Death in Paris

A multitude of thoughts run through my head as I contemplate the attacks in Paris that took place on Friday that thus far have accounted for 129 dead over 400 injured. For one thing, it drove the non-issue of red Starbucks cups off the news. Secondly, it seems to have galvanized the Western world, even more, it seems to me, than the attack in Madrid or even in London.

I first heard of the attacks through an alert on my phone, to indicate the way we live now. I stayed off TV for quite a while, choosing to read the New York Times Web site instead. The all-news channels, when they have their fangs into something, can be dreadful between acquisitions of information, interviewing dubious experts or witnesses that may be prank callers  while they spin their wheels.

I finally turned on the TV after all the shooting was done, and put on MSNBC. I watched Brian Williams talk to a French journalist who actually seemed to know what was going on, but I couldn't help wondering if Williams would later claim to have been right in the thick of it. His reputation is pretty much shot. He gave it over to Rachel Maddow, who has one of the most serious expressions of any news person on TV. She was somber in talking to the same French journalist, so I figured I'd seen all I could see.

I am no expert on Middle Eastern politics. I had to look up ISIS on Wikipedia, and find out that they really should be called ISIL, or Daesch (they have nothing to do with an Egyptian goddess). I knew of them, of course, and that they were the black hats of the world right now, a clot of religious fanaticism that knows no boundaries and is known for their viciousness. French president Hollande declared they were responsible, which was later backed up by the group themselves.

Religious fanaticism may be the most troubling thing about the world today. Greed, of course, is right up there, and though greed kills, fanatics seem to be touched by madness rather than any pursuit of riches. These people purposefully targeted innocent people--people going to a soccer match, a rock concert, eating out. They subvert the entire notion of war as being fought between soldiers. And what do they fight for? Self-preservation? Gold? Land? Oil? No, they fight because they don't like the idea that there are people unlike them that exist.

The members of ISIS are evil, cowardly cretins, but the response by the right-wing is troubling, as well. It brought all old, tired arguments, like the victims should have been armed. Really? If you were sitting at a concert, and a group of gunmen with AK-47s burst into the door shooting and throwing hand grenades, would you be able to do anything about it except increase the carnage? Others blamed refugees. It turns out that one of the attackers used a passport and entered as a refugee, but others were French or Belgian citizens. Refugees, it should be noted, are leaving Syria because they want to get away from these crazies.

I don't know how to stop these attacks from happening. Having security details at stadiums saved many lives, though, when a suicide bomber was stopped before entering the soccer game. Candidates for president can blame this, that, or the other for how ISIS was formed and how they can be stopped, but it seems to me that the very dangerousness of fanatics is that they don't see reason--they believe in something beyond reality and they can't be negotiated with. They see only black and white.

I have never been to Paris, but it certainly lives in my imagination, as it does to anyone who has read Hemingway or Henry Miller or seen movies like Casablanca or Midnight in Paris or An American in Paris. We feel like we've been there, and seen the Eiffel Tower. Of course, in calmer days we think of Parisians as being rude, but that's all water under the bridge. Fred Rodgers, the great children's TV host Mister Rodgers, said that his mother told him in times of crisis to look for the helpers to alleviate fear. That's a good idea, and what helps me is to see how people can gather together to show consolidation, even if it's doesn't do anything, like changing you profile picture on Facebook. It gives me goosebumps to see President Obama talk about France being our oldest ally, and it gives me hope for humanity when people of all walks of life show their support for a people from another nation.

France has since then bombed the hell out of ISIS-infiltrated towns, a reasonable reaction, I guess. But I don't see how that will stop things. As Woody Allen wrote of the holocaust in Hannah and Her Sisters, "The question isn't how could this happen, but why doesn't it happen more often?"