Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers.
This is how: in that year alone, 2001, over 10000 people were killed by gun homicides in the US --over three times as many random, pointless deaths as 9/11. Last year, there were over 15000: an increase of nearly twice as many families mourning the senseless death of their loved ones as the 9/11 families, but every year.
And twice as many people every year die of car accidents --sudden, random, untimely deaths. Every year.
These are inconceivable amounts of suffering, of mourning families and communities rent apart: almost as if the population of an entire mid-sized town got randomly obliterated every year.
And then consider that, in their name, hundreds of thousands of other innocent families around the globe have gone through --and still go through-- their very same suffering on that day: losing their loved ones to unimaginably violent attacks out of nowhere, absurdly justified by some abstract, foreign notion --collateral damage, preventive strike, what not.
The numbers don't lie. As a society, sooner or later we will have to come to terms precisely with the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism, and the grotesque price we have inflicted the world (and ourselves) with.
This is how: in that year alone, 2001, over 10000 people were killed by gun homicides in the US --over three times as many random, pointless deaths as 9/11. Last year, there were over 15000: an increase of nearly twice as many families mourning the senseless death of their loved ones as the 9/11 families, but every year.
And twice as many people every year die of car accidents --sudden, random, untimely deaths. Every year.
These are inconceivable amounts of suffering, of mourning families and communities rent apart: almost as if the population of an entire mid-sized town got randomly obliterated every year.
And then consider that, in their name, hundreds of thousands of other innocent families around the globe have gone through --and still go through-- their very same suffering on that day: losing their loved ones to unimaginably violent attacks out of nowhere, absurdly justified by some abstract, foreign notion --collateral damage, preventive strike, what not.
The numbers don't lie. As a society, sooner or later we will have to come to terms precisely with the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism, and the grotesque price we have inflicted the world (and ourselves) with.