Anything I could possibly say about what happened today will come across as trivial or cliche, but here I am.  So I suppose I should say something.

There are aspects of human nature that I will never, seemingly, understand.

There has been so much speculation since this afternoon, just as there is after every event like this.  Those that jump to the middle east, those that say in this hopeful, smug tone, "I pray that this was not an American.  I wouldn't be surprised if it was, but I hope it wasn't...", those that blame the anarchists, the North Koreans, &c, &c, &c...

I'm not an expert on other cultures, so I won't even attempt to explore, for example, suicide bombings or religiously motivated killings.  But because there is a distinct possibility that whoever did this was from here....

There are so many pat answers: "too many guns, too many knives, too many True Believers...." All of which allow us to dissociate ourselves from the so-called 'monsters' who committed these acts, to deny the capability within ourselves, to go about our lives, no matter how they might have contributed to the creation of a mentality that would allow someone to place a bomb on a crowded street.

This is not to say that there aren't too many guns, knives, and true believers; the real question we need to address is why so many are drawn to those options to solve their problems,  what those problems are, and how we, as a global community, can begin to address and (at least attempt) to eradicate them.

Monsters and crazies do not arise from the aether.  They are of us and among us.

The motivations that lie beneath this (and, I could argue, all) acts of terror are far more complicated and insidious. The factors that make these actions possible build up like stones at the bottom of a well--at some point, they will inevitably break the placid surface, disrupting the illusion of order that allows us to continue on our oblivious, merry way.

I can imagine that these bombings, like most bombings in the past, were not perpetrated by individuals; that they were, instead, a coordinated movement facilitated by a larger group, because how could one single individual do this? Isn't it a far more probable scenario that a type of groupthink was at play here?  Where people of a somewhat common view came together and became blind to the individual harm that they might cause in an attempt to right some greater wrong, whether real or imagined?

And then I think of Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kacinzsky, and I know how individuals can snap, broken by the same perceived injustices.

No, here, in America, by Americans, bombs are detonated out of anguish.  Out of a desperate attempt to be visible.  Out of a deep desire to be heard.  What other feeling could validate these kinds of actions but the pain of losing ones sense of self?  The pain of invisibility?  The gut-wrenching powerlessness?

And with every attempt to place it on a Them or a They (read, someone so completely unlike us), we drive one more person to the same kind of action.  It keeps happening because we keep ignoring why it happens, and it will continue so long as we continue to do so.

Addressing the real underlying causes of these attacks is going to be painful as all hell.

We don't have the luxury of avoiding that task any more.


All of my heart goes out to the victims of these kinds of attacks, and all of my intellect will continue to try to find a way to prevent them from ever happening again.