Murder is murder whether the victim is nine months or ninety years old; all murder is to be condemned. Anyone getting upset with anything that follows please refer back to this sentence and tell me what difference there is. If you do not agree with this sentence then you need not read any further.
And now I want an honest show of hands. How many of your, prior to April 19th would have expected to find a child day care center in a federal building. Honest now, how many of you folks who pretended to know that all along expect to find a day care center in your local city, country and state office buildings? I hope this second question has weeded out the dishonest who "remembered" expecting one in federal office buildings.
Intellectual honesty is not the same as indulging in emotion. There are many things terrorists rightly are. What they do inadvertently is a consequence of what they are. What they are by definition does not make it their intention.
This is a bit early in this national catharsis. But when we see the "uncontrolled" weeping and wailing in other cultures such as the middle east for their dead we must remember ours appears as forced to them as their's does to us. Yes, ours if forced.
Some ritual must be invoked and our national ritual. The media coverage is a part of it. Finding those willing or to vulnerable to refuse some tears on camera to "tell the story" of the tragedy.
A president saying the "presidential" words is part of it and why Clinton received such an violent response to his pointing the finger of blame so early; so long before there was more than a person matching an artist's sketch. Clinton violated the national mourning protocol.
Our ritual national mourning is to keep the finger pointing -- usually called fact finding -- out of the public eye until the mourning is over. Lacking extenuating circumstances, that means until all the bodies are recovered and accounted for. That is not what happened.
No one is immune from their own rituals and everyone knows when they are being violated. And those that conform to the ritual know when they have been betrayed. Thus when Clinton violated ritual and started pointing the finger of blame long before half the dead were removed he deprived millions of the ability to participate in that ritual.
Like it or not every talk show host that disagreed with Clinton in particular and liberals in general was deprived of that participation. Every person who disagreed with the liberals was deprived of that participation. Like it or not, every militia member was deprived.
They were not given the time to reflect upon the deaths and do their private soul searching. The climate that still today should be focused upon the mourning has been turned into a battleground but that short but stupid statement.
People who were reflecting upon their own words and actions were forced into a defensive posture by this attack. Right in the middle of the natural human soul searching of "could I have caused it?" they were accused of causing it. Right, wrong or indifferent, people who had nothing to do with the bombing are going to be accused of being baby killers. Even the people who did the bombing can not be accused of that unless it can be shown they were trying to kill children.
Yet our national ritual of mourning has been destroyed and can not be recovered. We now have positions hardening in the worst manner. Hearings on Waco scheduled for May have been cancelled which will feed any fires that exist. Any proto-nutcases out there have been accused before they had a chance to modify their own words and actions. Clinton could not have had a better model than when God told Moses, I will harden Pharaoh's heart.
It is agreed that Clinton named no one. He referred to many unnamed and "dark" forces of division that successfully derailed the revolt against liberalism after the assassination of JFK. It was so successful that the most wanton mass murderer in US presidential history, Lyndon Baines Johnson, per McNamara's memoirs, managed to be elected.
Save folks were smarter back then. The JFK funeral and the eulogists were permitted to do their work in accordance with our ritual of national mourning. We have known for two years now we have an irrational wild card in Clinton.
Now we have to live with him.