By Christopher Cudworth

One of two bombs explodes during the Boston Marathon

It’s horrid. It’s tragic. One cannot really take it in as yet no matter how many online videos there are, or how many heroes rushed to the aid of others.

Those stories will unfold. There will be analysis. Discovery. And hopefully, justice.

But then we will be forced to confront the worst reality of all. This was a surprise that we could not see coming, yet no surprise at all.

The marathon phenomenon along with the joyful madness of the Tour de France are events just aching for an act of terrorism. Massive crowds. Unsuspecting people. Terrorism loves that kind of happy madness. It was just a matter of time.

Whether domestic or foreign terrorism, the message is the same. You are vulnerable. We made this horror happen. Now you must recognize us.

Rewards

That’s right. It’s a sad, sick little fact that for all its supposed symbolism, terrorism comes down to the desperate need for attention by one or two individuals who can’t find their place in the world. So they buy into some massive twist of logic that says killing people is the ultimate symbol of their worth. Some terrorists are promised lines of virgins in heaven. Others are promised glory in the eyes of their dissatisfied comrades, lurking in the fields and valleys where their cries of supposed anguish echo back to them. After a while, that’s all they hear. Their own twisted voices.

They fear the government, or hate yours. They take aim at idols from Martin Luther King Jr. to John F. Kennedy to John Lennon or Ronald Reagan. Terrorism is assassination of the ideals of others. But it is also this disgustingly personal act of placing one’s personal vendetta over the lives of others.

The violence connection

America somehow cannot seem to equate its own penchant for commonplace violence with the terrorist strikes that come along now and then. Right away on Facebook gun advocates proactively ripped into the politics of those who would connect the bombings at a marathon with those trying to limit access to other super weapons, in other words, gun control. The goal was to disconnect the violence of terrorism and the violence ripping through bodies in Boston with the violence we have on the streets of America every day. Yet the facts are uglier than even the proactive gun lobby could hope to conceal. Since the Newtown, Connecticut shootings alone there have been more than 3000 people shot and killed by guns in America. That’s as many as people killed as were murdered in the terrorist strikes on 9/11.

Day to day terrorism

That pattern parallels terrorism in significant respects. Suicide terrorists blow themselves up for many reasons. An Elton John song (I Think I’m Gonna Kill Myself, see below) with lyrics by the brilliant Bernie Taupin reminds us of the terribly confused logic that takes over in despair, and how violence becomes a tool of expression or a way of life that takes away all life. It’s one of the tarsnakes of terrorism that says the very violence that seems to hold America together and make it a proud nation is also undermining the very surfaces on which we travel through time together.

But in the end, it is also about some selfish ambition. Some need to own a gun and use it like a paintbrush, or to bomb a marathon with Expressionistic flair. It’s all part of the same sick terror people feel inside and are driven to share with others. Then blame it on the object of their arts. The guns. For “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

Yeah, right. Bombs don’t kill people. People kill people. Bombs just do it better.

It’s a terrorist act. And also a social suicide. Trying to kill a society is the same as trying to kill yourself and others. We have also learned that in America more people have been killed by gun violence and suicides–violence against oneself–than in all our previous wars. Suicide is also way up among servicemen and women whose missions and recalls into tensely violent zones are breaking their wills to the point of killing themselves.

If you can’t make these connections about the net effects of violence, then you aren’t possessed of cognition, but of cognitive dissonance. As we’ve learned from the Boston Marathon, we can’t run away from the facts of our own confused logic. The massively violent nation that is America just got hit with a dose of its own internal dialogue. Whoever did it must have imagined some sort of scenario for themselves. And others. It’s how terrorism and gun violence and public bombings work. We can’t stop killing ourselves.

I Think I’m Gonna Kill Myself