Glad to hear Rushdie’s off ventilator and on the mend. His life is changed drastically once again due to hate. All our lives are changed once again. It’s appalling. As a writer I’m for free expression and peaceful discourse. Murder as censorship is for barbarian autocrats. It must be stopped.
Security was admittedly lax at the Chautauqua Institute event where Salman Rushdie was attacked. No metal detectors, only a county sheriff deputy and a state trooper present. No searches. However, he was attacked with a knife. Those can always be sneaked in. Ceramic knives and body placement both thwart metal detectors so howling for “security” is useless, especially after-the-fact.
Rushdie had declined the censorship of his life by security teams, safe houses, and continual shifting of address, etc. He got sick of hiding from theocratic threats and censorious disloyalty to freedom of expression from publishers with cold feet quickly, endured a decade of such crap, then decided to live free, and at liberty. To defy those who would suppress art and speech. He embodied the free expression and artistic integrity all deserve. For 25 years he was fine, until the Chautauqua attack.
Stochastic violence from radicalized dupes and riled cultists proliferates in a world dominated by lies, insanity, nihilism, zero-sum thinking, and divisive political rhetoric. Polarized views lead to extremism, even unto self-negation.
How can it be stopped? Make mankind extinct — off-hand, that’s probably the only way, given that mankind is defined by destruction and violence, intolerance and madness. Beyond such cynicism, culture change away from tolerating violence and fear and hate and greed would be a good first step. Yes, it would take generations but peace, love, and a sense of community, inclusiveness rather than exclusionary prejudice, are key to elevating us out of this bloodbath. Good luck with that, Hippies, the Nazis among us sneer.
We need to grow out of the superstition of religion and the psychopathy of capitalism.
It’s human nature to fear and hate and strike out, to try to suppress and crush and kill any and all things you don’t like. So … the poor will be with you always — and the violently crazy, as we’ve learned. Those few who have learned anything from history know this well.
We can make it far less common, and we can stop all but the most insane, by shifting our society’s emphasis toward humanism. Sisyphus understood the challenge, as did Prometheus.
Writers, unite to stand against oppression.
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