Based on this list, that’s worse than all deaths from Islamist attacks on western countries and consulates since 9/11 (including Israel but excluding Russia).
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Well said.
We absolutely have a terrorism problem with our law enforcement community.
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Since terror is an emotion, I’d say that the label trivialises deeper problems. Countries aren’t run on emotions, or reactions to them, so much as they are upon making practical decisions. So I think it is a framing device which encourages modelling and solving these problems ineffectually.
Counterpoints:
The TSA
The Department of Homeland Security
The US PATRIOT act
The Invasion of Iraq
The US Shutting down its borders
Repeal of Dodd-Frank
The Passing of Proposition 8
As you like to say so often, we’re not separate from our government here in the US. We are the government. And on average people act irrationally and more often than not in accordance with their emotions.
I think practicality plays very little role in anything publicly visible.
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Your examples are of people being fooled - usually twice. People in the governments exploit the emotional problems of the populace for what they perceive to be practical gains. This encourages the populace to assume that mass outrage is a legitimate way to get results. Meanwhile, those who exploit these conditions themselves are typically enacting predictable territorial status games which are also emotional, but rationalized.
I agree, but it is now a fairly dysfunctional government, because people have been conditioned over several generations to want long-term benefits, while acting only for short-term gains. Compulsive people can’t effectively plan much of anything, which is for better or worse what government involves.
I agree. Which is why, to me, it doesn’t quite qualify as government.
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I think the word you’re looking for there is impulsive. I’ve lived with ADHD a long time. I know a thing or two about not being able to plan for anything in the long term.
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I think that both can certainly be applied here.
Why I suggested that people are compulsive is because people assume they are getting things done, making great plans and decisions - which turn out to be replays of the same predictable behavior patterns. How I distinguish them is that impulsion is simply being propelled haplessly along, whereas compulsion is being poised to automatically pursue a certain vector. So they are certainly closely related concepts.
That people often demand the same things from life and society without ever thinking them through in planning terms is why I said that compulsion seems to be one of the main obstacles. But I know that this is quite reductive, and certainly not the only way to model these problems.
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Ah, I thought you meant impulsive, in that people are latching onto the first thing they think will achieve their short term goals, but as you explained, you meant that people are compulsively practicing something of a ritualized compulsion they’ve been trained to follow.
I can see how there’s validity in both simultaneously.
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I’m glad you picked up on that, because that’s a round-about part of my point. Yes, what happened in Paris last week was absolutely horrific, but that’s about two months worth of police murdering US citizens. I see terrorists at work here, but I doubt any of them could have been heard shouting lip service to Allah before they fired their weapons.
Just to be clear, the young men who carried out those attacks in Paris are about as devout as your average abortion clinic bomber. They use religion as a propaganda tool. It gets the reaction they want out of the target governments. It’s high time we stop falling for this particular canard.
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