Here we go again

After the tragedy at the Boston marathon this week, I admit to being a bit torn as to how I wanted to respond. As a blogger and writer I wanted to drop everything, rush to my keyboard, and begin the creation of a glorious and wonderfully worded piece blasting the malefactors who caused all this harm while praising all those who lent a hand in face to the horror of the situation to help those in need.

But I was conflicted. In a situation like this, it seems wrong to me to take  advantage of the suffering of so many just so I can write a piece that I hope will be well read and get me a great deal of attention. Although I would like to be a famous journalist and writer someday, and I dream of the time when thousands even millions would read my work, I feel somewhat uncomfortable gaining such notoriety at the expense of others. So I pondered, and waited, and watched to both see what would happen and decide how I best wanted to handle it.

The challenge for me was how to write something that sounded original and interesting without feeding off the suffering of those who went through this terrible tragedy and do so without sounding like the hundreds of other pieces that by now have already been written. Admittedly the emotions are high and the choices are many. One could write about the people who did this; who are they, where they are from, what on earth could cause them to do such a terrible thing. It would also be very easy to write about those daring souls that braved the danger, the chaos, the blood and guts and body parts everywhere and yes even the fear of death -and all with only the thought of helping a stranger.

But then it came to me.

I was on my way home from work today driving in my car and listening to the local talk radio station. Typically, in Chicago at least, talk radio hosts tend to be right wing conservatives. I don’t know why this is. In all honesty I don’t think I’ve ever heard a talk show hosted by a liberal, or even a moderate for that matter. This specific host was spending a little time discussing how absurd it was that certain members of the media and the liberal left were instantly blaming the explosion on some right wing radical.

I then went to my health club to get little exercise. My health club is set up with row upon row of exercise machines facing a long bank of oversized flat screen televisions. There are about 10 TV’s in a row all placed high enough so that everybody can see. Under each is written a different radio station you can tune into to listen to the program. For those who have the appropriate hardware, you can put on a set of headphones, choose the appropriate radio station marked underneath the television set and listen to the show. Although I have a smart phone, and it does come with a radio app, I have yet to find one that allows me to tune to whatever station I want to. So for me, I just watched the program and read the subtitles. The television I was watching was showing some news program; whether it was CNN or MSNBC I’m not sure. There on the screen was a panel of political experts; a Republican, a Democrat, and the host. It didn’t take long, even without headphones so that I could hear the dialogue, to understand what the topic was and where they were going with it.

These politicians weren’t discussing the poor spectators and runners and volunteers who have suffered so much. Neither were they discussing their thoughts or concerns about who had caused such a tragedy. And not one word was mentioned about the brave souls who reached out to help those in need. No, these were politicians and they had a higher calling. They had more important things to be concerned about. They were discussing whose fault was it and who shall we lay the blame on. But in this case, as stated before, they weren’t even talking about the perpetrator – the actual person who placed the bombs and caused so much tragedy. They were discussing it from a political perspective. As opponents in the arena of American politics, the only thing they had time for was to point fingers at each other as the radical group that was obviously the cause of so much pain, or, defending themselves and rambling on about why it could possibly be so.

And that’s when I realized that I hadn’t really seen one politician show any real concern for the victims or the volunteers, or how we are going to keep this country safe. All I’ve heard from the politicians, the ones who were supposed to be leading the way and carrying the banner, is finger-pointing and political rhetoric.

Yes, the president did make a statement, and it was a sincere and heartfelt statement about how we’re going to catch the bad guys and how he was sympathetic and sorry for the victims. The House and the Senate observed a minute of silence in honor of those who’d fallen, and the flags were all ordered to fly at half-mast. Not to be cynical, but president is required to make a statement. The members of the House and the Senate were told to observe a minute of silence and they did so because it was expected.

Three people are dead. Hundreds more have been wounded, some so severely that their lives will never be the same. Many of those wounded are just now, days later, waking up for the first time to realize that their leg or their arm is gone. People are suffering, the blood has barely even dried in the street, and all the politicians seem to be able to do is point fingers, discuss blame, and think about how they can use this event to make themselves look good and their opponents look bad.

I know, even as I write this and review my words I realize that it sounds cynical and harsh. So let me put it to you this way:

Let’s take all the politicians, line them up and one by one submit them to a lie detector test. Now I realize that a lie detector test is not submissible as evidence in a court of law, but in this case I think it will suit our purposes just fine. So let’s take each politician, hook them up to the equipment and ask them one simple question:

“I know that you are a concerned citizen, but isn’t it true that you are more concerned about your job, and how you can spin this to further your career then you are about catching the criminals, or protecting this country, or showing grief and concern for those who have suffered and those who volunteered”

When the lie detector exposes them for the selfish turds that they are, they are fired by we the people who put them there.

I am not a politician. As I have stated in previous articles I am not an expert in any of these areas. But in my opinion, it’s just common sense: now is not the time for debate or finger-pointing, mudslinging or politics as usual. Now is the time to come together as a country, led by the people who we elected to lead and guide and inspire, to heal and to support and to find the bastards who caused this.

For once I would love to see the politicians try to keep their jobs by doing their jobs.