Only an idiot would believe that the kidnapping of hundreds of school girls is anything but a sick, perverted act of hatred. Period. I don't care how you cut it, it is depraved. How we, as a civilized society, react to the heinous crime is a subject for discussion. I hope we can we agree on that. What stands out to me is the reaction to this crime. I know it is abhorrent to attack children, especially innocent girls! But why has this singular incident incited such extreme outrage? Could it be that the use of girls as a tool of terror has hit a nerve? The group responsible blames Western Education as the ‘crime’ these children were committing. Now they want to use them as trade bait, so are we to believe these maniacs really care at all about the girls? Of course not. They are getting exactly what they want, though. And that is a sense that the Western World is helpless. There have been thousands of extreme inhumane acts of kidnapping, murder, and torture since the Era of Fundamentalist Islamic Jihad began sometime back in the late 70’s with the kidnapping and murder of the Israeli Olympic Team. Obviously the world wide web didn't exist during the Palestinian Terrorists murder of the Israeli athletes so it played out live on Olympic TV coverage. The TV medium was a driving force coalescing world opinion against the tactics of terror, but it also proved to terrorists that using innocents was an effective tool of terror. During the Bosnian war, thousands of Muslim boys were summarily executed by extremists! They were dragged out of their homes and butchered in front of their families. Whole villages were slaughtered including newborn babies in Afghanistan because they were Coptic Christians! But little or none of those crimes received the publicity that modern day war crimes do. Besides, those events were seen as part of a broad civil war. Something that factions with long held hatreds exacted on each other. It was called Ethnic Cleansing, as though that made it any less rational. In every case, the inhumanity was couched in a fundamentalist religious fatwa. The perpetrators claim to be operating under the command of Allah. The Tide of Terror unleashed on the World by the many factions of Muslim Extremism has no shame in killing men, women and children who are non-combatants, innocent civilians, and even clergy. The Culture of Death permeates extremist fundamentalism like the Culture of Forgiveness permeates the Judeo-Christian ethic. The Boko Haram is simply a bunch of demented narcissists who use religion as a justification of their nihilism. Their acts of mayhem feed their compulsion to grab attention, show their anger and disrespect, to dispense sadism, pain and suffering and control every aspect of our lives up to and until they end their pathetic existence on this earth; the earth they consider corrupted because they can’t have their way. Yesterday, social media went ballistic after Michelle Obama posted a tweet showing a hashtag #Bring Back Our Girls!” My first impression was, how does advertising your empathy via Twitter help? To me, Twitter is just a giant network of digital advertising of self important feelings. It is a tool for self-aggrandizement. It is a digital billboard for patting yourself on the back. “Look at me, I just wanted you to share my rush!” Some, who criticized her were lambasted as jerks, because it was presumed the critics didn't care about the kidnapped Nigerian students (presumably because they were black). I don’t use Twitter, but it occurred to me that the criticism had more to do with the medium, not so much with the messenger or her message. Maybe the problem with the Twitter plea is that some people see Twitter as a singularly self obsessed indulgence. When it suddenly becomes a medium of activism, it may someday be effective, but it will have to wade through a ton of irrelevant blather before it reaches serious proportions. So the critics are simply suggesting that maybe we need to use something a little more ‘serious’ to project our outrage and to actuate change. The message “#Bring Back Our Girls” begs the question; who and how? When the First Lady is using Twitter to scream online ‘someone please help us!' it sounds a little desperate. She is, after all, the better half of the Most Powerful Man on the Planet, isn't she? If the President can’t "#Bring Back the Girls” how is crying out on Twitter going to accomplish anything? Maybe I am just naive. Maybe that is not the message Michelle was trying to send. |
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March 2024
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