BOSTON—After Monday’s horrific terror attack at the Boston Marathon that killed three and left hundreds injured, officials confirmed Tuesday that the bombings and senseless violence that followed occurred primarily because this is the kind of world we live in now.
According to reports, this is an age when, in an instant, two explosions can go off in rapid succession in a major urban center, disrupt the lives of thousands, and terrify hundreds of millions. In addition, those familiar with the situation went on to note that going through one’s day-to-day life with the uneasy feeling that a devastating act of violence could happen with little rhyme or reason is “just how it is now.”
Sources later confirmed that people crying, blood-spattered roads, and complete and total chaos are how the current world works and will continue to work for the foreseeable future.
“My fellow Americans, the events that happened yesterday in Boston are entirely consistent with the current state of humankind,” President Barack Obama said during a briefing in the White House East Room. “The days when we could walk outside and feel completely safe and secure are over. People die going to school now. They die going to the movies. And they die because, in this world, it’s more likely than not that some madman out there is hell-bent on instilling fear in others and destroying the lives of innocent people.”
“That’s the world in a nutshell, basically,” Obama continued. “It’s heartbreaking and frustrating and the powerless feeling it leaves me with fills me with pure, unadulterated rage. Thank you, and God bless America.”
Saying that being completely shocked by an urban bombing is now a thing of the past, officials confirmed that it’s no longer outside the realm of possibility for a mother, son, daughter, or husband to leave home in the morning and not return at night. Moreover, we now reportedly live in a time and place where expecting the worst and feeling slightly afraid of what awful thing will happen next is the default state of being.
Sources added that it is a horrifying, volatile world where phrases such as “our thoughts and prayers go out to,” “responders are currently sorting through the carnage,” and “a child is among the victims” are lines that everyone is now, sadly, quite familiar with.
Devices going off in trash cans, a citywide search for other deadly explosives, misinformation at the time of the attack, calling friends and making sure they are still alive, cell phone service being knocked out, images of someone in shock because they’ve just lost their limbs, and being overtaken by an overwhelming feeling of helplessness are all reportedly just part of how the world is now.
“If you are not hyper-vigilant and in some way fearful for your very life then, I’m sorry, you’re living on a completely different planet,” National Security Advisor Tom Donilon told reporters. “Now, if you feel like you live in an unpredictable place where somebody hates you for no reason whatsoever and literally wants to murder you even though they’ve never even met you, well, that’s living in the world based on how it truly is. It’s an age of constantly searching for answers but realizing there are none because there are simply no logical answers when it comes to insanity. ”
“That’s pretty goddamn sad, but it’s the truth,” Donilon added.
According to a majority of Americans, they have mostly come to terms with the fact that they now live in a world where, when an explosion happens, they immediately suspect it’s the result of domestic or foreign terrorism and are fully aware that hoping people died because of an accidental gas leak is morbidly wishful thinking. The U.S. populace also said that seeing the photo of a vacant-eyed suspect appear on their computer screen or watching a recorded message made by someone halfway around the world hours or days after an attack no longer shocks them.
In fact, sources confirmed, the nation fully expects it.
What reportedly frustrates and angers them most, every citizen in America said, is accepting that there is absolutely nothing they can do to change it.
“The lack of control I have when it comes to something as basic as the safety of myself and my family is very upsetting,” 42-year-old Pennsylvania resident Kathy Wells said. “I don’t want to kill anyone. I have never wanted to kill anyone. And yet there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who desperately want to kill me. I don’t know what to expect on a day-to-day basis, but I do tend to think that whatever happens will probably be bad.”
Added Wells, “I guess the world’s a pretty fucked-up place, huh?”