Does violence close to home mean more?

We happened to be eating on Rue Oberkampf, on the same block as the Bataclan in Paris, the night of  those events.   And we happen to live on the West Side in Manhattan where not a day goes by without at least one trip on the West Side Bike path.   My work is based in Portland, Oregon where it's been OK to walk in and assault dark-skinned individuals for quite some time, including yesterday.

Does proximity make any difference?

Lack of proximity clearly makes it harder to understand how other "tribes" feel.   Just look at Trump's response to the bike path murders in New York yesterday--60% of the victims came from Argentina and it never occurs to him to even mention the sadness in Rosario.   Of course, he's a moron, but the point here stands.   We mourn our own.   It's in our genetics, often disguised as biased "empathy" rather than the true standard of "compassion."

But if this psychopathic guy had just stayed in Passaic where he was living an apparently pathetic life and crashed into people there, would I feel differently?  I wish to believe not, and I guess it would be equally as offensive to me.  I hope so, if only to retain some self-respect.   

It’s more like, no matter where we go, violence continues…and stupid responses are predictable and in need of character to be resisted.  Trump has already made it clear how this is going to be used to justify reactionary politics…(Donald--a psychopath is still a person, not an "animal."  Animals don't behave like you.   They're better.).   This particular mentally ill individual is a green card holder, Muslim, Uzbekhistani—good reason to lock down the borders, huh?  

Forget Las Vegas…that was just a crazy white guy and it's not trending on Facebook at the moment. But if a dark-skinned lunatic does something violent, that’s politics!

My partner takes a somewhat different spin on the same point--that proximity of violence no longer matters: 

"There's nowhere to go anymore. Either we're somewhere where our behaviour has somehow incited such hatred that people want to just do anything possible to create havoc and death and destruction, or we've so trashed the environment that we're suffocating in the smoke of forest fires, or animals are choking on our plastic or or or..."

It's all proximate, even if we chose to forget last week's events, or ignore events that don't happen to people who look like us.

That's my point.