Boston and America Wins World Series

The year’s World Series autumn classic won by the Boston Red Sox a few weeks ago was a glorious win not only for that fair New England city and its faithful diehard fans but it was somewhat serendipitous and a big win for all of America. The win and celebration that showered down upon Boston was a symbolic vindication to the carnage that had shocked Boston and the world only 6 months earlier. It is on this fateful and revered New England holiday, Patriots Day, that Bostonians celebrate the ride of Paul Revere through the streets of Boston and the start of the American Revolution. It is also the day the famed Boston Marathon is run. It was on this day six months earlier that two young immigrant men from a former Russian Republic stabbed this city in the back. Inspired or directed by Chechen Islamist terrorists from their homeland, they seized upon this symbolic and special day in Boston, as terrorists often do, and cowardly planted back-pack bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon bringing death and carnage to the very city and country that had so welcomed them and given them new hope and opportunities that is only dreamed of by so many throughout the world. In the ensuing carnage that literally took life and limp of Boston and America’s faithful, a wave of reaction surged out of the terror with the tagline, “Boston Strong”. Boston and America’s reaction and strong faith and confirmation is an example to all the world that terrorist cowards may attack us and you may physically hurt us but you will never intimidate us nor break our strong and patriotic spirit. In actuality, these tragic events strengthen our resolve and send a clear message to those who may want to bring us harm; we are “Boston Strong” and America is even stronger. President Obama summed it up best when he suggested that the terrorists had made a serious miscalculation, “if they sought to intimidate us, to terrorize us, to shake us from….the values that make us who we are as Americans, well, it should be pretty clear by now that they picked the wrong city”. Massachusetts Governor Duval Patrick asked Bostonians not to “lose touch with their civic faith” and reminded them that Boston “invented America”. Blogger Jim Dowd who writes “Good Morning, Gloucester”, a quintessential seaside town just north of Boston, wrote that “the terrorists must not be from around here or else they would have known better”. So there is a lesson to be learned from this attack on America 12 years after 9/11. In a city that claims to be the birthplace of America, where its strength is personified in its educated intelligentsia, it’s tough New England working classes and its fanatical sports fans, a World Series pennant win was as symbolic and fitting for this city as it was for the rest of America. The message is clear to those cowards that call themselves terrorists, who hate our way of life, and want to maim and kill our children, you may hurt us but you will never break our spirit, only make us stronger.