Monday, April 29, 2013

What's so different about 'terrorism'?

It's nice to see that various Boston health services providers are going to pay the 'co-pays', ie, the money that the victims would have to pay out of their pockets. But I have to ask this question, without appearing to be a curmudgeon: Would these victims bills be paid for 'gratis' if they had been victims of everyday crime? Just two weeks before the Boston Marathon Bombings, someone shot up an MBTA (Boston's Transportation Authority in charge of buses and subways) bus at the Dudley Station around 5:30 in the afternoon. Yet there was no city-wide lock-down, no remain in your homes and lock your doors. One person was killed and I am sure that the other passengers on that bus were 'terrified'? So why the difference? During the Bush Administration, we were treated to almost daily, color-coded terror alerts and around Christmas time, we were told that Al Queda might try to blow up a mall, such as the Mall of America, the country's largest, in Minnesota. Just a few years ago, a young man, about 18 years old went on a shooting spree in a mall in Omaha, Nebraska. People were shot and others were cowering behind store counters. But again this was not labeled as an act of terrorism. Had the kid been yelling "Allah Akbar!" while doing it, would that have made it an act of terrorism? Would the victim's bills had been taken care of my the health insurance providers? On any given day at malls across America, someone is robbed, pick-pocketed, assaulted and occasionally killed just because they were at the wrong place and the wrong time. I am just curious to people's reactions, on a governmental and media level is so different when 'terrorism' is involved, while there is senseless killings that go on every day in this country. If you have to live in a high-crime neighborhood, you may be 'terrorized' as a party of your normal life. Someone, please explain...

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