Violence Is Violence, Victims are Victims

And a final thought. Maybe it's me, but I found this a trying weekend. It was not because of the stuff you read about in a self-help journal, no family drama. No, it was the front page stuff that got to me. Maybe you also find it hard to go about your daily business when you know at the very moment you're doing something mundane, going about your life, something truly awful is happening to other people who are also just going about theirs.

Now, sure, if you think about it, that's true of every moment of every day. Well, someone somewhere is going grocery shopping or blowing out birthday candles or getting engaged. Somewhere else, someone's being killed, maybe while trying to draw well water or pick up firewood, or as in Mumbai last week, while eating in a hotel restaurant or waiting for a train or visiting a community center.

How do you wrap your head around such an awful thing? And maybe it's self-centered, but hearing about this as Americans celebrated one of our most wonderful holidays was almost too much. And then, just when the fires in Mumbai were out, here at NPR, we learned that a bomb planted on a car belonging to four of our colleagues in Baghdad exploded minutes before they would have gotten in it. Too much.

We've already heard a lot of commentary about why people do these things, and we'll certainly hear more, and I do want to hear more about who planned these attacks and why. But is there really any explanation for picking up a machine gun and slaughtering innocent people as they try to get on a train or cook dinner or eat a meal in a hotel? Is there really any explanation for sticking a bomb on a car belonging to somebody who's only interested in telling your story to people who are trying to understand you?

But can I just tell you? The capper of all this for me was the news that a man, a store employee, was stomped to death at a Wal-Mart on Long Island last Friday as shoppers rushed in to take advantage of early-bird sales. And these same shoppers resisted efforts to clear the store while the man was receiving medical attention. Now, let's think about this. Did a man really die so some people could get first crack at a cheap flat screen TV?

In this country, it seems to me that we look down on people who kill in the name of religion. We pride ourselves on the creation of an ever more civil society where people resolve their differences free of violence, where we live free of the hatreds and ancient feuds of our forebears. And many of us tsk tsk news reports about teenagers who shoot each other over a pair of designer sneakers or a jacket, and we ask, what's wrong with them?

But what if what's wrong with them is actually something with a lot of us, that shopping has become our religion and we're willing to kill for it just as surely as those young men in T-shirts and jeans in Mumbai were willing to kill for what they believe. Who are we when we allow the awful to become mundane? Who are we when we allow our everyday doings to become an occasion for tragedy and needless pain? Just last month, millions of Americans went to the polls and they voted for change. But what if what really has to change is us?