Tomorrow is the second of the four Sundays in Advent. It is also St. Nicholas Day, and tonight millions of children throughout the German speaking world will be putting out their shoes in hopes he'll stop by with treats. It should be a day of peace, reflection, joy, and togetherness, but it won't be in much of the so-called "Christian West", for the simple reason that the terrorists are winning the fight for our hearts and minds. How sad is that?
Sure, we feel for all those who were ripped out of life in the attacks in Paris. Sure, we feel for those who were killed by the shooters in Colorado Springs, Savannah, and San Bernadino. We find ourselves asking "why" again and again, but we simply refuse to acknowledge what we all know is the answer to our question: we've become what we hate; we're complicit. And that's why we can't stop the terror.
Oh sure, we like to point to the turmoil in the Middle East and look down upon those uncivilized souls who simply can't stop fighting with one another and the world. We love to point our fingers in disgust at those who our misconceived religious fanaticism says we're justified in despising. And we overreact, both blindly and wildly, to the least bit of provocation from "them", whereas in truth we know that we are not one bit better.
Our reaction to 9/11, an alleged attack on our freedom? The Patriot Acts and more restricting and even eliminating many of those freedoms which had been attacked. Our reaction to the Paris attack, the latest attack on our freedom? Declaring a state of quasi-martial law and placing unrelated, environmental activists under house arrest during the recent climate summit; that is, restrictions on those freedoms (free speech, assembly) that had been attacked.
What do we abhor about terrorist attacks and mass shootings (which are, whether we want to own up to it or not, acts of terror)? The killing, the bloodshed, the violence. But how do we react? With even more violence. We started an illegal war in Iraq which directly and indirectly has caused the death of over a million innocent civilians. We aided and abetted terrorist organizations when they suited our purposes. After 14 years of violence, bombing, and killing in Afghanistan, the Taliban (a CIA creation) holds more territory and has more supporters than when we started. ISIS is a product of CIA intervention and years of funding and supplying by our so-called allies (Saudia Arabia, Qatar, Turkey), yet we say we are fighting them. We're supporting other "moderate terrorists" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean) to oust a legitimate head of government in Syria, even though no one can explain to me how we acquired the right to decide who other nations select as their leaders. By what right do we inflict such violence on others? Imagine for a moment some foreign country would be doing this to us? There would be fanatic violence from every corner as every gun-owning American and others would be violently reacting to the violence inflicted from without.
Of course, when that same violence comes from within (the attackers in Paris were European citizens) but they fit our propagandized profile (Middle-Eastern names will suffice) it's terror and the reaction is more violence to "them". When the same violence come from within but they're more like us, they are mere individual psychopaths. But, they aren't. They are the products of the veil of violence that covers all our actions and reactions. All we know anymore is violence, be it in sports, competitions of any kind, politics and political campaigns, family disputes, communal security or foreign policy.
We've become what we hate. We can't stop the terror. We could, if we changed, but we won't.
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