Are victims of terrorism relevant?

Seriously. This is one of those stale tropes that periodically emerge from the collective consciousness of the oh-so-smart liberals: the threat of terrorism “is way overblown”. Americans stand a greater chance of dying while slipping in their bathtubs than at the hand of terrorists. Barack Obama used to quote this factoid, as it was reported by the New York Times a year ago. Building on the concept, the ineffable NYT columnist proceeded to explain us that we (as a species) are unable to correctly judge risks, overreacting to measly acts of terror while failing to grasp the danger posed by Climate Change™. We’d need to get properly educated…
Back then, the news item everybody was talking (and anguishing) about was the Brussels terrorist attack of March 22, 2016,  when bombs detonated at the airport and at Maalbeek Metro Station, killing 32.
Here we go, again. Mourning the 11 victims of yesterday’s explosion on a Metro train in Saint Petersburg.
You never know, but in recent years under similar circumstances everybody was expecting the perpetrators to be radical Islamists, and in fact they were.
Nowadays non-Muslim wannabe terrorists probably wouldn’t even consider launching this sort of attack, because the public would attribute it to Muslims anyway.
Explosions, stabbings, shootings, vehicular assaults (and a stream of predictable media reactions) have become a normal sight.

 

How well will the aforementioned NYT article age?
Its message is clear: forget about radical Islam. The real danger comes from CO2 levels in a distant future:

election choices may shape coastlines 10,000 years from now […] Brussels survived this week’s terrorist attacks, but it may not survive climate change

 

Gasp! The climate denier Trump was elected as they feared, therefore Brussels is doomed!

 

Don’t get me wrong. It’s true our brain isn’t exactly prepared to cope with the unique challenges of a modern society; it’s also undeniable that most people exaggerate the magnitude of their personal risk associated with terrorism.

But don’t you find it ironic that they are condescendingly trying to convince you a real problem shouldn’t be blown out of proportion, while substituting it with an imaginary one?

 

Don’t blame the multicultural mayor

 

After London’s vehicular+stabbing attack on March 22 (on the anniversary of Brussel’s bombings), the city’s mayor Sadiq Khan was criticized by Donald Trump Jr. on Twitter for an earlier remark: last September, during an interview, Khan said that

Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for these things

 

If you listen to the full speech, in context, you may agree it’s really not that bad. He was controlled and diplomatic, but also a realist: knowing current conditions in western societies, he spoke like a responsible public official, preparing for the worst, trying to prevent future mass murders.
But after this specific attack, some right wing media outlets presented these words in a way that seemed to imply a callous disregard for the suffering of the victims.

In the perception of millions of people then, the first Muslim mayor of a western metropolis reacted to an act of terrorism carried out -under his jurisdiction- by an Islamic extremist by essentially saying: “You better get used to it, this is the new normal. The death of a few random innocent citizens now and then is a small price to pay, compared to the noble goal of building a multicultural society”. But this isn’t what he said at all.

Donald Trump Jr. (like the proverbial apple that doesn’t fall far from the tree) was caught in this small media storm, failing to understand the actual meaning of Khan’s words, reacting precisely as most of the target audience. This is a remarkable sight because such misrepresentation involved only a few newspapers, alternative media websites and social media sharing: the herd effect is so pervasive nowadays that even under a quasi-monopoly by the (leftist) mainstream media, you can easily manage to lock yourself out of the mainstream, living in a separate bubble.

So, yes, it was unfair to Khan to put his words out of context. I want to be able to criticize him through sound reasoning, concepts that any informed and intellectually honest person on both sides could agree upon. Let’s not close the door on debate.

We should make distinctions, without painting all adversaries with a broad brush: the NYT pundit was beyond the pale and anyone at that prestigious newspaper responsible for greenlighting that article is A FLAMING IDIOT. Khan instead said nothing wrong in that interview. Big difference. These are just two unrelated examples, but I think I made my point.

 

On  the other hand, Khan sounds like your textbook case of mainstream liberal/globalist. To his apparent thought process, and certainly as far as his policies are concerned, the fact he’s a Muslim is irrelevant. His non-Muslim, mainstream-compliant colleagues act and talk like him. Polished, reasonable, backed by experts and documentation, representing the inevitable ISO-9000 reality of present global organizations, they appear more and more like a PR face for a faceless societal superstructure, tasked with explaining to their constituency why they should accept the policies that international organizations suggest.
You can see how the Progressive mindset goes perfectly with this top-down elitist approach: for every problem there’s a definite answer, the matter is settled, we should embrace the inevitable.

The point is, the choices favoring mass migrations and the pretense to be able to integrate Muslims in a frail and self-hating post-Christian society aren’t even choices: no one decided to adopt this approach, but everybody is expected to go along. That’s the way thing go. Hence, that’s the way they should go.
Enabling Islamic radicalization (and the contextual decline of the West) is just one of the seemingly unstoppable (and for some reason desirable) developments, replete with euphemisms, making excuses, creating legal and social barrier to any opposition, re-educating the masses and policing language.

Now that the cat is out of the bag in fact IT DOES seem unthinkable to stop this process: how could you weed out people who could become terrorists, among the millions of European Muslim citizens or legal residents?

And I’m not saying that I could have devised a solution, even if I could magically intervene to change history, knowing what we know now.

