Keeping Perspective
“It [terror] never stops.”
I suspect that is something that Trump hopes rather than laments. The two groups who benefit from terrorism are terrorists and populists. The one group seeks to obtain and increase their power by inspiring fear; the other seeks to obtain and increase power by fomenting fear. Terrorists hate and target the status quo; populists hate and target the fringe. The responsible reaction to both is to not live in fear and to not buy into the “us against them” mentality.
Last Thursday, Trump was responding to the killing of a police officer in Paris by a man inspired by terrorist ideals. The whole world heard of this killing and buzzed once again with fear and, frankly, excitement. To those of us in Paris that evening, life went on as it had before. Many unaware of what had happened.
Any death is tragic and this mans was not trivial. But it was immediately politicized as well. France was just hours away from national elections, and—ironically—it seemed the goal of ISIS must have been to aid the populist candidate in that election. Today we will see just how much.
As Trump jumped on the news—literally as it was happening before any details had emerged—he lamented how out of hand things were in France. With the new death, 217 people have now died at the hands of terrorist in France in three years. Yet that number of people are killed by guns in the United States every 56 hours. Why was this one death, half-way around the world, more important than the average of 93 people who die every day in the US? Because it serves the narrative Trump is feeding.
The apartment my family stayed in last week in Paris was in the heart of an immigrant area. We were just one block down the street from what looked like refugee housing. It was right where earlier this year, reports of rioting and “no-go zones” were. Those reports were later proven to be more fake news.
On the first evening, my oldest son and I walked through the neighborhood looking for a grocery store. We saw no white people. We heard almost no French. Just a mixture of African languages and Arabic; homeless people and people selling everything from cigarettes to meat cooked on make-shift grills built in shopping carts to electronics. As we walked and talked, he told me that he was feeling a mixture of two emotions: fear, and guilt for feeling fear from people who were just different.
The fact is that crime and violence are probably higher in that neighborhood than in other parts of Paris. And there are very likely people in that area that sympathize with terrorists. But we also lived there several days and never once had a rational reason to fear for our safety. In even the “scariest” parts of Europe, one feels safe.
Here’s hoping the Brexit, populist, craziness doesn’t carry the day in France. Let's stop giving the fear mongers what they want.
I suspect that is something that Trump hopes rather than laments. The two groups who benefit from terrorism are terrorists and populists. The one group seeks to obtain and increase their power by inspiring fear; the other seeks to obtain and increase power by fomenting fear. Terrorists hate and target the status quo; populists hate and target the fringe. The responsible reaction to both is to not live in fear and to not buy into the “us against them” mentality.
Last Thursday, Trump was responding to the killing of a police officer in Paris by a man inspired by terrorist ideals. The whole world heard of this killing and buzzed once again with fear and, frankly, excitement. To those of us in Paris that evening, life went on as it had before. Many unaware of what had happened.
Any death is tragic and this mans was not trivial. But it was immediately politicized as well. France was just hours away from national elections, and—ironically—it seemed the goal of ISIS must have been to aid the populist candidate in that election. Today we will see just how much.
As Trump jumped on the news—literally as it was happening before any details had emerged—he lamented how out of hand things were in France. With the new death, 217 people have now died at the hands of terrorist in France in three years. Yet that number of people are killed by guns in the United States every 56 hours. Why was this one death, half-way around the world, more important than the average of 93 people who die every day in the US? Because it serves the narrative Trump is feeding.
The apartment my family stayed in last week in Paris was in the heart of an immigrant area. We were just one block down the street from what looked like refugee housing. It was right where earlier this year, reports of rioting and “no-go zones” were. Those reports were later proven to be more fake news.
On the first evening, my oldest son and I walked through the neighborhood looking for a grocery store. We saw no white people. We heard almost no French. Just a mixture of African languages and Arabic; homeless people and people selling everything from cigarettes to meat cooked on make-shift grills built in shopping carts to electronics. As we walked and talked, he told me that he was feeling a mixture of two emotions: fear, and guilt for feeling fear from people who were just different.
The fact is that crime and violence are probably higher in that neighborhood than in other parts of Paris. And there are very likely people in that area that sympathize with terrorists. But we also lived there several days and never once had a rational reason to fear for our safety. In even the “scariest” parts of Europe, one feels safe.
Here’s hoping the Brexit, populist, craziness doesn’t carry the day in France. Let's stop giving the fear mongers what they want.
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