I was just puttering around in my condo and I heard from the TV (CNN) the single most remarkable thing that I have ever heard:
Eight armed men attacked a wedding in Turkey, killing forty-four people. Police suspect a jilted ex-boyfriend of taking revenge.
Weird attacks with surface similarities to this one are commonplace these days, it’s true. The usual rationalizations have a reality beyond the personal or local. This one, though, seems to hang on a tiny thread of someone’s failed attempt at reason. BBC reports that, “there seems to have been a long running feud between the families.”
A jilted boyfriend? (With the help of seven friends?) A family feud? (With forty-four people dead in one attack?)
Something about the Twenty-First Century is making people think that their own little grievances are somehow supremely important; that their own little frustrations are somehow cosmically meaningful; that their own little personal narrative requires resolution; that their own little community must rule the world; whatever.
What is this shit? You tell me. Something about encroaching old age has driven me out of the speculation market.
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7 comments:
I might be fucking up this quote but here goes; "The difference between the truth & fiction is that fiction has to make sense"
*jorge
Humans are just less hairy chimps, only a few millenia out of the jungle. Remember the beginning of of "2001"? Ape tribe against ape tribe, terrible territorial little chimps we that are. What's the difference between a jawbone or an Uzzi?
going to hell in a handbag we are my friend...rather disheartening, isn't it?
"Truth is stranger than fiction," and you gave the reason, Jorge. We all know stories first hand that are way too weird to include in a serious work of fiction.
Do you think it's true that weird stuff like this Turkey thing always happened, but now we all hear about it on CNN?
That's jilted taken to a whole new level. Forty-four in revenge for the jilted one. What a ratio.
[thoroughly] "jilted". Some peoples are more communal than others, tribal even yes. This guy brought his tribe and the other tribe suffered. Yeah, just minutes out of the jungle for many of us. And yes, CNN is now center stage for this crap. They still execute criminals on the street in many places. The trial being angry shouts. The judge being the executioner. My friend told me rapists in Iran get buried up to their necks and then pelted with tiny pebbles until they are dead or on their way. He also told me that Iran taps EVERY cell phone conversation in the country, or so the people are inclined to believe, leading them to "Godfather-like" measures of circumnavigation.
Re: street trial/executions:
I read about one in a West African country. Some NGO guy and his minder saw a guy try to steal some high-value thing from a street market. Locals caught him, tied him to a pole with wire, and beat him to death. The NGO guy says, boy, that's harsh, death for stealing. The minder told him, no, we respect thieves, but he was a bad thief.
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