I'm exhausted and about to go to bed. Before I do, I want to relay an exchange I just witnessed on NECN. The reporter on scene in Watertown asked a Watertown FD member how he felt, and he bursted out, "Feeling better...now."
If I could try to summarize the general feeling among the people in the crowd in a single word, it would be this: "relieved." Many of the people congregating now have spent most of the past day inside their homes, in some cases laying on the floor in fear. Some of their children will have nightmares for years. Many people in surrounding towns were just as terrified.
For right now, they are relieved. They can breathe again, they can relax again, and they can sleep well tonight.
From what I can gather using my own senses, the feeling out there is NOT bloodlust. It is NOT about hate, retribution, name-calling, or jingoism. It's relief. Pure and simple.
Some will try to jam in their own narrative, and describe the feeling in Watertown as something else. They are wrong. There is elation. There is gratitude. There is admiration and appreciation for the uniformed personnel who put their own lives at risk in order to help take him alive. The suspect is already in the hands of some of the best medical professionals in the world, and will remain so for some time. He will receive a trial. Through that process, the world will learn about what it's like to grow up in one of the most welcoming, tolerant, open places in the world.
If I could try to summarize the general feeling among the people in the crowd in a single word, it would be this: "relieved." Many of the people congregating now have spent most of the past day inside their homes, in some cases laying on the floor in fear. Some of their children will have nightmares for years. Many people in surrounding towns were just as terrified.
For right now, they are relieved. They can breathe again, they can relax again, and they can sleep well tonight.
From what I can gather using my own senses, the feeling out there is NOT bloodlust. It is NOT about hate, retribution, name-calling, or jingoism. It's relief. Pure and simple.
Some will try to jam in their own narrative, and describe the feeling in Watertown as something else. They are wrong. There is elation. There is gratitude. There is admiration and appreciation for the uniformed personnel who put their own lives at risk in order to help take him alive. The suspect is already in the hands of some of the best medical professionals in the world, and will remain so for some time. He will receive a trial. Through that process, the world will learn about what it's like to grow up in one of the most welcoming, tolerant, open places in the world.
Amen. New England's fairness to all goes straight back to John Adams. What a country.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but think about the anguish a trial will heap back upon the Richards, the Campbells and the Lingzis. We can all congratulate ourselves all we want about the higher-mindedness of our legal system, but not everyone experiences "justice" the same way, and not everyone is well served by a public trial. I found myself conflicted to hear he was taken alive--not that I don't believe fervently in our system of justice, but because, as a parent, I can already feel the hole in my heart for what these families will have to re-live so that we can have our "fair" closure.
ReplyDeleteThe horror of this will never really end.
I had an in-law spouting conspiratorial theories, while the city was sheltered in. I also saw a lot of internet memes, that for one were WRONG and two just plain too early/insensitive.
ReplyDeleteand why was an image of the dead suspect #1 floating around in Facebook???
Also I saw many Catholics on my twitter feed, making note that Catholics don't bomb in the name of the Jesus and the Church. oh really... Guy Fawkes?
Apparently they were oblivious of the existing fear that so many were experiencing, especially in Watertown/Cambridge.