Macho Grande wrote:Longhorned wrote:ChooChooCat wrote:Good to hear you and yours is safe DC. Glad to hear all our guys and their families are good to go as well. In general Europe is just not a safe place to be at the moment unfortunately.
Safer than the U.S. though.
lol. Somehow I get the feeling that the team will feel much safer from terror attacks once they step foot on American soil.
Here's the thing. Like Choo said, the chances of being hurt in a terrorist attack are basically nil. A lot of us on this board travel internationally all the time and live abroad, and I hope nobody here has been close to such a situation (I haven't). And yet today, the kids in a program whom we're all obviously familiar with and invested in were as close as you can be. And this was largely their introduction to visiting a foreign culture.
You're right, they probably want to come home, and rightfully so. I would, too. The terrorist attack today robbed people of their lives and the people they loved. It's a tragedy. I don't mean to to minimize the experience of ultimate loss, but to be real about this: Those kids we cheer for on the court lost a hell of a great experience today. Forget prep and bonding for the upcoming season -- this was supposed to be a trip they'd remember for the rest of their lives. Naturally, it was going to leave positive impressions on them about Valencia, Barcelona, and Spanish and Catalunyan and European culture and history. That's all destroyed now, and they're left with a sense of horror to associate with Spain like I and most here can't even imagine.
What Choo said about Europe not being a safe place now reminds me of my mother. She nearly had a heart attack when I went to the Syrian border a couple years back. And in disagreeing with Choo, I probably remind him of his mother, too. We're not talking about politics. But this idea of the world outside the U.S. as unsafe got reinforced today, and that's going to influence how Americans travel and limit the kind of cultural contact that, in my opinion, is an essential foundation for how we relate to the world and even our basic humanity.
As far as these kids on the team go, though... All we can do is support them. This horrible, evil, violent attack by ISIS (the worst people in the world) has taken something from them that they probably can never get back.
This violence, this pure hatred borne of the deepest stupidity, is hitting closer and closer to home for everyone. It isn't political. We have to talk and be reasonable. Bear Down.