Stand Out Crisis

There is, and will be for days to come, about the Paris attacks and why so much more focus is given to Paris than all of the other places where these things happen. My preliminary thoughts on the subject may seem a bit crass and insensitive but that isn't my intention. Simply stated, we are human beings and we have a threshold of tolerance for everything including how much sympathy we can have.

Paris is the heart of European Culture and usually the first face of a new aesthetic movement in art. It has not seen large scale violence since WWII, hasn't seen a bloodbath in its streets from "homegrown" terror since its decade long Revolution of  1789. Paris is the heart of France. It is the face of France, City of Love and Light and Enlightenment. So to see a direct assault on a place of historic rosie outlooks and the symbol of our own individual tendency towards romanticism... it attacks the heart of every person. Let's face it, as much as so many people hate America if you blew up the White House no one would bat more of an eye than we did in Independence Day. It gets blown up in movies all the time. But this is Paris. It doesn't get this kind of treatment in movies or real life.

Paris suffers from something of an Immunity Syndrome. The French are so innocuous no one thinks of them as a target. So when they are it hurts a billion times worse than anywhere else. France is a country of peacemakers unlike so many other places around the world.

The Irish have been blowing themselves up for centuries.
Mexico's streets have been thick with blood and guns for the better part of two years while drug cartels are trying to subdue the people.
Israel, Gaza, the West Bank... all the damn time.
Beiruit, Afghanistan, Pakistan & India, Iraq & Iran... all the damn time.
Anywhere Putin wants to be in the Balkan States.
Every country in Africa north of Botswana is feuding with someone, tribal leaders and governments are locking horns over who gets the right to control what. Peacekeeping missions are failing and millions are dying there every year.
Who knows what has really been happening in Cuba.
South America? Pick a country, pick a poison... mineral, oil, lumber production has resulted int he wholesale slaughter of indigenous persons for decades. Drug cartels? They got plenty. And plenty of people in the way of their success.
Haiti and the Carribean are not short on violence and atrocity.

The difference between Paris and the places I just listed is that the places I just listed have rejected ALL attempts at mediation. REJECTED PEACE. Jews and Palestinians will never find peace until they agree to stop shedding each other's blood. Won't happen. They have chosen this. They each have chosen a pig-headed stance on matters of nationality and, most hauntingly, the status of the other as human. In the case of all these countries who systemically reject peace after decades long attempts to negotiate peace with and for them there is only one response.

We let them go off on their own. It is what parents do to children who will not be controlled. If you can not chose peace for yourself, and you will not chose the peace someone else wants for you, then the only thing to do is step back and let the parties, "Duke it out" as we say in the States. We walk away from people who are always angry, who are always starting fights because that is the life that is chosen. Chose to be sour and angry but don't drag me into it. With parents, they figure that children will get sick of being hurt and eventually stop. In many house holds that will be the case. In others though, the ego keeps pumping adrenaline enough to keep going until the body gives out.

People who love light, joyousness, celebrations and diversity will tire of the barrage of arguments and the hate mongering. They will leave you alone to beat the shit out of each other. If you isolate the troule makers then everyone else is comfortable. The problem with Paris is that the trouble makers involved the peace makers. All those hateful people are not happy when they haven't gotten the attention they want while they are beating on someone. So the fight comes to shore in Paris. And because Paris has been thwarted in its attempts to broker peace and looks like it ignoring the fight then Paris becomes the new victim. It doesn't matter that Paris was rejected out of hand when it offered olive branches and solutions. ISIS wants what it wants. ISIS hates who it hates (which is everyone). ISIS wants to be the Apocalypse.

You can not fight that.
If you let them embroil you in their own private agenda then they win. If the goal is to set the world on fire and you join the fray then you let them win.

This is not the time for Paris to panic.
Party on Paris.
Laugh. Laugh. Love. Live.
Be the opposite of what they want.