In today’s instant world, it doesn’t take long after a tragedy for people to come up with theories and hypotheses on what/why/who.  I’ve personally seen 7 different theories about who was behind today’s Boston attack, ranging from the highly plausible and even fairly obvious, to the absolute beyond stupid (aliens, anyone?)  As I sat and watched the nearly frenzied coverage of the attack by a media who only cares about bloody stories if it furthers their agenda (don’t forget, we’re still waiting for comprehensive coverage by the mainstream media on the Kermit Gosnell murder case), it struck me that for a few hours, that street in Boston looked a lot like a war-torn third world country from the news.  Debris everywhere, people screaming, chaos, and blood.  A lot of blood.

Any American with half a grain of love for their nation was filled with rage today; absolute fury at the idea that some piece of human excrement dared to turn a piece of our land into that,  and our innocent people into charred, shredded, screaming flesh.  The absolute question is WHO?  WHY?  And yet, I’m told we aren’t allowed to ask.  In fact, to paraphrase one prominent conservative, if you politicize this right now, you’re an insensitive jerk—because right now, the ONLY thing we should be allowed to talk about are the victims.  Quite frankly, that’s crap, and here’s why.

Let’s say your sister was out for a run. Suddenly someone drove past her, rolled down their window, and shot her, leaving her there on the jogging path.  Maybe she’s alive, maybe not.  The cops come to you and say, “We’re so sorry this happened to you and your family.  In fact, we’re SO sorry, we aren’t going to start trying to find out who did this for a while.  We decided we’re going to just grieve with you.  It doesn’t matter who did it, and until we know more (which we won’t because we don’t plan to look for a while), we aren’t going to really posit any theories based on already collected data or historical analysis.  We’re just going to stand around your house and hold candles for a while.  In fact, one of her friends was already outside the police station asking what we plan to do about this attack, but we ran him off because it’s not ABOUT finding who did it, and it’s so insensitive of him to even start asking that stuff.  It’s about you guys.”

Now let’s assume that your sister was actively being stalked by an ex who frequently told people that she belonged to him, that she didn’t have the right to see who she wanted, to go and do what she wanted.  He was quite open about his plans for her, and while he never really came out and said he personally would kill her, she knew.  You knew, as her sibling.  Her friends and coworkers knew there was danger.  All the indicators were there.  Maybe you even went to the courts for a restraining order, trying to stop him through the law.  You knew, absolutely, that things were reaching a fever pitch in this situation.  In fact, it was so clear cut to you that the second the police told you what had happened to her, you knew it was probably him.  Even more horrifying is, her ex is a local politician.

The cops, however, are not happy that you are bringing this up.  They don’t want to see the folders of text messages and recorded phone calls.  They are not interested in the pile of evidence you’ve collected on the ongoing situation.  In fact, they call you crazy when you mention that it’s even possible the politician had something to do with this.  They scoff at you.  “How dare you talk about politics right now?  It’s time to grieve.  It’s time to hold candles and pray together.  Later on, we’ll start looking for who harmed your sister, but right now we want to set up some vigils and Facebook pages.”

Would you be okay with this?  Would you be willing to sit idly by and just “grieve” for a while while evidence goes cold, witnesses disappear?  Would you be grateful that the cops share your pain?  Would  you agree that it doesn’t matter who did it?  Or would every fiber of your being want someone, ANYONE, to go FIND the person who did this, RIGHT FREAKING NOW?

In the wake of Boston’s tragedy, those who stand up to ask who/what/why are lambasted—even by conservatives.  “Let’s all come together.  It’s a time to bond and grieve and worry about the victims.  Don’t ask all these questions…right now we need to all just worry about the victims.”

Here’s some cold, hard reality.  That’s not something that I can do from where I am, on the other side of the country.  What I CAN do, is look for truth–because God knows the media won’t give it to us.  What’s more, we learned from a long list of incidents and tragedies that the government won’t tell us the truth either.  Fast and Furious, Benghazi, Operation Northwoods, Able Danger, the list goes on forever.  In fact, if it weren’t for people who wouldn’t stop digging, the government would still be trying to feed us the story about how Benghazi was all over a video.  If it wasn’t for the people who wouldn’t quit looking for the truth, people would still think Saddam had WMD, Watergate wouldn’t have happened, and John Kerry might be President.

There’s such a thing as integrity.  There are things like justice, and truth.  To me, pretending that it doesn’t matter who did this, or that we can deal with that “later,” is a slap in the face to us all.  It is BECAUSE of the man with the shredded leg in the street that I choose not to sit back and wait to be fed an official story by a lying member of the administration that is easily proven false.  It is because of the old woman, covered in blood, staring blankly out from a wheelchair that I refuse to be shamed into playing tiddlywinks and standing at vigils.   To be very, brutally honest, I’m offended at the hint of a notion that even asking the questions is somehow a Bad Thing(tm).  It’s not politicizing a tragedy to dig for truth–and you can bet your absolute, worthless bottom dollar that there are people, right this second, sitting in a room looking for ways to spin this to help their rights-snatching agenda.  As Rahm Emanuel famously said, never let a tragedy go to waste.

So you guys go ahead and pull up some chairs to the campfire, make some s’mores, and cry your way through a few verses of Kum Ba Yah while wringing your hands and waxing poetic about how we should talk a certain way or do/say certain things.  The rest of us will be out here being “offensive” and “political”—not because we don’t care about the victims, but because we care so much we refuse to let one more attack get covered up.