Every once in a while, things happen in the world that sadden and discourage me to the point that I don’t feel like writing about politics. That’s how I feel today, in the wake of the attack in Nice, France. There’s no logical reason why I feel worse today than I did when someone opened fire on Dallas policemen or the Orlando night club or the Istanbul airport or in a restaurant in Dhaka, Bangladesh or with a truck bomb in Baghdad.
Maybe having a baseball-crazy son makes it a little personal for me when I look at Sean and Brodie Copeland. Maybe it’s the place and the time of this particular attack. The victims were celebrating the death of monarchy in one of the most idyllic settings in the world, and they were as pluralistic and cosmopolitan as any crowd you could find. Maybe it’s just some kind of personal threshold that was reached here, a point at which I become temporarily demoralized.
Whatever combination of factors, it seems like a heavy lift today to focus on someone like Donald Trump and his potential running mates.
But, of course, it’s at times like these that politics are most important, because when we’re talking about an escalating cycle of violence, it’s critical that people don’t succumb to their worst instincts.
I feel the pull of those bad instincts this morning. I’m frustrated and I want easy solutions. I’m mad, and I want to pay somebody back. I’m fearful, and I wan’t someone to make my fear subside, even for a little while. And it’s when I feel like this that I am most appreciative of the man we have in the White House right now. Sometimes, it feels like he keeps things from spinning out of control and that we cannot afford to lose him.
But why waste my breath wishing the country would recognize that he’s just as vital to our needs as FDR was in 1940?
He is leaving office, and there’s nothing that can be done about it.
Maybe our political futures belong to the Le Pens and Trumps and Boris Johnsons. Or maybe things aren’t quite so bad, but they’re still not good enough.
I try not to think about it, but it’s my job to write about it.
Regardless of the fact that we had the 2 U.S. Congressmen, Bob Ney and Walter Jones, renaming French fries and French toast, the American people have always had a strong bond with the French people. Every child learns the role of France during the American Revolution. Millions of immigrants first saw the Statue of Liberty when they left troubled countries for new opportunities and freedoms. We may not speak the French language, but the U.S. and France are soulmates. With each senseless attack, we may fear we are losing some of the freedoms that the French helped us acquire.
There will be unconnected political fall-out, too. There have been street protests over the govt’s unilateral decision to enact changes to significantly weaken the ability of French labor to organize for bargaining. They have been marching in defiance of “emergency martial law” decree from govt. Now that will be extended and govt will have justification to break the protests.
Take a break. Go to a ball game. Have a picnic. Drown some worms somewhere pretty. Fuck the election cycle for this weekend.
Nobody here will die if we don’t get the latest and greatest of our deathless thoughts in the comment section.
Trump will not win because you took a weekend off. HRC will not be mortally wounded for missing the minute by minute analysis and mental gymnastics to prove some esoteric point.
TO really waste time, try this website:
http://unbelievablefactsblog.com/page/0
Good advice
Dear Martin,
I know the feeling and there were moments I wanted to dispense with the feather and stop writing about Western foreign policy.
Indeed, it’s a threshold that has been crossed in society and some kind of revolt or backlash will take place. With social media, events from far-away places seem suddenly close-by … they are not!
What is bothersome, violence does beget violence, lessons written down in the Old Testament … in a totally different society. Through the ages in Europe and with the explorations across the seas / oceans to discover “primitive” cultures of the human kind .. mistakes have been made and a lot of destruction has been caused. Uprooting society is what has been taken place in the Western wold for decades since the victory over fascism in 1945.
Each nation across the globe has witnessed its own scourge of violence. A lot was caused by different factions of Christians worshipping the same Creator. The Enlightenment and the French Revolution had put manlind on a more human track … so we thought until the events in the 20th century.
No, we are not there yet to respect one’s brother and fellow human kind. The search for peace used to be found in certain think tanks … in my neck of the Woods, these are all gone as a fossil of history. These institutions have searched for fellows, often of the neocon or right wing theories. So sad indeed.
Many years ago I decided to go back to basics and put more effort in my own community of friends, neighbours and family. I’m much happier today and am enjoying life.
You have my sympathy, truly.
What make the Nice attack different is that all you need to carry it out is a deranged driver and a big truck. Bombs on planes or in restaurants or attackers with machine guns all require considerable planning, expertise and access to rare specialised resources, and thus are far easier for the security forces to prevent.
But where do you even begin when every large truck is a potential terrorist atrocity waiting to happen?
I can see all cars and trucks being fitted with electronic sensors and controls to prevent future collisions – like the Google self drive cars – but that will take years to implement and even those could probably be deactivated by a determined terrorist.
