Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
Imagine you have decided to go out for dinner, with your family or with your partner. You're at a restaurant, calmly eating something different, chatting about things you usually don't chat about at home. You're enjoying yourselves. From afar you hear pops that sound like a car backfiring. They get closer, and suddenly the windows shatter. People scream and dive to the floor. You pull your loved ones down and they pull you down, too. The pops disappear but the screaming and shouting don't. People are lying in pools of blood. Those who aren't hurt start to get up and look for help. Others try to help those lying on the ground. All around you the only question you hear is, "Why?"
Why would someone simply shoot to kill? There are killings with reasons you can understand behind them. A drive-by shooting against rival gang members. A shooting of someone who double-crossed a drug dealer. A mob-land shooting that gets rid of rival extortioners. However vile those deaths, they are understandable. Not last night's. Last night's shooting of innocent people enjoying a Friday night on the town is incomprehensible from any angle. The only thing certain is the fear in the attack.
Fear on the part of the victims and survivors, and on the part of society in general. The thing these idiots want is to make us feel insecure in our lives. They want us to be continuously looking over our shoulders, scanning the crowd for suspicious persons. They want us to think twice about continuing our daily or weekly routine. They want us to think twice about going shopping, going to the movies, getting together with friends. They want us to be so scared that we will give up what we have said we hold most sacred - our freedoms. And Paris is so representative of that.
The French people took the example of the American Revolution to heart and once the dust and the rubble of the Ancien Régime were cleared, plastered the doctrine in every aspect of their public lives. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. Paris became the model for an egalitarian society where one could live as they saw fit. Even more so than the United States. After the Russian Revolution, Russian émigrés of all kinds went to Paris, where they were welcome. In the Spanish Civil War, lines of people crossed to France and many ended up in Paris. During the Balkan wars, many refugees escaped to Paris. In just about every revolt or small or large war, many who escaped, escaped to Paris. Former dictators like the Shah of Iran as well. France, and Paris in particular, has always accepted refugees. Now they are struggling to accept Syrians, and they will. That is one of the reasons the extremist idiots have chosen Paris. Paris is light, and they want to plunge it into their darkness.
But, however much fear they try to instill, we must hold fast. No one wants to die, but if we give in to their fear we will die little by little. Every time we fear a bearded man, every time we fear a veiled woman, every time we decide to change our routine out of fear, our spirits die a little more. Every time we do not contest a curtailing of our freedoms in the name of security, our spirits die. Once we have accepted and supported the eroding of the freedoms our ancestors so valiantly strived to attain, to simply be able to say we live safe from these idiots, our spirits will have died and left only empty shells. And by then the physical death won't matter so much.
These idiots live in a darkness of their own creation so strong they are compelled to extend that darkness. All they know is the dark corners of their twisted, closed minds. So they strike at the lights the way they know best, with bullets of fear. We must show them we do not fear them. We simply pity them.
Why would someone simply shoot to kill? There are killings with reasons you can understand behind them. A drive-by shooting against rival gang members. A shooting of someone who double-crossed a drug dealer. A mob-land shooting that gets rid of rival extortioners. However vile those deaths, they are understandable. Not last night's. Last night's shooting of innocent people enjoying a Friday night on the town is incomprehensible from any angle. The only thing certain is the fear in the attack.
Fear on the part of the victims and survivors, and on the part of society in general. The thing these idiots want is to make us feel insecure in our lives. They want us to be continuously looking over our shoulders, scanning the crowd for suspicious persons. They want us to think twice about continuing our daily or weekly routine. They want us to think twice about going shopping, going to the movies, getting together with friends. They want us to be so scared that we will give up what we have said we hold most sacred - our freedoms. And Paris is so representative of that.
The French people took the example of the American Revolution to heart and once the dust and the rubble of the Ancien Régime were cleared, plastered the doctrine in every aspect of their public lives. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. Paris became the model for an egalitarian society where one could live as they saw fit. Even more so than the United States. After the Russian Revolution, Russian émigrés of all kinds went to Paris, where they were welcome. In the Spanish Civil War, lines of people crossed to France and many ended up in Paris. During the Balkan wars, many refugees escaped to Paris. In just about every revolt or small or large war, many who escaped, escaped to Paris. Former dictators like the Shah of Iran as well. France, and Paris in particular, has always accepted refugees. Now they are struggling to accept Syrians, and they will. That is one of the reasons the extremist idiots have chosen Paris. Paris is light, and they want to plunge it into their darkness.
But, however much fear they try to instill, we must hold fast. No one wants to die, but if we give in to their fear we will die little by little. Every time we fear a bearded man, every time we fear a veiled woman, every time we decide to change our routine out of fear, our spirits die a little more. Every time we do not contest a curtailing of our freedoms in the name of security, our spirits die. Once we have accepted and supported the eroding of the freedoms our ancestors so valiantly strived to attain, to simply be able to say we live safe from these idiots, our spirits will have died and left only empty shells. And by then the physical death won't matter so much.
These idiots live in a darkness of their own creation so strong they are compelled to extend that darkness. All they know is the dark corners of their twisted, closed minds. So they strike at the lights the way they know best, with bullets of fear. We must show them we do not fear them. We simply pity them.
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