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Health & Fitness

An Open Letter in Response to Kevin Cullen of The Boston Globe - A Man Who Believes it Just Doesn't Matter.

An open letter in response to Kevin Cullen of The Boston Globe - A man who believes it just doesn't matter why the Boston Marathon bombers hate *us*, just that they do.

"Jeremy spoke in class today"

-- Pearl Jam (1991)

The bombs went off during the Boston Marathon, and the blood was still flowing freely when the broken-record uproar for more blood had already, predictably, started gushing.

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Like so many who were looking for information, following the story and trying to sift through the rubble of initially too-quickly-reported-not-quite-facts, The Boston Globe became a go-to source for the most current headlines.  As an aside, a thank you to the paper for choosing to make their content free for the week, rather than charging money to all of us caught up in the concern.

There's little connection or history between myself and the paper, Boston has never been a home or way-station in this lifetime, and it is unknown whether they are considered a right-leaning or left-leaning paper.  These labels matter little all in all as most media these days holds bias in some direction - and there's an insidious acceptance that news has as much spin as can be safely put into the whirlygig without it toppling over.  Cronkite twists and turns in his grave.

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Regardless, this jaw, warily hovering above the keyboard still, hit the floor in astonishment when the headline of the published column exclaimed, "It Doesn't Matter Why They Hate Us, They Just Do".

First, to be frank - to detonate a bomb in any crowd, holds no bravery.  To kill civilians out celebrating achievements of friends and family...there are no words.  In military endeavors, each wearing a uniform knows that they are stepping off of the playground and into the battlezone.  Not so, a spectator.  So make no mistake - there is no part of this mind that can find any iota of justification for what was done.

Yet, while the majority of the compassion that comes forth is for those who were injured and killed, and the families and friends thereof...why is having compassion (and in this context compassion equates with an understanding - which does not indicate acceptance) for those who have killed, instantly equate with a show of supporting their cause?  Isn't an understanding of why, a first step in finding prevention?  Diagnosis begets cure?  Why wouldn't it matter why they "hate" us?  How couldn't it matter why they hate us?

***

There is no need, and truthfully it always seems a bit unfair, to ever take apart what a writer has written and line by line or paragraph by paragraph, go through and respond to each section - without the author having an opportunity to reply.  This case is no different.  So, while it is unlikely that Kevin Cullen will ever see this piece (for who is your narrator, this rooster, who is sitting above this keyboard - not exactly a syndicated readership of thousands...while Mr. Cullen is a well decorated writer, no doubt) there are these two specific paragraphs that stand out and demand a response.

If you'd like to read his entire article, and it would be fair to him for that to occur, the article is located here.

***

"I was on an NPR show this morning, talking as I drove back from Cambridge to write this column, and a caller came on the air and started talking about how we’ve got to look in the mirror and ask what we as Americans have done to create angry young men like this.

I almost drove off the road.

No one who lost their life or their limbs on Boylston Street last Monday did anything to create angry young men like this..."

-- Kevin Cullen, Boston Globe, April 19th 2013

Let's step back in history a little ways.  We'll land the time machine on April 20th, 1999.

Columbine - the first moment in which the refrain for "64 degrees and cloudy" transmogrified from prophecy, to truth (if the reference is lost, watch this link).

A few days after the death of fifteen, a gentleman named Greg Zanis, who is from Illinois, and has the carpenter gene (the Jesus metaphor is somewhat astonishing for all of the vitriol that spewed up from the masses afterwards) built fifteen large wooden crosses, each with a name emblazoned upon, and drove to Colorado to erect them in Clement Park, which sits across from Columbine High School.

But wait, a faint flicker twinkles in the night...weren't there only thirteen killed that day?

Seemingly right away there were those who argued against the killers having crosses next to those of the victims.  But why?  While they were killers, yes and of course, they were also still sons, siblings, cousins, friends...and regardless of the unspeakable nature of their actions, there were those who still grieved for them.  If nothing else grieved for not knowing that such actions were inside of them - and had not done anything to help make that anger, cease.  Funerals and memorials are for the living, not the dead.  All the dead, regardless of villain or victim, have mourners.  Yet, the crosses of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were pulled down by friends of the victims - reports seem mixed as to whether the memorials were destroyed, or...and thirteen crosses remained.

