I give to you today a tale of heroes and villains. It won't be hard to find the heroes, not after this week.
We all owe a big debt of thanks to the brave men and women of the Boston PD, SWAT, Massachusetts National Guard, and other first responders who sprung into action without concern for their own lives to protect the local citizens and -- quite literally -- the entire nation. If those kooks were better funded, and more intelligent, they could have spread their pressure-cooker nightmare anywhere they wanted. Fortunately they were caught quickly.
But above and beyond the bravery of those trained and equipped to handle such things was the bravery of those private citizens on the scene at the time of the bombing. Without body armor or sidearm, these people jumped into a war zone to help aid the wounded. Without their sharp and selfless actions, the death toll could easily have been ten times as high. Those, in my eyes, are the true heroes.
We would all like to think we would do the same thing were we in that position, but acts of terror don't occur that often. Nor are many of us frequently in proximity to burning buildings or collapsing bridges or people accidentally in the path of oncoming trains. But what can we do, each of us, all of us, to be the heroes that we saw in Boston that day?
What we don't realize is, bombs of a different kind go off in people's lives every day. Bombs like job loss, crippling injury, murder, robbery, death of a loved one, addiction, mental illness or even the loss of a spouse to separation or divorce. If you don't think these things are as severe as what happened in Boston, I invite you to try one or two. You know, just for laughs.
These kinds of events affect people no less than the bombs affected the victims in Boston; family life changed forever, fear and depression becoming the norm instead of the exception, financial difficulty or complete collapse, and permanent emotional instability. It only takes one of these types of events to set off an explosion that people often never recover from.
Those kinds of bombing victims are right next door to you. Right down the street. Across the aisle from you at the office, next to you in the pew at church.
What are you doing to help those people?
It's okay, not everybody can be a hero. You have your own problems, and you have to make sure your own house is in order first. You have responsibilities just like I do. What about the people at the Boston Marathon who were there with little kids? If they managed to escape unscathed, their first priority would have been to get those kids the hell out of there! Nobody is questioning that, nor am I chastising you for making sure that you're taking care of yourself first. It's a natural reaction, and one that I can't criticize. Inaction makes you neither a hero nor a villain, and put in the same circumstance, I could live with that.
So who are the villains in this tale?
Imagine if you saw, at the perimeter of the bombing in Boston, a group of people actively trying to impede the rescue efforts. Dozens of people lying bleeding, some of them dying, limbs torn off; but they were surrounded by a frenzied mob of idiots at the edges of the chaos making every effort to keep police, ambulance, and private citizens from helping the victims.
What would you call people like that? Not just refusing to help, but trying to make it impossible for anyone else to help either. Who would do that? Seriously, that's not just a villain, that's the most heinous form of living filth known to man. Those people are scum. They're the worst kind of sinner. Letting innocent people suffer and possibly die? Those people deserve to die themselves, in the most gruesome and torturous manner imaginable.
But that kind of thing didn't happen in Boston. So, who am I talking about?
If the principles guiding the way you vote include cutting off funding for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, or universal health care --- trying to make sure that the bombs that go off in people's lives every day will cause them to suffer and die --- I'm talking about you.
And whatever God is out there has a special place for you... in the deepest reaches of hell.
