The death toll from Monday night’s apparent suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, U.K. now stands at 22, Save Jerseyans, and the victims of this particular jihadist assault are children.
Analysts have been dreading this day for some time. So-called “soft targets” like a pop concert or grade school obviously don’t have the same level of security as a military instillation or embassy. They’re the perfect targets for ISIS’s legions of “fight in place” amateur entrepreneurs of death and destruction.
We pray for healing for the dozens of casualties and their families who remain.
The survivors won’t forget what happened in Manchester because it’s brutally new to them. 23-year old Grande was seven for September 11th.
Most of her fans were babies or mere sparkles in their parents’ eyes.
Terror — and the evil that drives it forward — isn’t something they can comprehend. I wouldn’t expect them to. Other than the arduous experience of navigating security at an airport for a family vacation or senior class trip? The consequences of terror are a foreign experience for the pre-911 generation coming up Something that happens in a distant bazaar on the television screen during the dinner hour. Not… real.
This detachment isn’t just a matter of chronology and geography, of course. It’s culture. The post-religious, unapologetically relativistic, stiflingly politically correct, helicopter parent-protected world in which these younger millennials were reared has no concept of the evil we’re up against. Is there even a word for it? It can’t be explained in 140 characters, treated with a behavior-modifying drug like Ritalin or dismissed like an annoying Internet pop up advertisement.
We can’t meme/hug/pray/hashtag/5k color run race this problem away, folks.
I first learned of Ms. Grande’s existence back in 2015 when the pop star licked an unpurchased doughnut and then proceeded to throw a bratty shit fit, declaring how much she ‘hated’ America.
Ms. Grande and her followers now know that “hate” is something they don’t understand any more than they’d know what to do with a cassette player. It’s a terrible lesson I wish, with all my heart and soul, that they could’ve learned from their parents and teachers instead of a twisted, depraved criminal. But that’s simply not how the real world works.
Evil isn’t Donald Trump or a cartoonish villain from the cinemas. Evil is a punishingly real, callous, indefatigable force in the world that doesn’t honor safe spaces and won’t stop until destroyed.
We need to pray for them all, Save Jerseyans. Love, comfort, and support them. Yes. And then we need to teach them about the true nature of evil before it’s too late for the Western world that they’re destined to inherit.
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