Let's climb back in the time machine and head closer to home.

December 14th, 2012.

Sandy Hook.  One person, armed with a willingness to harm, kills twenty eight people.  Yes, twenty eight if my math stands correct.

We look on the news and see the stories of the twenty students and six teachers...and dutifully the reporting turns into iconography the number twenty six and ignores the fact that the killer and his mother were, actually, people.  Not monsters.  Not something dreamed up in the imagination of Clive Barker or Stephen King.  Not incarnations of Satan on Earth.  People.  And they died.  And while there is certainly no forgiveness that can be found in this heart for the one who pulled the trigger, and in our era of passing the blame the mother has been vilified as well, what are we really achieving by ignoring his being a human (which is different than stating "ignoring his humanity")?  In his death, we are doing the same thing that was done to him his entire life - keeping him at arm's length.  And the mourning of twenty six remains.

To not count Adam Lanza, is to say he doesn't count - and isn't that separation part of the problem in the first place?  Why propagate this?  Why ignore it?  It Doesn't Matter Why They Hate Us, They Just Do.  No, this is wrong.  It matters.  In fact, it matters most.

To say it doesn't matter why, is to say we don't care why...and that there is nothing to be done about it.  Would we say about Columbine, or Sandy Hook, that it does not matter why?  Then why the bombers?  And this is where the headline in the Boston Globe, on Kevin Cullen's article, can't possibly be the lesson learned and propagated after this newest of horrors - because all of these horrors, etched in our memory until we die, are at their root, exactly the same.

Yes the authorities will search for a why, and reports will come in hundreds of pages, and information will be gleaned from every source possible, and it will all be packaged up with a nice little three-ring ribbon and a bow...but that's not really the why, that's just a way to make us all feel as if it can be tidily put to rest.

But we don't know why.  We don't really know why.  If we knew why...it wouldn't keep happening.  Diagnosis, cure.  We don't care to diagnose, there is no cure and we pass the responsibility on to the next person, the next organization, the next generation.

It is the same as every time something like this happens and we label the killer as crazy.  It is such a mistake - for to label the killer as crazy is a way to say - this person...there's something wrong...they are not like us...and we create separation, believe that we, reading this, are not capable of such actions.  Yet, it is people, humans, just like us who commit these actions - not monsters, not evil beings, but humans.  Each and every one of us has the capacity for the greatest horrors, or the most heavenly light.  If this is true, why are we each resigned to being responsible for our own extremes without an iota of help?

To call them crazy is to make for an easy answer.  Yet here we are, once more, calling the root of these problems the need for better mental health services.  The mental health of one, is healed by the community in which they exist, not a service, not a weekly appointment on a calendar that is covered by insurance and make way for the next patient.  Keeping a loner, behind closed doors, to heal him or her, does not create one who begins to connect.  Healing comes from becoming a part of, not remaining apart from.  To not care why, is to retain separation.  To care is to bring into the fold.  Into the flock, for those whose compassion has a religious fervor.  While there is quiescence in solitude, there is rarely, healing.

This separation of cool and uncool, has to end.

*** 

"At least let’s see how this ends. At least let us bury our dead first. At least let us heal our wounded. At least let us take care of our first responders. Then maybe I’ll listen to “what did we do to make them hate us” claptrap. Then maybe I’ll go to some soul-searching debate about how our foreign policy is screwed up and how we’re creating too many enemies and too few allies.

But then, maybe I won’t."

-- Kevin Cullen, Boston Globe, April 19th 2013 

There's no way to type, with a straight face, that there are not actions undertaken by this country that have pissed off large factions of the world.  And right now, some folks reading this have spoken a refrain, "Who cares?".  There are a number of us who care if, for nothing else, we'd like to see our children travel this globe safely, meet the people of the world in peace, without having to safety pin a maple leaf on their satchel so as to convince folks they are Canadian and not from the United States and to be allowed passage, unharmed.

