joshuagates

Josh Gates · @joshuagates

16th Apr 2013 from TwitLonger


An open letter to those responsible for today's bombings at the Boston Marathon: Like everyone else, I feel angry and confused by the senselessness of what you perpetrated. I also feel embarrassed for you. Obviously you don't have a very keen view of history. If you did, you might have learned that terror doesn't take root very well in Boston - maybe the New England soil is just too tough.

Gunfire didn't subdue us on State Street in 1770, oppression only led to tea-stained waves in Boston harbor in 1773, and an entire empire couldn't hold the city beyond 1776. Those two fateful flights that began at Logan Airport in 2001 didn't bring the city to its knees, and your sorry explosions certainly won't either.

And the venue. You're kidding, right? How could you hope to derail an event defined by human endurance? Since you're holed up somewhere while the police work toward your inevitable arrest, you've got time for a quick history lesson: The Persians tried to subjugate the Greeks in 490 BC. News flash: Didn't work. The Greek messenger Pheidippides is said to have run the distance from the war fields of Marathon to Athens without stopping to announce the defeat of the Persian army. Marathons are the oldest races in the world, steeped in the celebration of the human spirit over tyranny. Also dip-shit, it's Patriot's Day in Massachusetts, when we commemorate the battles of Lexington and Concord and the "shot heard round the world." Emerson wrote that. I'm paraphrasing a bit, but it essentially means, "don't fuck with people in Boston." And in case you're not near a TV, I should also point out that you didn't actually stop the race (kudos to Ethiopia's Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia on the win). In fact, in the 117 years that Boston has been staging its marathon, the only time it was cancelled was during the height of World War I, when it was replaced by armed forces running the race in full uniform as a show of solidarity.

Sorry things didn't work out for you. We'll clean up your mess, mourn our dead, haul your ass up into the light of day, and then do what we've been doing for the last 250 years - get back on our feet and stand even taller.


Sent from my iPad

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