Making sense of Boston

By Brian Platt  April 25, 2013

Last week was an extraordinary one for news, mostly in a bad way. The Boston Marathon bombing and the subsequent hunt for the culprits was the most notable and traumatic incident. But there were also poison letters sent to Barack Obama and a U.S. senator, and a massive fertilizer plant explosion in Texas killed at least 14 people, many of them volunteer firefighters. It was one of those weeks where it felt like society was coming apart at the seams.

Even during such a chaotic few days, the marathon bombing stands out for its malicious, indiscriminate violence. We’re starting to learn more about what could have possessed the Tsarnaev brothers to attack such a harmless target. The Associated Press reports that a mysterious friend named Misha twisted the elder brother’s mind with conspiracy theories and cruel religious dogma, convincing him to give up boxing and music: “‘Somehow, he just took his brain,’ said Tamerlan’s uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, who recalled conversations with Tamerlan’s worried father about Misha’s influence.”

I don’t know if we can ever really understand how a person can become so mentally manipulated that he can justify blowing off the legs of innocent runners and spectators. And if Misha was able to do it with Tamerlan (assuming this story is correct), who’s to say how many others he’s influencing?

Yet it also occurs to me how amazing it is that these bombings happen so rarely. The Tsarnaevs made the explosives with pressure cookers and nails; anybody could have done it, if they had really wanted to. It’s not very difficult for a single person to sow terror in a free country. But a big reason why these events shock us is because western countries hardly ever experience such violence — and contrary to popular belief, things are getting better over time, not worse.

The New York Times pointed out this week that the post-2001 years have wrongly been thought of as an era gripped by terrorist attacks, when in fact such attacks have been declining in the United States (Sept. 11 being the notable exception): “Since 2001, the number of fatalities in terrorist attacks has reached double digits in only one year, 2009, when an Army psychiatrist killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., officials say. That was a sharp contrast with the 1970s, by far the most violent decade since the tracking began in 1970.”

For one thing, this decline goes to show how wrong it is to overreact to terrorist incidents today with needlessly restrictive legislation (something to worry about now as Canada’s Parliament enacts new laws). But it also underlines a rather comforting thought: as horrible as the marathon bombing was, it stands out as an increasingly rare exception. What we like to tell ourselves about humanity — that strangers can be trusted, that we can rely on each other for help, that most of us are good, decent people — is not just wishful thinking; it’s backed up by the data, if one cares to look. It’s so easy to forget that when cable news channels are stacked with terrible stories.

In the aftermath of the bombing, a picture was being circulated on Twitter and Facebook with a quote from Mister Rogers. It’s the sort of thing I often roll my eyes at, but I have to admit, on this occasion it rang true. It said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”


Brian Platt is a master of journalism student at Carleton University.