As the savage reality of the Boston Marathon bombings sinks in, it is pretty clear the Hub has finally made it onto the world stage. Yes, we’ve become a target for terror, alongside London and New York.
Boston’s resurgence over the last several decades, from grimy backwater to a global business and cultural center, has been nothing but extraordinary.
With rogues like James Michael Curley running into the ground what was then a moldy old museum of a city, 1950s Boston was a dark and dreary place to live, more likely to turn into Buffalo East than the Athens of the early 21st century.
But Boston’s comeback, for all its glories, has also made the city and its sprawling environs a tempting target, a grand platform for the deranged and diabolically evil of all persuasions looking to make their twisted statements.
‘A Symbolic City’
“Boston is quite a symbolic city,” Richard Barrett, a former top British intelligence officer and anti-terrorism expert, told The Daily Telegraph, a nation daily based in London.
No, we can’t match London or New York for size. But Boston today is both a modern urban success story and a vibrant symbol of the Enlightenment ideals that have shaped and reshaped our country with each successive generation.
Behind this remarkable comeback story is decades of redevelopment under a succession of wise mayors, as well as the rise of a knowledge-based economy that has played to the strengths of the university-rich Boston area.
Boston and its suburbs are increasingly the place to be for the upwardly mobile professionals and the wealthy, driving an unprecedented surge in downtown luxury condos and suburban home prices. The area’s booming biotech and high-tech industries are drawing talent from around the globe, while local cultural institutions, like the Museum of Fine Arts and Institute of Contemporary Art, are at their zenith, having spent hundreds of millions on extravagant makeovers. And the new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center has, for the first time, made the city a major destination for conventions and meetings, from cutting-edge video game start-ups to medical device makers.
Simply put, Boston has become a top global destination, transforming a venerable, long-time sporting event like the Boston Marathon into a major international affair – and the kind of event that draws not just media armies, but, as it is clear now, nihilistic individuals/groups bent on sowing terror and destruction.
Still, it is more than just our success, but also our ideals, that anger the fringe elements out there, whether they be madmen bent on creating theocratic dictatorships in far-off lands or homegrown neo-Nazis consumed with pig-headed rage.
We are the birthplace of both the American Revolution and the Abolition Movement, events which sparked sweeping societal change that continues on down to this day.
OK, we have fallen down on our own ideals as many times as we have lived up to them – the busing riots of the ’70s and the despicable treatment of immigrants from just about every land, across the 19th and well into the 20th century, to name just two.
But despite such backsliding, Boston still broadly stands for some of the most enduring ideals of the modern age, first and foremost being political and social equality for all, regardless of religious belief, class background, race, and now, sexual preference.
All those values are on display in an event like the Boston Marathon, with its international cast, framed by the scene of men and women, black and white, young and old, rich and poor, gay and straight, all sharing in the joys and agonies of a grueling competition whose roots can be found in the Athens of ancient Greece. Throw in the annual Patriots Day festivities, and you have quite a mix of ideals and hallowed traditions.
In fact, judging from the sorry state of the world, these remain radical ideals in many countries around the world, and even in some of the more desperate corners of our own.
Don’t Hunker Down
But the solution is not to hunker down, but for Boston to keep on being Boston, while learning a thing or two from other great cities that been visited by evil and bravely faced it down.
Certainly Boston’s finest appear to have performed heroically in the aftermath of the Marathon Day bombings. But the Hub can also learn much from cities like London and New York, both of which have learned long ago to live with the threat of random and terrifying violence.
London famously learned to live with mass terror daily during the dark days of World War II, when Nazi bombers and later rockets killed tens of thousands and maimed countless more. IRA bomb attacks did their damage during the post-war years as well, while Al-Queda terrorists wreaked havoc on the city back in 2005. Remarkably, London went on to host the summer Olympics last year, which went off without a single hitch.
Closer to home, New York City has shown remarkable resilience and defiance in both rebounding after the devastation visited by 9/11 and years of constant threats and plots.
Both cities have gone on being great, but with the realization that greatness requires constant vigilance as well.
And like these great global metropolises, Boston can and will as well.
Email: sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com
