From Boston Marathon to Boston MIT by way of deaths from elsewhere.

On Monday in Boston, we all know how death was brought to innocent people through bombs in a crowd. Ugly, stupid deaths as well as insufferable injuries that maimed people who had done nothing to the perpetrators. Surreal massacre it was but then again, as I answered a family member, these minds work outside the framework of Reality to begin with.

Yesterday in Boston, the Police found and confronted the perpetrators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where again death came sweeping for a Campus Police officer and one of the murderous lunatics, a brother pair from Chechnya. The other is of course actively chased as I write.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324493704578432030609754740.html

In the interval, an industrial site in Texas was the stage of an accident that left more people dead than the combined tally from Bean Town : 5 up North in New England and 12 down South. The real difference between the two tragedies is the cause.

As the medias in America and abroad covered these events though, elsewhere death also came. On Tuesday in Iran  and Pakistan, a major earthquake killed between 35 and 60+ people depending on the accuracy of the reports.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22168202
Why did the media almost skip that? For the same reason that they also skip on the over 20 000 daily victims of starvation :
http://www.globalissues.org/article/715/today-21000-children-died-around-the-world
Because in each case, when contrasted with our US victims, these people did not have a clear future to begin with!

Are you shocked? Do you find my statement to be insensitive? Then please read again the numbers above it. My statement is a simple reflection of the discrepancy in the importance of treatment between those 20K of skinny kids and the 35 Pakistanis. The first more or less know in advance that they will die soon way before their time. The second live in a place where the dailies carry deaths of the same nature as those in Boston but in higher numbers routinely. So does Iraq by the way as 9 died today still with bombing attacks as a cause? So unless if, like that family member mentioned above, you regularly give some of your hard earned money to organizations that fight hunger and violence and injustice worldwide, you can be shocked all you want. It’s not that I don’t care about your unease or revolt; I do care : I tried to instill or raise it on purpose.

Having accomplished that though, I’ll wait for another post on another day to carry on those faceless dead far away and come back to Boston. For if it is too late to save the Chinese student, the perky restaurant manager and that 8 year old boy, there may never be a better time to draw for their unjust demise the conclusions for those that survived. For instance, we can read the sign that kid is holding in this picture of him put out by the press :

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/year_old_boston_marathon_victim_9LkiVtyTjVxDpQ7aMaNVPL

That photo of Martin Richard struck and stuck with me as I thought of writing this piece. No more hurting people says that sign he made in school. It does not say which people but it adds PEACE.

Martin did not specify because I think his parents raised him to value life in general or so it would seem. He did not want anyone hurt, period? I’m sure he would have been pained by those 20 000 kids like him but less fortunate that die of hunger every day, had he lived to read this. And while he did not, his sister and mom will. They will live but the young girl lost her legs that day. Along with many other victims that had to be amputated.
One of those victims, a lucky one with only relatively minor injuries was on TV the other night and spoke of the friends being treated at the hospital. Picking the lead from the CNN interviewer Anderson Cooper, he talked of the costs of those injuries. Not the obvious physical ones, mind you but rather the thousands of dollars in medical bills that will follow treatment and hopefully recuperation and rehabilitation. 5 to 50 thousand US dollars is the cost of one leg prosthesis and these do not last a lifetime so that it is a repeat cost, especially for the kids.
http://www.disabled-world.com/

It sadly happens that not only does the USA not keep a universal health care system despite President Obama and others before him efforts but the care if top notch is also the costliest around.
http://people.howstuffworks.com/why-pursue-health-reform1.htm

So that the folks that got torn apart by the inhuman minds and acts of the bombers now face many problems. Sure, there is the insurance. If they had some. If it offered good enough coverage. And if the result allows them to go back to work. One of the ladies hurt and having lost limbs is a hairdresser? That requires one to stand almost all day long. How will she fare now? And the friends of the guy that raised the question were, as he described, “hard working Americans”. It’s not clear that you can go back to construction work or moving company on a leg and a half? So maybe, just maybe, this kind of tragedy should launch a National discussion or debate on solutions. Funds or a program with the government backing some of the financial burden for victims of acts of terror and folly like on Monday? Heck, if that was in place it might bring a new mindset on the health care issue of that great land?

Which may be so much wishing on shooting stars on my part though! For another thing happened this week between the bombing and the shooting. In Congress, that opening we had talked about here on this blog for additional background checks for gun acquisitions fell and crashed ( which is why my tone was not overjoyed when the news initially reported the “opening” ). For political reasons, both of reelection but also muddy thoughts on the possible sending back of the favor later on another subject when it would be too steep a prize, even Democrats voted against. Even though the Nation when polled overwhelmingly approves. Even though victims of those guns are everywhere, a Congress woman like Gabby Giffords or a Newtown victim father as Neil Heslin or heroic Vicky Soto’s sister. Even though some of the families and friends of that December mass murder were there Monday near or on the pavement as the 26th mile mark of the Marathon represented the same number of victims in that school? Even in the midst of Boston events and all.

So that I may be exerting myself to absolutely no avail here? How could a country that cannot act on horrible lessons and regulate itself well with guns raise the bar on health care for the same reason?

But I love that great country through some of its members and history enough not to stop pushing the subject. My readers can attest to that by now.

As said Aretha in that song : THINK! … Tay.