I don't read newspapers and rarely turn on the radio. I use Firefox or Chrome because there's no start up news page. And with internet and social media I can live alone without immediate friends. As the song says, 'you don't need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows' - with sincere appologies to those who were badly effected by an idiot wind.

Several months ago here in Coventry a bus driver lost control of his steering and the accelerator, mounted the kerb, and ploughed into a supermarket ATM killing a small boy and an elderly lady. An accident with apparently no explanation as to what went wrong. I only found out while talking to someone in the workplace. I was shocked on two levels. Firstly the appalling atrocity that had happened only a few hundred yards from where I live, and secondly the reminder and realization of my disconnection and lack of social empathy.

This doesn't mean I don't care, only that I feel confounded.

wayfriend wrote:The ones happening now are always the worst, the most immediate. No matter how many times it has been "now" for you. That's human nature.

Well said indeed WF.

aliantha wrote:And in the meantime, gun manufacturers are making more guns, and gun sellers are selling more guns, and none of us is any safer.

At the admitted risk of injecting a bit of the 'Tank into this, it really isn't about the guns. You can make every single gun illegal tomorrow, and it will still happen. Hell, you can make every single gun inoperable tomorrow, and it will still happen. Only the means will change.

Rune wrote:I was shocked on two levels. Firstly the appalling atrocity that had happened only a few hundred yards from where I live, and secondly the reminder and realization of my disconnection and lack of social empathy.

This doesn't mean I don't care, only that I feel confounded.

I'm with you on the social empathy thing. I never really feel connected to events like this, even indirectly. I can think about them and their implications intellectually, but I don't ever have an emotional response.

But for some reason I feel it important to stay connected as it were. To be aware of events, local and national and global. Maybe I'm comforted by being able to see "it" coming. Partly it's to remind me that there is also a lot out there that is good and right and noble.

Life is hard, nature is cruel, but by and large, people as individuals are mostly a pretty decent bunch. Desiderata and all that.

--A

I wouldn't call myself disconnected, but I don't watch the news on TV, and I think there is a difference between reading about terrible things and watching them replayed over and over on the news. Not sure what my point is there.

This one hit close to home. I have quite a few friends in that area who could easily have been there. None of them were, but I spent a good part of Sunday wondering if they were all alive. Not something I want to experience again.

aliantha wrote:I'm not convinced the Orlando shooter was a terrorist, either

I'm genuinely curious why you'd discount the words of the shooter himself, who pledged allegiance to ISIS during the attack and left a trail of Islamic radicalism going back to his high school days. Feel free to respond in the Tank, if it's too contentious to discuss here (though, apparently it wasn't too contentious to bring up here ...).

We can find ways to diminish the horror of this as merely "a product of the now," but we can also point out how it was worse than many previous 'nows' by noting that it's the worst terrorist attack upon our soil in 15 years. Each frame of reference has its own political agenda behind it. Though I can understand why some would seek to diminishing the importance of this shooting, I can't empathize at all with the desire to do so.

It's interesting how political agendas creep into an explicitly 'nonpolitical' thread, despite the author's original intent. I invite you all to expound upon these political points/agendas/conspiracy theories in the Tank, where they belong.

Zarathustra wrote:

aliantha wrote:I'm not convinced the Orlando shooter was a terrorist, either

I'm genuinely curious why you'd discount the words of the shooter himself, who pledged allegiance to ISIS during the attack and left a trail of Islamic radicalism going back to his high school days. Feel free to respond in the Tank, if it's too contentious to discuss here (though, apparently it wasn't too contentious to bring up here ...).

We can find ways to diminish the horror of this as merely "a product of the now," but we can also point out how it was worse than many previous 'nows' by noting that it's the worst terrorist attack upon our soil in 15 years. Each frame of reference has its own political agenda behind it. Though I can understand why some would seek to diminishing the importance of this shooting, I can't empathize at all with the desire to do so.

It's interesting how political agendas creep into an explicitly 'nonpolitical' thread, despite the author's original intent. I invite you all to expound upon these political points/agendas/conspiracy theories in the Tank, where they belong.

I have done so, Z, as you know, and I don't think it's bringing in a "political agenda" to express my gut feeling that the guy likely had a lot of motives, some of them related to his sexuality and relationship with his father. It may have been the easiest course for him to pin his motivation for the attack on "terrorism" instead of self-loathing.

And that's all I'll say about it here.

aliantha wrote: ... the guy likely had a lot of motives, some of them related to his sexuality and relationship with his father. It may have been the easiest course for him to pin his motivation for the attack on "terrorism" instead of self-loathing.

And that's all I'll say about it here.

I think what you say here probably applies to almost every terrorist. Motives are mixed. Relationships and people are broken. There are no easy answers to apply or ways to fix this, it is part of the world we live in. I believe he was a terrorist, but that was his way of identifying his pain. He could equally have said "disaffected third culture kid" or "sexually confused and vengeful" but he chose to say "I identify with ISIS".

And, this:

is the best response. An unmitigated tragedy. I am at least gratified that *most* people responded with a degree of compassion. For those who were mean, there is a saying in Nigeria: Let them say. (Loose translation: the hell with them.)

We live in a mean and nasty world. We also live in a world where a friend of mine offered to trade his life for that of a young boy over whose neck a machete was raised (and they had never met) and both men lived.

This again:


Hang in there, peeps.

Sorus wrote:...This one hit close to home. I have quite a few friends in that area who could easily have been there. None of them were, but I spent a good part of Sunday wondering if they were all alive. Not something I want to experience again.

Belated hugs. Yes. not something anyone wants to experience again.

aliantha wrote:And I said to myself, "Yep, nope, not reading this story -- moving on now..."

soo.. if anyone here has heard Christians sayin' stuff that's not cool in response to this tragedy... and wishes to express frustration.. I'm all ears.
(and I don't feel like I need to "fix" perceptions. just listen.)