Satire Does Not Always Involve Humor. The Most Powerful Satire Never Does.

[MADem]

62. Well of course they "should have expected" it. For chrissake--are we expected to

suspend rational thought in an asinine attempt to somehow be "politically correct?" Saying that is NOT "victim blaming." Saying that is being able to add two plus two and come up with four.

Insults to the Prophet have, in the past, been met by bloodshed. Murder, even. Recently--and in Europe, too. To predict that present or future "insults" would not be met by some sort of forceful expression, if not bloodshed is--to put it bluntly--STUPID. It doesn't mean it's "OK," or it is the fault of the victim, it just means that if you put out birdseed, the birds are gonna come. Surprise, surprise.


I am pretty confident that the staff at Charlie Hebdo "expected" some shit, and maybe even some violent shit, like an office bombing or death threats--they just didn't "expect" actual mass murder. The fact that they worked behind locked doors suggest that they indeed DID "expect" some kind of trouble, and they weren't unaware of potential for problems. They weighed the risk, they took steps to secure themselves--they just didn't count on someone opening the door under duress for the perpetrators.

To compare the whole argument to victim blaming in the case of rape is just not on, though. People rape for lots of twisted reasons--sexual perversion, power trips, you name it. It is a violent crime, it is reprehensible, but that's where the similarity ends. Most rape victims aren't the "scantily clad lass pulled into the dark alley" either. Often as not the victims can be on social security.

What I am finding irritating is this repeated "Now, now, don't blame the victim" refrain--as if anyone IS actually blaming the victims. No one is blaming them, they're just saying this shit isn't as shocking and surprising as some might want to pretend it is. Again--because one has to do this over, and over, and over again--that doesn't make it acceptable, that doesn't make it right, that doesn't mean that people should put up with it, that doesn't mean that censorship should rule the day, etc., etc.--but to pretend that it was IMPOSSIBLE for this kind of thing to happen, and to pretend that "Oooh, no one could have predicted it" is absurd.

Summation: To accuse people of "victim blaming" for thinking that this tragedy might have been very possible, and to have predicted that it very well could have happened, and even for not being terribly surprised by it, is flat-out wrong. It's simply knowing the lay of the land, knowing there are disaffected extremists in Europe who are prone to violent response, knowing how they react to these kinds of things, and putting those elements together and drawing a conclusion.