Anger, fear, contempt ”” these are understandable emotions when people learn of a would-be act of terrorism at a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in their own downtown. I’ve gone through those, and a fair bit of sadness, too ”” sadness that a kid from our community would allegedly want to smash a happy scene to a million bits, sadness that no one set him straight, and sadness that my Muslim friends are feeling even more under the gun than before.
In the understandable rush to make sense of the nonsensical, people grasp for their ideologies: The Muslims are out to get us! Law enforcement has it in for minorities! What emerges for me is no rallying cry but some emphatic words of caution. Let’s be careful about picking our scapegoats and leaping to our favorite over-generalizations. And, especially, let’s choose responses that don’t hurt an already-bad situation.
“Anger, fear, and contempt…”
I note that in modern society these are the most salient of things personal. This observation brings about another:
“For several good reasons, many of us Portlanders are having a hard time wrapping our minds around the horrific thought of a 19-year-old from the local suburbs wanting to kill and destroy.”
Can you not imagine that the fact that our minds are so shallow, only an emmotion or two deep, might be the reason we have a hard time wrapping our minds around a horrific thought? Modern culture is self-indicting. We used to know that man was intrinsically evil and society made protection for such fact. Today, Man is assumed to be intrinsically good and we are horrified when our assumptions are upended.
God help us.
Don