dagblog - Comments for "From Sandy Hook to Boston: America's love affair with Extremism must come to an end."

The position of Mom is so

erica20 — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:45:34 +0000

In reply to Extreme thinking by whom? I'm

The position of Mom is so important that it's almost impossible not to be controlling.....

I was thinking more of extreme thinking within the larger community--but you could certainly figure that having oddball, paranoid moms who didn't make great decisions did not do these boys any favors.

Hmm, in the sense that this

erica20 — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:43:37 +0000

In reply to More grist for the arugment

Hmm, in the sense that this is the message we were supposed to figure out after Sept 11 but didn't, because, Iraq?

More grist for the arugment

artappraiser — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:48:59 +0000

In reply to One thing your comments

More grist for the arugment that this story is an international phenomenon, not Amerocentric:

Source: Juan Cole

yeah, they even make wildly

artappraiser — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 01:56:48 +0000

In reply to From what I have seen, track

yeah, they even make wildly popular movies about it where like one guy runs for the glory of God and another guy runs to overcome prejudice

Extreme thinking by whom? I'm

NCD — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 01:25:56 +0000

In reply to From Sandy Hook to Boston: America's love affair with Extremism must come to an end.

Extreme thinking by whom? I'm interested in people's take on the Moms of these 19 year olds.

Nancy stockpiled guns and ammo in her million dollar house. She was the first victim.

There are also reports the bomber's Mom aided in their Islamic radicalization.

Were they both 'controlling' Moms?

From what I have seen, track

Elusive Trope — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:51:56 +0000

In reply to One thing your comments

From what I have seen, track and field is huge in Europe. It is likely that there were more Europeans watching live than Americans.

One thing your comments

artappraiser — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:36:09 +0000

In reply to This is an interesting

One thing your comments reminded me of is how surprised I was during following the story early on that there was immediate headline coverage at many international sources you would not expect, like Al Jazeera, a Serbian news source, and AllAfrica.com, pushing other major news off their home pages.

Since then, I have seen more than one commentator ruminate along the lines of "if it happens in America, it's more striking than in say, Iraq, because if America can't offer a secure daily life, who can?"

BUT--and this is coming from someone who knows the syndrome well, being quite phobic of competitive sports--that's forgetting this happened to be an attack on a major international marathon! One of the most famous international marathons! To many around the world who are into this sort of cultural exchange as providing benefits along the lines of "can't we all get along?", initially this looked like an attack on international goodwill! So the massive attention wasn't really just about America uber alles.

The moment of silence at the London Marathon on Sunday:

from New York Times' "Festive and Defiant, London Runs a Marathon for Boston" by John F. Burns

This is an interesting

Anonymous Trope — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 23:59:12 +0000

In reply to Adam Gopnik at The New Yorker

This is an interesting article which brings up a host of threads.

One comment resonates as being very succinct in its insight:

And we already had a glimpse of how this might be a tragedy of assimilation and its discontents.

Although I would say that the process of assimilation is something to consider regardless of whether one is physically shifting from one geographical region or not.

But all of our experience suggests that it is not “fundamentalism” alone but an aching tension between modernity and a false picture of a purer fundamentalist past that makes terrorists

Although I would say that claiming all of our experience suggests this is being a little extreme, or should I say radical ;).

His claim, however, [emphasis mine] brings up a problem in addressing stories that capture "national" attention:

The decision to shut down Boston, though doubtless made in good faith and from honest anxiety, seemed like an undue surrender to the power of the terrorist act—as did, indeed, the readiness to turn over the entire attention of the nation to a violent, scary, tragic, lurid but, in the larger scheme of things, ultimately small threat to the public peace.

In the way it is worded, it would seem to say that attention of the entity known as the nation is dictated as if it were an a singular, autonomous entity. If the entire (or close to 98% of the) attention of the entire (or close to 98% of the) nation was turned toward it, it was because the story resonated and captured the imagination of a vast number of those individuals who make up that nation.

The readiness, if is true to say it existed, was an outcome of many different and diverse experiences for many different and diverse individuals. Sometimes when a large group of people act in a similar fashion, it is easy to think that it is done in an unthinking, sheep-like fashion. Mob mentality and all that.

While the actual threat in terms of the general problem of terrorism may be small (or not), the dynamics of this story may illustrate other issues and problems that are not small.

Adam Gopnik at The New Yorker

artappraiser — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:44:59 +0000

In reply to From Sandy Hook to Boston: America's love affair with Extremism must come to an end.

Adam Gopnik at The New Yorker (mainly an art culture critic & essayist) is thinking along similar lines as you, Trope and Maiello, but takes it in a different direction:

[....] The toxic combination of round-the-clock cable television—does anyone now recall the killer of Gianni Versace, who claimed exactly the same kind of attention then as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did today?—and an already exaggerated sense of the risk of terrorism turned a horrible story of maiming and death and cruelty into a national epic of fear. What terrorists want is to terrify people; Americans always oblige.

Experts tell us the meaning of what they haven’t seen; poets and novelists tell us the meaning of what they haven’t seen, either, but have somehow managed to fully imagine. Maybe the literature of terrorism, from Conrad to Updike (and let us not forget Tolstoy, fascinated by the Chechens), can now throw a little light on how apparently likable kids become cold-hearted killers. Acts of imagination are different from acts of projection: one kind terrifies; the other clarifies.

I think it's safe to say I

Elusive Trope — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:00:39 +0000

In reply to From Sandy Hook to Boston: America's love affair with Extremism must come to an end.

I think it's safe to say I believe there is a need a for a grand re-think of our ideological conversation, or more specifically a grand re-think about how we think about ideologies. The two events to which you refer, taken together, can provide enough fodder for this.

But as I wrote about in There is no Evil, confronting these less-than-pleasant examples of the potential expressions of human nature means confronting something about ourselves we might not want to see.

The forces that pull us from the center toward the (radical) extremes never cease. It isn't about getting the middle and then riding out the rest of our remaining time in safety and comfort.

And there are times when being vanilla isn't what is called for. How does one respond when the Brown Shirts come knocking on the door? How does one respond to any kind of (perceived) oppression, state-sponsored or not?