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Who deserves a Facebook flag tribute?

Who deserves a Facebook flag tribute?

Last updated on: July 26, 2016 at 9:09 pm by Jane the Actuary

Who deserves a Facebook flag tribute? 2016-07-26T21:09:14-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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from pixabay.com; https://pixabay.com/en/flags-belgian-flag-irish-flag-993629/

The French had their “Je suis Charlie” moment, followed by Bataclan.

Then we changed our Facebook profile pics to show the Belgian flag.

The Orlando killings saw a flurry of rainbow avatars.

A few people, on principle, adopted Afghan flags, protesting the fact that bombings there seemed not to “count”. (Personally, I think there is a difference between a place that’s nominally at peace and a country that’s a war zone.)

I suppose there was no San Bernardino avatar because there is no obvious symbol.

Now, in a breathtakingly short period of time, we have:

The attack in Nice.

A train attack, a machete attack, a mass shooting, and an attempted suicide bombing in a crowded place, in Bavaria.

A massacre at a center for the disabled in Japan.

A shooting at a nightclub’s “teen night” in Fort Myers, Florida.

And now the killing of a priest in France, in the middle of mass, by a man who’d already attempted to make his way to ISIS twice.

And our reactions to these attacks challenge us.

Is it “better” that it turned out that the Munich shooting was a local mass shooting admirer, that the victims were kids in, basically, his own neighborhood, and that it was (so far as we know) merely coincidence that he was of Muslim origin — rather than being another instance of a Muslim attacking as jihad?

Is it a relief that the Fort Myers shooting was just another case of urban violence in a violent neighborhood, and that the victims had “ghetto” names like “Stef’an”?

Are any of these worse than the fact that, here in Chicago, the local CBS affiliate’s website has a web page which lists, for each weekend, the tallies of dead and wounded due to shootings? 5 killed, 7 killed, 5 killed, etc.

Well, yes, and no.

Let’s be honest with ourselves: we all tend to write off inner-city shootings as gang-related, and as more often than not having as victims gangbangers (no matter how many times their mothers profess that “he was turning his life around”) or family members. We tend to figure that it’s pretty hopeless and not a heck of a lot we outsiders can do about it anyway. And, to be honest, when President Obama makes claims like “it’s easier for an inner city kid to get a gun than a book,” that produces mockery rather than solutions. Plus, we middle-class folk aren’t at risk, and, well, we’re kind of used to it.

And bombings in Afghanistan or Iraq? Well, it’s a war zone, after all.

ISIS attacks, on the other hand — well, they could happen to us.

But is that all? Is Obama right that there’s no meaningful risk, just a small risk with a disproportionate amount of fear? The fear matters, and the unknownness of it, and the possibility that an attack could come wholly out of nowhere — as well as the fact that this is a wholly new threat, and the deaths and violence are multiplying.

So what next? Honestly, right now it feels like the “what next” is just waiting for the next attack.

from pixabay.com; https://pixabay.com/en/flags-belgian-flag-irish-flag-993629/

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