Ok, I’ll say it. It was terrorism. But first, some clarity.

When someone(s) plants explosive devices at locations where there will be crowds, detonates them and, as a result, kills and maims dozens of people, that is terrorism.

Why?  Because senseless death in such a dramatic fashion tends to scare the bejeesus out of people.  When the explosions are seconds apart and within walking/visual distance of each other, there is no question that it is terrorism.  The explosions were meant to kill and terrify.

The problem is that we have come to associate terrorism with scary brown skinned people with middle eastern names and have conveeeeeniently forgotten that before Al Qaeda, there was Timothy McVeigh.  Now, unless people are starting to refer to McVeigh as a freedom fighter, we should remember that we once called him a terrorist.

So, while we wait to determine who set the explosives off, we shouldn’t be afraid to call it what it is: terrorism.  And it’s just as likely to be homegrown as middle eastern.  All you right wing whip kissing cowards can chill until we get to the bottom of this.

Here come the soft targets

I was cleaning leaves out of the flower beds at the new house when I heard the news and hoped that #1 child was in class today in Framingham and not taking the day off to watch a race in person.  She hasn’t texted me back yet. She’s probably just busy.

It’s taken 12 years for terrorism to go after soft targets here in the US.  I expect there will be another round of shrieking about how we must go after brown skinned people and clamp down even more and subject each other to even more interrogation and frisking.  But there are more than 300 million of us and we will all grind to a halt, some of us cowering under our beds, and the country will be no safer from soft target terrorism.

Maybe this time, we’ll think before we invade, although I’m sure the military contractors would prefer we are thoroughly freaked out by today’s turn of events.

Yes, I’m pissed off and I’m very sad for the victims.  But I haven’t lost my mind yet.  This time, we need to keep our collective heads cool because as far as we know, the soft target terrorism is just beginning and we don’t know yet who is responsible.