So we probably have to get used to the idea that we live in a world where crazy people can do crazy things and there isn’t a whole lot we can do about it. Avoid crowds is about the only advice you can offer, and that puts so many enjoyable past-times at risk.
But if attacks like this become more frequent they also become more meaningless. What cannot be prevented must be endured. There is no political course of action which can change it, so we just have to send our condolences to the bereaved and carry on regardless.
But this truck wasn’t any old truck. It was full of weapons and hand grenades. Unless by internet source was wrong. Where does all this crap come from? It’s appalling, especially this attack today, maybe because it negated everything the French were celebrating, which we want to celebrate too.
Unless by internet source was wrong.
About as wrong as the reports of four snipers in Dallas. CNN
Also appears that the eyewitness reports of the murderer jumping out of the truck cab and randomly shooting people are incorrect since the police shot and killed him while he remained in the truck.
From a radio interview, it’s possible there was no political motive. It appears the individual was distraught because of personal setbacks and the attack may be a suicide. Am thinking of last year’s German pilot who crashed his passenger plane Germanwings Flight 9525 in the Central Massif of France.
○ What we know about the terrorist behind the Nice lorry massacre
○ The Copycat Effect and Aircraft Suicides
○ Driver of truck in Nice attacks not a known terrorist | France24 |
Forensic experts searched the flat where Bouhlel had lived, located in a four-storey block in the Abattoirs, a working class neighbourhood of Nice not far from the train station.
In a perpetual state of war, it’s easy to overlook that some individuals adopt the form — violence — without any substance or message of a religious, political, or even personal natures. Of course that doesn’t stop observers from looking for such an explanatory answer and grabbing or locking onto the slimmest of leads or signs. i.e Nice witnesses last night were sure they heard the murderer scream “allahu akbar.” How plausible is that considering that he never left the truck of the cab?
The German pilot (co-pilot really) locked the cockpit when the pilot when to use the lavatory, then flew the plane into the ground. He never looked at the dozens he murdered. The truck driver did. The situations don’t seem at all parallel to me.
As to the driver being “not a known terrorist”, you could probably say the same thing for a lot of lunatics. Was that guy Breivik in Norway a “known terrorist” before he massacred all those young people? Nope.
That’s just freaky about the name of the neighborhood where the lorry driver lived. For those who don’t know any French, “abattoir” means slaughterhouse.
After the 9/11 attack, there were a lot of ways I could have reacted. I decided to take the approach that sometimes shit happens and that it was best to carry on with those activities I and my family enjoy. Truth is that none of us make it out of here alive. Would much rather die having lived life to the fullest than living in fear. So, no crowd avoidance for me or my family. No avoiding travel opportunities – business or pleasure – simply because something “might” happen.
hey, oagua! did you see that Zinke is speaking at the R Convention?
I believe I’ve started detecting a glimmer suggesting “President Zinke Wannabe” dreams glinting from his right eye in recent appearances.
He’s still a joke. Alas, Trump’s shown that that’s not a serious impediment, at least within the GOP.
wow! and yes, it’s not an impediment
The other name for terrorism is “asymmetric warfare”. This is about as asymmetric as anyone could imagine, and horrifically “effective” for exactly that reason, limited only by access to appropriate vehicles and the (very low!) skill levels required to steer one to a crowded place. I’ve heard reporting suggesting ISIS had already encouraged this type of attack.
Why wouldn’t such attacks proliferate after the “success” of this one.
It’s depressing.
With all the politicians and/or heads of government and/or state rushing to politicize the horrendous acts of one lone mass-murderer, it seems best for bloggers to step back and calmly and rationally contextualize these latest horror. IMHO, societies/cultures cannot afford to indulge in glorifying violence through the military and police and/or movies, TV, and internet videos and expect that somewhere, someone will perpetrate a random act of horror that has the look and/or feel of what is seen everyday from war zones in the Iraq, etc. or on cinema, etc. screens. And take comfort in the fact that so very few, almost exclusively male, people act out their fantasy, mass-murder rages on strangers.
I am frustrated because there is no “moral” authority anymore to combat the selling of violence. What pea-brain does not know that human beings are the best of species at imitating? I would like to see a graphing of the number of mass violent incidents over time. The line would probably be a steep curve because the increase is exponential. Why is there no “War on Violence”? I don’t feel like accepting the answer that violence sells. So what? Lots of things sell. Does that mean we consume all kinds of toxic products? Why is there no coalition of the various institutions to combat this insanity? Is it because these institutions are so weakened? Why is that?
Perhaps “moral” authority was always a fiction. There have always been social norms and conventions — some healthful and some harmful — that limited individual behaviors within certain boundaries. Individuals that broke “taboos” were shunned. In a far more mobile and disconnected world, such standards don’t prevail and more individuals want the thrill, profit, glory of defying conventions. What behaviors are subject to negative judgment by others get upended in a topsy turvy fashion. None of that takes place overnight but in small steps with each step normalized.
