A SECOND LOOK AT PATTERNS IN OUR SOCIAL FABRIC

I published a version of this post.

 

One of my favorite clichés is “woven in the fabric of society”. English teachers warn against using tired old truisms; come up with something new, they say. Most of the time these warnings are taken by authors as good advice, but remember a cliché is what it is because it makes a point so well it deserves repeating. That is how I feel about the one I just quoted but with the caveat added, we should never be content; we should keep looking for ways to express deeper meaning.

These thoughts came to mind while I was listening to the endless news reports about the Boston Bombers exposing all the senseless killing and raw emotions associated with the incident. In the background verbiage, various reported were referencing many peripheral things deeply “woven” into our society. For example, I heard several times that the National Rifle Association had prevented, by lobbying congress, from putting tracers in gun powered that would allow tracking the source of explosive. Also, I saw video clips of an America born terrorist trying to recruit other terrorists, and that the United States guns were easily available around the world and that our country was “awash in guns,which were his exact words. During the crisis, I could imagine assault rifle owners in Boston going to the closet or gun cabinet. What could these untrained disorganized people do with these guns? If they looked out the window, the streets filled with a well-organized militia trained to protect them. It clearly was a Norman Schwarzkopf’s “overwhelming force” response, made famous in desert storm made in spite of the fact that the people of Boston had overwhelming evidence it was two people, shortly reduce to only one that they were after.

“Overwhelming force’ has become the American way. We see it on every TV show where swat teams invade houses of drug dealers, etc. Many people own a weapon designed to kill people because they are free to do so, even though they do not know how to or want to use those weapons; it is the American way. An armed person, already protected by well-armed forces in excessive numbers, has become the American way. 

American people complain about privacy but are grateful for store camera surveillance of the streets when the Tsarnaev brothers planted their bombs. They cursed the NRA for preventing tracers in gunpowder, which prevented easy tracing of the explosives. The point is that all of these things are intricately “woven in the fabric of our society” but the cliché misses the point. A fabric can be all one color, can be dark and unappealing but it also can be alive and vibrant; it can be static or dynamic; it can be organized or it can be chaotic. It is beautiful of the fabric because of the pattern, which is enchanting because it is always changing.

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