What We No Longer Recognize In Ourselves

Now that the Boston bombers are off the streets criticisms are in full bluster.  My, we are an intolerant, impatient people.

To see people cheering law enforcement after the last of the two young men was apprehended was both understandable and disturbing.  One, because the horror and the accompanying anxiety was at an end.  Then there was what was left of a very young life being carted away to an uncertain but predictably unpleasant fate.  That I cannot cheer.  I'd rather breath a sigh of relief.

Criticisms of how the FBI handled the situation are going full bore.  I think the combined units responsible for public safety did an excellent job.  Should the FBI be blamed in retrospect because even though cautioned by the Russians they couldn't unearth anything damning about the older of the two suspects?  I think not.  We don't yet arrest people for crimes uncommitted.  We do, however, have a problem as to how to classify certain crimes but that is not the fault of the FBI.

I moved on to skimming various articles about the men, their families and friends.  Then came the comments.  First was criticism of how the various media outlets handled the events as they unfolded. No one did it right and the criticisms were scathing depending on political persuasion. Understand, the media puts out false information not knowing for sure if it is in fact false in the mad rush to get the scoop.  It's insane and of no use.  Twitter is even worse.  Yet we eat it up.  Ill informed it seems is better than uninformed.  Forget properly informed.

All this segways into current discussions on bullying and cyber bullying. It's who we are anymore.  No one can have a different opinion from my own.  The idiots! And that's tame to say the least.  Look at Congress and the President.  The bickering goes on, the name calling, the disparaging.  Isn't it all bullying and doesn't it stem from hate?  Hate used to be a strong and seldom called for term but this day and age it seems to be part of the 'new normal'.

Even in our local papers we've lost ourselves in the confusion over bullying and criticism.  In a conversation about bullying a reader questioned how youngsters were to know the difference when so many of the comments on local blogs were so nasty.  The administrator of one of those blogs suggested she didn't know that difference.

I suggest she does.  Criticism can be leveled without nastiness.  My own readers take me to task quite often, we just don't agree, but my regulars are never nasty.  The comments on the blogs she alluded to often are.  There is nothing constructive about nasty criticism unless it tells the character of the nameless that level it.

Do any of us see ourselves in that light anymore?  Can we just skew semantics and expect it to be found acceptable?  Or all we all deluding ourselves thinking everything is fine and dandy when in fact we don't really like one another very much. On any level. Unless we are in total sync. Which of course we never are.

I liked the 'old normal' better but I fear it has been permantly replaced. I often feel like Don Quixote tilting at windmills that will never again function as they once did. Well oiled, running smoothly, contributing to the overall well being of the community.  I wonder if there are any Sancho Panzas left to  with whom to pair?