Charlie Hebdo

It’s Saturday and blog time, but there’s nothing in my protected, overfed life that’s worth talking about after what happened in Paris. 

Rage. 

It takes a lot of little dehumanising steps to get to dehumanising rage.  Like having a microphone shoved in your face after the death of twelve colleagues to be asked, Were they wrong to go so far?  Or being called a coward for blurring the offensive cartoons in your publication. 

Before you know it, you’re not safe going to the grocery store or sending your kids to school.  You’re angry and helpless, looking for someone to blame.  

So you legislate how much of her face a Muslim woman can cover.  You protest the building of a community centre near Ground Zero.  You make a crazy quilt of evocative ideas such as freedom, liberty, equality, and embroider them together with fear, anger, phobia, hatred.

Were they wrong to go so far?  The French journalist responded, You don’t argue with the dead. 

There are nearly twenty dead, including the terrorists.  Each life lost, started as a child in someone's arms.  How many dehumanising steps did it take for that child to give up his life for the opportunity to destroy someone else's?  That's a question worth answering.