EDITORIAL

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ou go see a marathon finish. A joyous, enthusiastic moment. Then, next minute, an explosion. And the joy turns into tragedy, the enthusiasm into terror. There are bodies on the ground; one is that of a child, and the wounded – in these early hours they are talking about two hundred wounded, a lot of them have lost limbs. You go see a marathon because maybe you’re an amateur athlete, too… and you end up losing your legs.

It happened in the highly civilized city of Boston, that most European of American cities, famous also for the excellence of Harvard University. It has happened again in that America which for many decades was “the land of dreams”, the land of opportunities, the universe in which if you can dream something you can do it. And if the unspeakable barbarity of 9/11 inflicted a hefty blow to the dream, the blood let in its wake over the last decade has not improved things: the children shot down in the primary school in Sandy Hook, the slaughter of the cinema audience in Aurora, the massacre at Virginia Tech. And previous to 2001, we still remember the mass murder at Columbine High School (brought so forcefully onto the big screen by Michel Moore), the horrendous attack on Oklahoma City, with its 168 dead, and the shameful bombing of the Atlanta Olympics. The madness of killers who commit slaughters and the bloodthirstiness of terrorist attacks seem to have become the country’s cipher. And no sociological investigation has yet found convincing answers to so much senseless violence.

Madness surely knows no bounds. In 2005 the attack on London brought bomb panic to Europe, and in 2011 the Utoya slaughter in Norway, with its toll of over 90 dead, gave the Old Continent its dose of mass murder horror. In May 2012 it was the turn of a school in Puglia. The horrendous attack carried out by a madman in front of the Morvillo-Falcone school in Brindisi killed a girl of 16 and seriously injured others.

In America the measures promised by Obama to make it more difficult to access and possess a weapon have been called for by so many, and not only the victims’ relatives.

Uprooting homicidal madness is impossible, but without automatic rifles, without assault weapons, the damage would not be quite so catastrophic. And stopping a fanatic who wants to plant a bomb in the most unthinkable of places is very difficult but not impossible. In recent years, attempts on the New York subway, at Times Square, on the Federal Reserve, and in a cinema in Ohio have all been successfully foiled.

In 2012 one of the most famous slogans in America had its tenth anniversary. It 2002 it was adopted by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York as part of the campaign created by Korey Kay & Partners to encourage passengers to report parcels and objects of a suspicious nature. The famous slogan, which is still in use, is “If you see something, say something”. The trains and the stations on the New York subway have been wallpapered with it. And its success continues to grow; it’s on the site that hosts the Statue of Liberty (in Manhattan Bay), in Chicago, in Maryland and it has even made its appearance on occasions like the Super Bowl.

Inviting millions of people to “pay attention”, recruiting them as collaborators in a colossal prevention of terrorism operation is an intelligent choice. “If you see something, say something” is a campaign that should be spread and strengthened wherever large numbers of people gather. Like in the old Westerns it is time that the “goodies” organize themselves against the “baddies”, but only by looking out, paying attention and preventing. Against the barbarities of terrorism and violence it is our public spirit that can save us.