This is what Wolf Blitzer, a competent and informed television news host, declared at one point on Sunday afternoon. Forty-nine victims were known dead and at least 53 wounded in the worst mass shooting in US history—the assault by yet another crazed Muslim jihadist on the Pulse gay night club in Orlando, Fla.
It’s we who are the experts on this nightmare.
In a flash, a small panel of commentators spoke somberly about the attack, parsed the issue of whether this was or was not a hate crime (really, people?) and offered their perfunctory bromides about the fear gripping the community and speculated antiseptically about possible “copycat” actions looming.
There was a “break” announced in the coverage and some advertisements for a “new and improved” 2017 Nissan and a “fast and effective” antacid ensued. Somehow, I was underwhelmed by the amount of expertise shared by the well-paid panel of bobbing heads and theatrically grim countenances.
Here’s the only real knowledgeable speculation we can offer one another: what next? CNN, Fox, and the others get us through the day with their canned exploitation of this war against innocent civilians being waged by sectarian barbarians. But the network celebrities are not the experts. We are—we, the people of America, France, Israel, the UK and so many other nations—who are trying to cope with the reality that life is irreversibly altered and darkened by the greatest scourge against civilization since the Nazis.
We are the experts (although we survivors lack the ultimate, bloodied credentials of the dead and the horrific stripes of the wounded and maimed) because we are the ones living helplessly with this ongoing nightmare.
We are the ones who—besides worrying so much and feeling so betrayed by this abysmal 21st century—know that all the talk about “containment,” all the rhetoric about not sacrificing our freedoms in the name of too much scrutiny, and all the maddening political correctness, the western world is simply not angry or brazen enough to kill this enemy once and for all.
The individual that walked into that nightclub early Sunday morning with two deadly weapons (according to reports) had been licensed as a security guard. He was evidently familiar to the FBI. His agitated state of mind and his contempt for life were apparently known to his imam.
He traveled a long distance with his firearms and body armor to carry out his jihad moment.
The government of the United States seems to find me every year, without any strenuous effort, when it comes to my taxes. It knows my balances, where I work, who is or is not my dependent, and it can swiftly garnish my wages or seize my possessions if I even hint of indiscretions. Why can’t it find these guys who openly plan to destroy the lives of our people and the secure peace of our nation? Why can the authorities take my money away but leave these guys with their armaments?
Maybe the answer is blowing in the gunfire, somewhere in between the expert panels, the antacids, and the media culture that is already waiting for the next nut case to give them something about which to pontificate?