Oh, I think Cruz’s remarks call for a whole new bingo game: where will the current lineup of Republican presidential candidates and party leaders place the blame?
I guess the free space will be “Family Values” since all the spaces will be some variation on that theme with blame being placed on:
-Transgender people
-Same-sex marriage
-LGBT rights activists
-Single mothers
-Divorce
I could go on by saying the line between satire and reality is way too thin here, but Cruz’s remarks already wiped out the line.
Agreed, acknowledging it using a label of “Terror” actually lends to whatever fucked up narrative or belief that person (or persons) are trying to achieve.
With Jihadists (another shit term) its to spread the fear of islam, with this guy its to spread the acceptance of the “war on christianity” mixed in with “baby parts are bad m’kay, so no reproductive freedoms for you!”. These are sort of like product brands that the media loves to package up with corporate islam or nutter logos and narrative (spawning things the chart Cory posted when the interwebs notice the irony of whats going on).
Its how one addresses the brand, i.e. how do you defuse Terror, inc. The solution is to use common names such as murderer, or my favorite, just call them Assholes… It worked for Penn and Teller when they did the Bullshit! series.
However you still are left with a media industry that is making money from sensationalizing the news.
This does not mean they aren’t psychopaths. Having a stable, relatively wealthy background does not mean the person won’t be a murderer, abuser, or psychopath in general.
There’s an interesting book that opened my eyes to the subject, even though I do wonder about some of the statistics cited: The Sociopath Next Door. The author (Harvard-trained and long-term practicing psychologist Martha Stout) claims that they are 4% of the population – 1 in 11 people – which does seem a bit high to me, but when you read about their psychology you start to realize that the Hannibal Lechter types are only the tip of the iceberg. Here’s a decent review to give you a sense of the book. The book itself is a quick and enlightening read.
Like with “mentally ill” and most of these bingo squares, the problem isn’t not jumping to conclusions when it’s a white guy, the problem is when we don’t afford other people the same nuance.
Still, when the white guy who shot up the clinic is a known anti-abortionist who was rambling to police about dead baby parts then guessing his motive isn’t really “jumping to conclusions” so much as “drawing a reasonable conclusion from available evidence.”
A few points, I’m not an American, and the world is bigger than America. Also, Sunday Talk Shows do not make up the entirety of the US news media landscape. You’re also kind of proving my point, the only people (mostly) who talk about ideological influences are right wing assholes like you’ve described, this is what happens when others fail to engage. Most leftist commentary on the issues serves as apologism for the terrible ideological factors at play here (by focusing solely on western geopolitical activities), and anyone who attempts to redress this balance is straw manned and labeled an Islamophobe, when non-apologist Muslims try and address the issue they’re painted as uncle-toms by conservative Muslims and leftists alike.
Your claim that Islam is the primary motivation for any terrorist activity is baseless and wrong.
I never said it was the primary motivation for any terrorist activity.
Where do you get this from? How do you know that? Where’s your evidence? You even acknowledge that ISIS is a group fighting for sovereignty in the face of (perceived or actual) oppressive colonial occupation, just like the IRA, but somehow it’s not the same because of some supposed causal difference that cannot possibly be proven or disproven.
The only reason you could possibly think there is no causal link between Islamist ideology and terrorism is ignorance, it’s very simply proven.
Here’s another good article that should help you get a better grip on what’s actually going on (written by a former Islamist, so he might actually have a better idea about this than you):
Islam seems to have some frightening magical power in your mind, as if a man might pick up the Quran, read it, and as a consequence decide to dedicate and sacrifice his life in a war against western decadence. That’s the core of your Islamophobia.
No, that’s the core of your straw-man bulshit. How about addressing the actual points I’m making rather than making up a ridiculous narrative I never even came close to suggesting, never mind believing.
I’m not going to address anything else you’ve written because it’s more of the same dishonest nonsense.
I really don’t know if you are right about the direction of most leftist commentary - I probably don’t expose myself to the majority of leftist commentary. I think you are overblowing the “ideological” factors. The primary factor at play is that young people can be conscripted into almost anything. Afterschool basketball programs have a proven effect on crime. Why is that? It’s because you can get teenagers to latch their identity onto almost anything.
The exact same people who are sacrificing their lives for terrorists could be protesting abortion or playing basketball or building homes for the homeless. It could be in the name of Christ or Allah or the Buddha or Atheism or Red Pills - and any action could be in the name of any philosophy. A charismatic self-proclaimed Buddhist could get young people murdering in the name of Buddha, and a white supremecist could have young people planting community gardens.
Islam isn’t the problem, and Christianity isn’t the problem. The problem is disaffected people - especially young people - who have nothing to anchor themselves to, nothing to hope for in their future, who can be easily conscripted. And you are going to find a lot of disaffected youth in countries that are in states of war. You want less violence, increase social mobility and employment. Give young people a sense that their lives are worth something. Then when someone says, “Hey, you should throw your life away for Star Wars against the foul Star Trek fans” they’ll think, “Hmm, I don’t know, I was planning on buying playing Half-life 3 next month.”
You posted an article saying that we have to beat ISIS we have to recognize it is part of a global movement to impose religion. I disagree. I think to beat it we need to recognize that it functions largely the same way that any large organization functions, and the primary issues are how they recruit and where their money comes from. Their goals define why we would like to stop them, not how we are going to stop them.
