I don’t know if I am (Je suis) totally Charlie

Maybe this is not the best way to begin an essay, but being politically correct is,  reached this point, nonsense. The truth is the truth, yes, but sometimes it is a polihedron with multiple faces not always as beautiful or ugly as we may think.

The reprehensible shooting of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo’s headquarters has been a truly jab into the heart of the most recognizable nation of freedom in old Europe, but no more than a sharp pain into the chest of a body little accustomed to severe injuries.

Again, opinions could be misunderstood, but statistics never lie. In the 11^th  September 2001 terrorist attacks on The Pentagon, The World Trade Center and other places in North America three thousand people died there. The 11^th March 2004 bombs in the Madrid train system cost a toll of almost 200 lives. In Paris 12 people passed away and four more are critical or seriously ill. The magnitude goes in decreasing numbers.

Now think about the tsunami of 2004 which drowned 230.000 second-class inhabitants, or the earthquake in Haiti where a hundred thousand natives –maybe more– stopped breathing in the name of poverty. And what about the innocents being killed every day in the African and Asian war conflicts? The figures are so big that it is risky not only to be born there, but also to state an approximate toll number.

The Western World has mobilized with the execrable crime of the satirical magazine, but we have been watching the Islamic State killing people day in, day out and nobody has ever cared about it. It seems that freedom of expresion is more important than third world’s lives.

When these horrible things happen, one can less than reflect critically on them. A teacher or mother brought her pupils/children to Charlie Hebdo house to show them that the artists had been killed for drawing. Well, I won’t say that is false, but I’m afraid this is a huge simplification of the facts.

Shooting somebody because they have shown an image of your undepicted God or prophet seems a bit overfanatic, I admit, but there is much more over the layer than it seems. I mean, we exert economic legal assassination. The developed nations have long helped poor countries to die of inner starvation. This has nothing to do with religion. It’s pure survival. And we first world citizens have forgotten about them long ago. We don’t push triggers. Not in the literal sense. We don’t need to. A good pack of measures and restrictions, greedy politics and interventionism have made the work for us (did I want to say “us” or “U.S.”? I’m not pretty sure).

Isn’t it cruel, insensitive, a total aberration to celebrate our Christmas traditions and compulsive consumerism habits while we turn our backs to those in need of basic help? Perhaps we deserve this kind of suicidal torments, maybe we are much more guilty than we think. Where did autocriticism go long ago? Oh, yes, we don’t need it. It’s all about maniacal followers of Allah and their Holy War. They are the baddies and we, pure saints that unfortunately passed by over there in the worst moment.

I think we are totally mistaken. And still we consider ourselves the paradigm of liberty, egalitarism and fraternity. The Islamic State may deserve a good nuclear bomb under their pants, but we didn’t care a damn until they touched our isolated happiness and remembered us that people are dying violently out there while we suffer depressions because there isn’t much more to undergo when all our basic necessities are covered. If bums are perishing of coldness, bad luck. But my family a new iphone each.