No, I didn't say that at all

I have long maintained that the wonder of communication is that we manage to communicate at all. The reaction(s) to the Paris terror attacks have made this clear once again.

There are lots of smart people running around out there and some of them use their brains (at least sometimes) and some of them don't (or not very often), others are more emotional than reasonable, still others have such fixed ideas that no manner or volume of facts or arguments is going to change their minds. Unfortunately, I must say, that's how people are.

What is particularly tough these days, though, is have a view of things that is not mainstream or mainstream-sanctioned. We have arrived at a point here in the West when disagreeing with a given (generally speaking, accepted) point-of-view is automatically interpreted as advocating the precise opposite. This isn't faulty thinking, it's unacceptable behavior, and I don't care how smart you are or think you are, if you make this mistake, you're just being stupid. None of us lives in a world of black-and-white, regardless of how much most people, the mainstream media, the powers-that-be, or anyone else would like it to be so.

Let me repeat what I've said so often in the past few days: what happened in Paris is reprehensible and inexcusable. There is no justification for it; end of story. Let me add what I've also had to say so often in the past few days: I understand all your shock and sadness, but the fact remains that this kind of thing happens to "us" (I'll come back to that) once every couple of years; for too many others on this planet, this is their life every single day. Why is that so hard to understand? Why is it so unwanted when someone -- like me -- brings it up? I think those are legitimate questions.

Our reaction to the tragedy of terrorism should be (and yes, I'm being very prescriptive here), how do we stop things like this (read: acts of terror) from happening? what can we do to make it stop?

This shouldn't detract us from our mourning, but our mourning itself should sensitize us to the real issues involved. We've got a problem, and by "we" I mean all of us, every single human being on the planet. Terror happens everywhere but in some places more than other. We, in the West, have been exposed (NYC, London, Madrid, Paris, to name the most familiar), but others have been immersed (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, to name the most recent) in it. It matters. It matters a lot that we have to go through it, but it matters that others have to live with it.

While I have never claimed that we don't care about the terror inflicted on others, there is a good bit of factual evidence available that we don't know about it, don't recognize it, don't accept it, and don't feel as moved by it as we should. This "we" is all of us in the West, and all our countries that believe that we know what's better for others than they know themselves, which we claim fear and hate us when they would probably just prefer that we leave them alone, which just happen to be sitting are geographical areas that we have decided -- for whatever reasons -- are in "our interest". Just what the hell is that: our "interests"?

Personally, I'm sick and tired of all the blaming, all the blathering, all the threatening and the theatrics, all the conflict-seeking and the killing. When are we going to get it? When are we going to understand that every act of violence and revenge that we yearn for only makes things worse? When are we finally going to practice what we preach?

Lest we forget

Make no mistake: the events of September 11, 14 years ago, were unnecessary, tragic, shocking, damnable, disgusting, and devastating. There is no way that anyone can "justify" what happened. It was an destructive and frightening act of terror.

We should remember, though, that we still don't know who was responsible. We were told who was responsible, and this was different people or organizations at different times, but we do not know with any certainty. There are, to this day, too many unanswered questions. I'm anything but a conspiracy theorist or practitioner. I yearn for clarity, for transparency, for uprightness, and for honesty. Things that I'm sure many of you would agree are lacking today.

Almost 3,000 people lost their lives, needlessly on one single day. Death tallies like that are normally the result of war, but war was "declared" on "terror" in the wake of those events. And that, my dear reader, is what is so troubling.

The government has spent years trying to convince us of who was behind the attacks, but their arguments and proof are unconvincing. The commission report is laughable and contradicts itself. Nevertheless, we attacked Afghanistan, which was not behind the attacks, even if they were allegedly sheltering Bin Laden. We attacked them for revenge. The country was in chaos before and after the Russians were forced to leave. It wasn't Pakistan, our ally. It wasn't anyone with whom we had friendly relations, but we had a bone to pick with Saddam Hussein and that was the "trump card" eventually played. We attacked Iraq only a few years later, a second act of revenge. We may have been threatened by Al Qaeda or some similar organization, but we attacked countries ... out of revenge.

Since time heals no wounds, as yesterday's Facebook activity will attest, what is it that we have actually done? We've killed, maimed, wounded, traumatized, more than one million human beings. A few of them were from "our side" (about 7,000) if you count 9/11 itself. But the remaining 999,993,000 were "them". No more, no less. Just "them". We weren't defending ourselves, we weren't being attacked. We were attacked once. We, on the other hand, have been attacking ever since.

What does that say about us? About us as a people? About us as a civilization? The old Kabbalistic adage states it clearly: you become what you hate. And we hate. Over 1,000,000 people have lost their lives directly because of this event, another 1,000,000 are in the process of being killed, more than 50,000,000 people are fleeing for their lives, and we have the cold-hearted audacity to glorify the killing, allegedly in the name of the killed. What has become of us?

Two (or more) wrongs have never made a right, and they never will. We gave up our moral high ground long ago, but we still refuse to acknowledge that we're not a damn bit better than those whom we despise, detest, and hate. I'm sorry I have to say it, but for all you so-called good Christians out there screaming the loudest at the Muslims, don't forget that, by your own standards, you will be judged by what you have done, and not by what you have said.

If we want to maintain that Life (whatever you may perceive that to be) is somehow sacred or of high value, then it is time we started acting like it. You can turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the crying and anguish of the suffering, but there's not enough pathetic (in the sense of unjustified pathos) patriotism to cover it over or tune it out. You can act like you are in the right, but to find glee, happiness, or pleasure in the suffering and death of another human being is sadism, pure and simple.

And that, dear reader, is something I don't think we should try to forget.