My heart aches for the families and friends. I still have relatives in France and hope they are ok. Probably so, as neither lives close to Nice. I will fight back by not giving in to fear.
“But, of course, it’s at times like these that politics are most important, because when we’re talking about an escalating cycle of violence, it’s critical that people don’t succumb to their worst instincts.”
Except, of course, after a domestic gun massacre, when the most important thing for us to do is “not politicize it” by calling for stricter gun laws.
Consider this political response.
On Bastille Day in France, the Socialist Party President of France extended the suspension of liberties guaranteed as Rights of Man because of one man, one truck, less than 300 casualties, the results of a 2 km assault on people celebrating Bastille Day.
The attacker got the results he was seeking. The attacker, at last report grew up in Nice. Culturally the attacker is French; culturally the attacker is also muslim with Tunisian cultural roots. Only someone who thoroughly understood the implications of Hollande’s probable response (given his response to the Paris attacks) and the use of the symbolism of Bastille Day could have defeated the French narrative that they are about supporting human rights or a “responsibility to protect” in their foreign policy.
The impulse of frightened leaders to look tough instead of to be tough has weakened Western power over the past 15 years.
The national security consensus cannot figure out when it is being rope-a-doped into creating an internal rebellion of its own citizens. Not immediately, but in time when people figure out the shame of touting the Rights of Man in a permanent temporary state of emergency.
What is worse, the if-it-bleeds-it-leads for-profit media is leading the hysteria that leads to popular panic and pressure on politicians to choose unwise but superficially “tough” responses.
Daesh is losing on the ground in Syria. After the Istanbul bombing (although not necessarily the cause), Erdogan changed direction with regard to his policy on Syria. The Syrian government with Russian help are working on clearing out East Aleppo. Raqaa has been under siege for a month with French air support. After having expelled Daesh from Fallujah (the proximate timing of the Baghdad attack), the Iraqi army and its militias are preparing the siege of Mosul. That has been supported with a bump up in US troops deployed to Iraq.
When a state is failing, one form of counter-attack is terrorism. Given Daesh’s history, a return to terrorist tactics is a given. But the lone wolf nature of the Nice attack shows that an organized, centrally planned and timed attack, in the style of US operations, has been effectively shut down. Daesh is relying on stochastic terrorism, but even their propaganda communications over the internet is increasingly shut down.
But they have created in majority populations in the West the Islamaphobic reaction that provides the discriminatory society in which Daesh ideas spread further without their action. Or homegrown ideas in muslim communities get acted out in violence.
Heckuva job, W.
Yep, today too I am depressed because our military and leaders fundamentally have no intention of keeping us safe as a foundational value. They are trapped in the national security state that they have created.
You’re giving the murderer far more credit for the symbolism of his attack than he probably deserves. Wouldn’t take more than “big holiday, big crowds, not so difficult to kill many.” His profile pointed to him being a danger to his family and not strangers on a promenade.
Maybe so as to his consciousness of what he was doing.
I had not seen the report of him being a danger to his family. It is important not to associate a cultural frame to what might be merely a psychological break.
Flamboyant suicides are getting to be the rage with certain types of young men.
If that is so, where is the terrorism? Where is the evidence that it was not done out of a purely individualistic context?
But I am amazed at how quickly the US political environment caused a frenzy of politicians taking the bait of the whole terrorist tactical frame.
Where would western politicians be today if they couldn’t label all major acts of violence perpetrated by a non-white actor as terrorism? A no-cost way to continue selling their war-on-terror.
We can’t even be sure that these mass-murders are also suicides. The mind can easily lead such men to believe that they will live and get away with their murder spree. Even as so few leave the scene of their crimes alive. Breivik doesn’t appear to have been suicidal at all, and while unmistakably political, his acts don’t fit within the narrative that western leaders want to promote. Same with McVeigh. Anomie and If
by that.
Can’t.
Seen too much at this point.
Unless the guy left some sort of statement–a letter, a social media post–his motives will remain a mystery. Not that that will deter demagogues like Trump and Gingrich.
BooMan has a good reason for the murders in Nice to feel personal. We’ve probably all had reactions of that sort to events that logically we have no actual link to. I recall being quite distraught when, in the aftermath of the attacks in Paris last fall, the French police raided an apartment in the suburb of St. Denis and got into a firefight with people connected to the terrorist attacks. The reason? I saw a map showing the location of the apartment and realized that I’d walked around that neighborhood several years previously. Not profound, but somehow this realization connected me with the events in a way that seeing a report on TV never would.
Or more precisely, I share it.
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