Last night we watched a movie about the band Eagles of Death Metal, who were playing at the Bataclan in Paris that horrible evening when terrorists murdered over 100 people throughout the city. The main thrust of the movie was about how the band got to the point of being there and their inter-relationships, how they managed to survive that evening when 82 people in the theater didn't, and how they and some of the audience members coped with the emotional aftermath.
I remember well the outpouring of love and support that flowed to Paris and France, from us and the rest of the world. "Je Suis Paris" was plastered on t-shirts and posters and facebook pages. It seems so long ago, those feelings of shock and horror, anger and resilience, unity and brotherhood. It was terrorism, and everyone called it that.
Last week we had 3 mass shootings here in the U.S. There was no "other" committing these horrific murders. These were committed by white men (ostensibly Christian, but who knows or really cares?). They were just the most recent in a string of deadly attacks on U.S. soil by fellow citizens with a common thread weaving them all together: white supremacy. It begs the question: why is the reaction so different?
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