This rant is designed to be read in 7 minutes 6 seconds or less.
Let’s start with what this rant is not about.
This rant is not about bombings in Europe, because I don’t believe there is any point in me writing at length to say bombing innocent people in Brussels or Paris is wrong. There might be a point in going on about all the other approximately one hundred terrorist attacks that have happened elsewhere around the world so far this year, but the point of that would just be to say Non-European Lives Also Matter, I’d be done as soon as I began.
This rant is not about the election fraud that marred the Arizona Democratic primary. I am tempted to rail about that, but I’m writing this the day before Washington State’s Democratic caucus, and I want to give that one a chance to be better. If not, and if the caucus here is anything like Arizona’s primary, I’ll be releasing the Kraken. So that should wait a week.
This rant is not about #ManInTree. No one can rant about man in tree. His beard is so plush. Didn’t you climb trees when you were a kid? You can’t even rant against his “rescuers,” because we live now in a world where children can’t climb trees, they might get hurt. And he was only held on a charge of malicious mischief for his own good. He needs observation. Besides, he’s now a nationally recognized Seattle icon. We’re in the news!
What I want to go off on is the KOMO News story about the woman who beat the windows out of a van and found herself regaining consciousness outside her house.
The story came out six days after the incident had occurred, after she was released from the hospital. She said she complained to the police for weeks about a van that had come to be parked in front of her house all the time, because the area around it was littered with used needles and urine soaked rags, among other things. But the police didn’t do anything.
So she got a hammer and went to the van and “in the hopes of getting the attention” of the occupant or occupants, smashed the van’s windows.
The KOMO article characterized what happened in its headline as “Seattle woman attacked while trying to confront occupiers of ‘nuisance’ van.”
So today’s rant is going to be all about how amazingly stupid and mindless and vicious that headline is.
The United States defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated by noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.” To me, it means getting attention with fear or violence.
The woman didn’t bomb an airport. She didn’t even kill anyone. But when you decide to smash windows in a van knowing that there are people in it, “to get their attention,” that is not in and of itself terrorism, but it is a key ingredient. “Get their attention” is what terrorism is about.
“Get their attention” as in “Don’t they know who I am?” It’s I’m the right religion; I’m the right color; I’m the one who belongs here. No Indians allowed, you lost the land; no homeless people, no Christians, no Muslims — it just depends who’s saying it.
She gets their attention by smashing their windows, an act of terror that can only be assumed to be an invasion with intent to commit physical assault.
If I’m in my apartment and someone decides to get my attention by breaking the windows, I am going to assume they mean to enter and either rob me or assault me or both. No, I
take that back. In the sheer terror of realizing that my windows are being smashed in, I am only going to assume the attackers mean harm to me. They have a hammer. I’m next after the windows.
KOMO not only doesn’t get that, it let the woman get completely away with characterizing her attack as “getting their attention.”
The message KOMO sends to everyone reading its story or seeing its report is, “Yes, don’t they know who WE are?” KOMO has the woman’s back. She’s shown as a victim.
This is unacceptable.