Don't Mourn. Organize!

No, I didn't dream I saw Joe Hill* last night.  But I think of some of his final words, especially when I read yet one more article about all the "healing" that has to be done in the aftermath of the "Boston Bombings."

Guess what?  Most of us don't have anything more to heal than a headache from hearing too much crap about the whole sorry mess.


I am NOT talking about the people directly affected by this horrifying event.  I defy you to keep your eyes dry when reading about any of them, including the April 29, 2013 report in The Boston Globe about the guys from Stoneham. ("Friends wounded at Marathon will recover together.") Five friends gathered near the finish line to cheer on a sixth, and ended up with burns, shrapnel wounds, and amputated legs. These individuals, and their families, as well as the other actual victims and their families, are the only ones entitled to "heal." Those who suffered economic damage are entitled to "recover" or "recoup."

As for the rest of those who have some peripheral or imagined connection to the crime, they can "get over themselves." If you are upset about something awful you see on TV, you don't have to immerse yourself in it, you can turn off the tube and walk away. Why, you can even live up to the "Boston Strong" catchphrase plastered all over the place and "suck it up."

I am revulsed when I read, in the same edition of the paper, an article such as "Cambride Rindge and Latin rallies to begin healing."  One of the organizers, an alumnus, is quoted as saying "We didn't want to focus on them [the bombers]. . .We all know what happened. We want to talk about healing."

Oh, the humanity!  One of the loseramas graduated a couple of years ago from Cambridge Rindge and Latin, so that means what, exactly? You need to heal from the fact that you may have walked down the same hallway in the very same year, or decade, or century?  You need to heal from the fact that you thought he was just a half-baked stoner and not a half-baked terrorist in the making?

Another participant in this rally of healing stated, “We’ll always be a community. We’ll keep in touch on Facebook, I’m sure. It’s hard to understand that we’ll need to deal with a situation like this.”

It's hard to understand that these people attended an academic high school and can't come up with anything more thoughtful than this drivel.  Didn't they ever hear the word "vapid?"

It's not just them.  And it's not just the Boston bombings.  WIll the parade of hang-wringing, sobbing, and cowering ninnies never end?  How many teddy bears will be thrown on the pavement? How many vigils held? How many candles lit? How many snot-filled tissues tossed in the gutter?

Get over yourselves, Americans.  Feel bad, it was ugly and horrible.  Pray, if it makes you feel better. Send a donation, if you can. But please stop wallowing in your self-dramatizing faux grief. Stop trying to make it all about you and your need to "heal."  Don't mourn!  Organize.  Organize a fund-raiser or a heal-fest if you want, but there is something more important that may need organizing.

Organize your thoughts. Empathy is necessary, but it is not sufficient. In a crisis, we need to think. 

Here are some things I've been thinking about:

• All our tax dollars which have been funding a disorganized security apparatus with which has proven itself incapable of sharing information about credible threats and potential troublemakers.  Meanwhile, we have to take our shoes off if we want to fly from Boston to East Cupcake.

• All those anonymous "sources" who now report they knew all about the bulging bags of cash the CIA has been delivering to the "government" of Afghanistan, cash for which they received nothing of value in return. Meanwhile, there are a lot of folks right here who could do with even a thin envelope of cash, or a job, or a meal.

• All the necessary and acceptable risks of life in a free and open society. Bad things are going to happen no matter how many surveillance cameras are out there, or how many panels of inquiry are convened by ass-covering politicians and bureaucrats.

I know.  I know.  All that thinking makes my head hurt, too, but, while my thoughts might not be profound, or convincing, they don't require one nanosecond of healing.

*That would be Joe Hill, singer, songwriter, and labor martyr, not Joe Hill, horror writer and son of Stephen King. In one of his last communications before his execution for a murder historians believe he may not have committed, Hill wired BIll Haywood of the IWW:  "Goodbye Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize... Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don't want to be found dead in Utah." 

I wouldn't want to be found dead in Utah either.