The recent crises the past few years has made me realize just how stupid some Americans are. They have this herd mentality and it was so obvious on social networks during this specific attack, it wasn't even funny. I'm sure you read all those Twitter and Facebook posts where they cursed Muslims and Obama and all other sorts of stupid shit. They're so uneducated that they feel that those two things were the main reason behind the attack, not just sick individuals carrying out an act of terror.
After seeing that type of mentality through stupidity, I really had a hard time not losing my cool. A few things irked me this time, just like they did the last few attacks that have happened. Sandy Hook, this, etc. People "sending prayers" through Facebook statuses. Why? What good does that do for the victims and their families? To me, it just looks like that person trying to show others that they care and feel better about themselves for it. Multiply that by 100+ people all trying to do the same thing, and your news feed is flooded with shit like that. Instead of the media slapping it in your face, making you look at it, you've got your own people doing it.
As far as people celebrating in the streets, as far as I know, they are Bostonians themselves in the streets celebrating. They were on lock-down, in their homes for over 48 hours and were not allowed out. Military vehicles and soldiers were walking down each and every street doing house-to-house checks. I can imagine it happening in a third world country, as it probably does in Iraq and Afghanistan. But not here in the States. Not in a first world country will you have military essentially becoming the police in a city. Never has a city gone into lockdown in the US, in recent memory for me.
I don't think anyone outside of Boston was in the streets celebrating, though. So I do believe it was a small minority. Of course, going back to the social network thing, a lot of people took to Facebook to announce the great news, as if they themselves had gone in fully armed and apprehended the guy lying inside the boat. I got angry again, but just let it go. There was a circlejerk with a few white conservative "friends" on Facebook which involved mentioning gun laws, mentioning the military and America and how great it is (none of the people were tied to the military, they just like to think they are), and others just being thankful he was finally caught.
I haven't looked at your conspiracy theory link, but those two were rampant on Facebook and watching these dumbasses share the links to pages that had pictures circled in red, trying to prove a government cover up not 24 hours after the blasts, that also pissed me off. One, at how stupid and gullible my friends are and two, how quickly it was spreading and starting to flood my feed.
I wish I had a real answer as to why we're so stupid. Maybe the spotlight is always on us so more stupid fucks get exposed. Maybe we have the same percentage of the population that fucks it up for all of us with their stupidity. I don't know. But starting with Sandy Hook and now this bombing (so basically the last 5 months), I've really gotten sick and tired of people. I think I've finally hit that point now.
