"Convincing ourselves that we've been vicariously traumatized by the pain of strangers has become a cherished national pastime," I wrote in a 2007 column for the Los Angeles Times. That column was motivated by the response to the Virginia Tech shootings, but it could apply equally to the Newtown shooting or the Boston Marathon bombing or the Waco disaster. Here's what I wrote then:
Five days after the Virginia Tech massacre, the friends and families of the victims are grieving -- and despite the relentless glare of the media spotlight, their pain is still private. It belongs to them, not to the rest of us.
But you sure wouldn't know it from the way we talk about the tragedy. In modern America, there's always plenty of trauma to go around....Did you feel sad when you heard the news? Did you ponder, however fleetingly, the mystery of mortality? If so, don't just go on with your ordinary life as if nothing has happened to disrupt it (even though nothing has happened to disrupt it). Honor your grief! Attend a candlelight vigil, post a poignant message on one of MySpace's Virginia Tech memorial pages and please, seek trauma counseling as soon as possible....
[But] count me out. There's something fraudulent about this eagerness to latch onto the grief of others and embrace the idea that we, too, have been victimized.... Empathy is good, but feeling shocked and saddened by the shootings doesn't make us traumatized or special -- these feelings make us normal. Our self-indulgent conviction that we have all been traumatized also operates, ironically, to shut down empathy for other, less media-genic victims....Our collective insistence that we all share in the Virginia Tech trauma is a form of anti-politics, one that blinds us to the distinctions between different kinds and degrees of suffering.
So please, please, don't tell us that Boston has become just like Afghanistan, or that you now understand what it must be like to live in Iraq. It's not, and you don't. (I don't either, and I'm thankful for that.) Thousands of American servicemembers have been injured or killed in bomb blasts over the last decade, as have thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians. In Iraq on Monday, more than 50 people died in a bomb blast, and another attack killed at least 15 on Thursday. In Afghanistan, bomb blasts killed at least eight on Monday, and insurgent attacks and more bombs killed several dozen others over the next few days.
We Americans have never had to live with the continual insecurity and carnage that is the daily lot for millions around the world, and thank God for that. That doesn't mean we need to wear sackcloth and ashes every day to commemorate the suffering of strangers around the world, but it wouldn't hurt for us to stop acting like a bombing that killed three people has magically transformed all Americans into martyrs and heroes.
So please don't pat yourself on the back for courageously going on with your regular business this week just to "show the terrorists" that they can't intimidate you. Unless you're President Obama or one of a small number of people against whom there are repeated, credible threats, "the terrorists" aren't that interested in you, personally. Carry on. Odds are, you'll be just fine. (Unless you're hit by lightning, which is somewhat more likely than becoming a victim of a terrorist attack.)
You also don't need to assert proudly that Boston will get through this. Of course it will. The city of Boston's been around for nearly 400 years, and it has survived smallpox epidemics, bread riots, the Revolutionary War, draft riots, labor riots, race riots, and decades of sky-high homicide rates. Three dead in a terrorist attack is devastating for the families and friends of the victims, but it is not going to destroy Boston.
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