Does that caring make us weak?  Because it seems to me that this is the heart of Mr. Cullen's argument - that we're America and we're not going to change dammit...for anyone or anything and if you don't like what we do well, just sit down and shut up and deal with it...and each time there is a bombing, or a killing, or an abduction...it justifies to many a deeper trenching in of this...dare we use the words...American Value.

Yet, while nobody is responsible for these actions other than those who commit them, it is too easy a washing of hands and self-cleansing of soul to say our actions do not contribute to the mindset of animosity.  Each takes responsibility for their individual actions, but it takes a community to amplify the heart of the individual.  When we as a whole, have such a microphone or ram's horn, we too, are responsible.

This column is a way of demanding back some small portion of the airwaves, so that it be known that folks like Mr. Cullen do not speak for all of us.  His is an inclusiveness for which this writer wants no part and will battle against propagating.

Granted, it's a tired argument, really, that we need to look in the mirror so as to explain the world's hatred of the United States.  It's tired, because it is untrue to base the beliefs of three hundred million people on the actions of the government and the loud cry of a portion of the populous.  It's tired, because it is the same for any faction, of which the United States is just one.  It's tired because it's true.  It's tired because there's chest pounding here, there's chest pounding there, and everybody wants to blame the other for the blaming of the other for the blaming of something that nobody can quite remember.  There's nothing more dangerous than two sides puffing out their chests - for we've created a society in which ceasing to strut around like some *ahem* cocked-up rooster...is frowned upon.

We could ask who looks in the mirror first, but does looking in the mirror really have the connotation we're looking for?  Not really, for appearances are not what we need to change.  Where is there a mirror that shows the sinew and the neuron?  Who is willing to look deep inside, to care, first?

To say we don't care why is to unequivocally believe that no matter what, such lashing out by bombers, mass murderers, is wrong - and this is, of course, one hundred percent, true.  But, should we really expect that those who are picked on, bullied, beaten down, ostracized, isolated, ridiculed, badgered, and broken...can and will go through an entire lifetime without reacting in some way, shape or form?  No.  Would we like them to?  Yes.  But it is unrealistic.  If we want the angry young killers to learn something other than the bombast bursting in air, then we need to teach them something better than the hatred that is fed behind closed doors.

No, we groundlings did nothing specifically to the bombers, to "create angry young men", to make them hate us...but what have we done for them to make them feel that what they have learned about us, is but a demonization and a stereotype?  What does it say about us, if the reported is true, that one of the bombers said something to the effect of "I don't have any American friends, I don't understand them"?  Certainly, they don't mean we all speak as rocket scientists, in algebraic sentences, and they haven't yet mastered calculus?  For if all stereotypes exist because they begin with a small seed of truth that is exaggerated into a beratement, then what is to be done to show them that not all of us, hate them in return.  What do we do when there is evidence all around that there are so many who would rather hate, than help.  And how is such feeling, to prefer hatred to helping, humanly possible?

The solution is simple.  It always is simple.  The solution is simple decency.

Decency is not weakness.  Nor is it an acquiescence of our own ideals or way of life.  Sometimes decency is understanding, even without acceptance.  Why is it that what killers do always matters?  It matters, because truth always matters.  It matters because understanding the why creates connection, even if not agreement.  It matters why because understanding the why is the only way to a better world - ignorance may be bliss but it is not peace.  It matters because the world is a diverse place but it is our common bonds that will see us through these darknesses and into the light - and there are common bonds even with the most vile of creatures - and it is up to those of us who dream of a better world to seek these pathways to contact.

For then, it matters because what matters to each and every individual creature is simply a manner of being that allows each of us, each to each, our path, unfettered.  And such freedoms are only possible with the support of the world around us.  United we stand, divided we fall is not a moniker that is reserved for this country.  Only then, hopefully, when such freedoms permeate each being across every land, it will no longer matter whether or not it matters why they hate us, because then we'll no longer need to ask the question as to why they hate us...because it will long ago have been answered - they no longer do.

***

If you've read this far, you must think, feel, wonder, posit...something....about what you have just read.  Even if it is but a greeting, leave a note at the bottom, to mark tangible trace that you were here.  The internet does not have to remain so impersonal.

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