 

So, yes, Khan wasn’t telling you that victims don’t count and you should learn to live with a few mass murders now and them. But the concept was implied. Not in his speech, rather in the way our “multicultural” societies are structured.

The flaw is in the multicultural, post-Christian part.

 

The Al Jazeera 'Likes' Controversy
Here’s another example of controversial content that may have been presented unfairly. I’m sorry to say no one seems to treat episodes like this as something more than an opportunity for some more partisan talking points: either hyped or debunked.

As you can see, a screen grab from a Facebook Al Jazeera live video from the London Attack shows 15 laughing faces, 9 “thumbs up” and only 1 angry or sad face. Disturbing.

Al Jazeera responded pointing out that in the end there weren’t many laughing faces for the feed, a single digits percent figure comparable to that of the BBC broadcast.
People may come up with elaborate theories on both sides (maybe someone purged the record to make it seem more reasonable; maybe this image is photoshopped). I won’t go there.
Let’s just take the facts at face value.
Yes, there are Muslims in the western world who aren’t afraid to cheer when terrorists strike. And yes, they are a small minority.

 

If you recall the incident with Trump referring to thousands of people in America cheering after 9/11, the whole point was that those Muslims publicly rejoicing for that senseless act of terror were definitely not in the thousands, and people like Trump tended to inflate the number. But they were definitely there, and yet the media bent over backwards to deny this fact.
You can’t understand a problem if you’re just choosing a side to blindly support.

The real problem, though, is that most of the Muslims who cheer for the terrorists won’t do it in public.

 

We’re all Israel now. Get used to it.

 

Israelis know the feeling: when your son or daughter boards a bus, at least during some intifada years, at least in some cities, you don’t really know if you’ll see him/her again. Something may happen.

Hence you may choose to instruct your two children to use separate buses: that way you are hedging your best, in fact at least one of them is getting back home tonight…

That’s life, apparently. Like in Israel, we may face this reality from time to time. Some will die at the hands of Muslim jihadists. Some. The others will move on, learning not to rock the boat. You don’t want to paint a giant target on your back.
As Mark Steyn brilliantly put it after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, on the subject of how lonely and isolated anyone daring to resist radical Islam is becoming, due to conformism and, frankly, fear:

So the cowardly and evasive “support” the world showed after January’s bloodbath was a very clear lesson to the survivors in the limits of global solidarity – and how it will go next time: We’ll be sad when you die, too! (Although probably not quite as sad and not in as many numbers, because, like, been there, done that.)

 

Are you prepared?

 

OK, we obsess over 5 people killed by a car used as a weapon by a murderer, we don’t give much thought to the 500 people who died in car accidents during the time interval between two terror attacks in the same region.

Is this reasonable? YES! There are a number of reasons for our following this gut feeling.
Because when you don’t react, things turn sour. Terrorism isn’t meant to cull our population by a few units (we are taking care ourselves of that part, through a dysfunctional approach to family and procreation). No, terrorism is meant to instill terror in your heart.

The party that is feared grows in power, those who are conquered by fear just give up. Our vision of the world changes. We gradually lose our ability to speak up, to confront Islamists, to protest against a special treatment for Muslims, to preserve our traditions and laws…

 

We’re definitely not Israel

 

People pretend to show strength in the face of terror attacks in the lamest, most pathetic ways. I couldn’t blame them, they are trying to cope as best they can. Case in point: the inevitable “Keep Calm And Carry On” meme, to signify that you are still living your life as you used to, unfazed.

There’s a Right Angle video (Bill Whittle, Steve Green and Scott Ott commentary) that specifically addressed this fake postiring, this inane reaction.

Bill Whittle:

Is your civilization worth defending or not? Are your children, and your views, and your beliefs, and your freedoms worth defending or not?
Because if they’re not, you might as well just become a Muslim now. Why wait to the end!
I mean: if the entire strategy of your country is to get used to it, then you should all convert now: it’s just a matter of time.

 

 

Israelis living in a colony, a sort of fortified citadel surrounded by enemy territory, made a conscious decision: in the worst case scenario, they’ll be killed, or they’ll manage for a while but their children or grandchildren eventually will die a horrible death; in the best case scenario, they will spend all their lives in a sort of permanent war zone, like prisoners under siege, possibly for generations, until something may happen to normalize the situation.
They’re facing extreme hostility, but they are doing it for a purpose, with arguably commendable determination, even if you don’t agree with their motive. They are committed to a cause. They value doing their part for the future of Israel (as they see it) more than their lives.
That’s how they manage.

 

Europeans are definitely different. Most of us don’t have an idea of what to do with our lives, let alone a vision, a sense of purpose. Christianity would give us strength; but most Europeans don’t really believe in anything. Besides, they would deem the idea of a Christian Europe both obscene and immoral! Good luck with a Muslim Europe, then!

 

 

 

As I said, I don’t have solutions. But at least, let’s not pretend we are OK with the current path to self-annihilation. Let’s at least keep fighting for words, for truth, for reason. And for the reasonable choice to BE CHRISTIAN.

So, no. Don’t get used to senseless murder just because it seems inevitable. Pray for the victims, even if the next door atheist is mocking you and insisting it’s useless, plus it’s “religion” that is the real problem to begin with.

 

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