We can't stop terror

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.

Fear will be our undoing

FDR's "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" is one of those quotes we learn about in school and don't understand until many, many years later. When he said it, the Depression was wreaking its havoc and WW2 was on the horizon. There was, to be sure, lots of reasons why lots of Americans were afraid. And, the same is true today.

Terrorism, be it domestic (the preferred American variety) or foreign (what the rest of the world gets), has but one goal: instilling terror in those in some way close to the victims. For the most part it works, and the knee-jerk reaction to anything that terrorizes us is to fight back. Against what? We don't always know. But when we're "thinking" with our spinal columns, it doesn't really matter. Better a bigger bunch of bodies lying around than to do "nothing", whereby not reacting in a knee-jerk manner is probably the best thing you can do. And here, the emphasis is on "do". Having the presence of mind, willingness, and courage to not simply lash out in fear is an act, an action, worth applauding.

Problems are never, and have never been, solved by violence. It doesn't matter what the problem is. Problems aren't, and never will be, resolved, by blindly reacting aggressively. Frustration (and a feeling of powerlessness) is poor counsel for smart decisions. Don't get me wrong, I know just how easy it is do simply strike back; I know how much we'd like to just "put an end to it all". But, truth be told, that's not how things work, and it is long past time that we grow up and recognize that all the approaches we have tried thus far have not produced the results that most of us want. It is time most of us realize, though, that the results that "we" want are not necessarily the results that others -- in particular, others with more influence with decision-makers -- may want.

Terrorists live from terror. The more afraid we are, the more effectively they've "done their job". If we all don't immediately react with abject fear, we've got a huge, well-paid, and submissive media industry which will do what it can to keep us shaking in our shoes. And, there are untold numbers of large and small corporations who start rubbing their hands in glee, for nothing sells weapons like fear. Yes, the first question we always have to ask ourselves in "cui bono" (Who benefits?) And, the fact that the question shows up in Latin (a language spoken by the world's last great empire, two millennia ago) should tell you how long "we, the people" have been having to put up with this.

Power lives off fear. It is really that simple. The more you're afraid, the more power others have. We really need to start asking ourselves just how much we need to be living in fear. We need to ask ourselves whether our willingness to submit, to kow-tow, to defer to the "wisdom" of others is really worth the benefits we supposedly gain.

When you're afraid, you can't think clearly. When you're afraid, you're more than willing to compromise. When you're afraid, you can be too easily led and misled. And all the blustering, bravado, macho, military, fire-power, talk will -- I can assure you, and history proves me right -- remain just that, talk. Why? Because you can't bomb an idea out of existence. Ideas ... and their evil spawn ideologies ... can only be countered by sounder, stronger, more substantial ideas. Resorting to force, pure and simple, merely "proves" that you have no ideas left.

Yes, fear will be our undoing, if we continue to be afraid, but what we should be more afraid of than random terror itself is the calculated terror we are fed day in and day out from those who allegedly want to protect us.

No, I didn't say that at all

I have long maintained that the wonder of communication is that we manage to communicate at all. The reaction(s) to the Paris terror attacks have made this clear once again.

There are lots of smart people running around out there and some of them use their brains (at least sometimes) and some of them don't (or not very often), others are more emotional than reasonable, still others have such fixed ideas that no manner or volume of facts or arguments is going to change their minds. Unfortunately, I must say, that's how people are.

What is particularly tough these days, though, is have a view of things that is not mainstream or mainstream-sanctioned. We have arrived at a point here in the West when disagreeing with a given (generally speaking, accepted) point-of-view is automatically interpreted as advocating the precise opposite. This isn't faulty thinking, it's unacceptable behavior, and I don't care how smart you are or think you are, if you make this mistake, you're just being stupid. None of us lives in a world of black-and-white, regardless of how much most people, the mainstream media, the powers-that-be, or anyone else would like it to be so.

Let me repeat what I've said so often in the past few days: what happened in Paris is reprehensible and inexcusable. There is no justification for it; end of story. Let me add what I've also had to say so often in the past few days: I understand all your shock and sadness, but the fact remains that this kind of thing happens to "us" (I'll come back to that) once every couple of years; for too many others on this planet, this is their life every single day. Why is that so hard to understand? Why is it so unwanted when someone -- like me -- brings it up? I think those are legitimate questions.

Our reaction to the tragedy of terrorism should be (and yes, I'm being very prescriptive here), how do we stop things like this (read: acts of terror) from happening? what can we do to make it stop?

This shouldn't detract us from our mourning, but our mourning itself should sensitize us to the real issues involved. We've got a problem, and by "we" I mean all of us, every single human being on the planet. Terror happens everywhere but in some places more than other. We, in the West, have been exposed (NYC, London, Madrid, Paris, to name the most familiar), but others have been immersed (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, to name the most recent) in it. It matters. It matters a lot that we have to go through it, but it matters that others have to live with it.

While I have never claimed that we don't care about the terror inflicted on others, there is a good bit of factual evidence available that we don't know about it, don't recognize it, don't accept it, and don't feel as moved by it as we should. This "we" is all of us in the West, and all our countries that believe that we know what's better for others than they know themselves, which we claim fear and hate us when they would probably just prefer that we leave them alone, which just happen to be sitting are geographical areas that we have decided -- for whatever reasons -- are in "our interest". Just what the hell is that: our "interests"?

Personally, I'm sick and tired of all the blaming, all the blathering, all the threatening and the theatrics, all the conflict-seeking and the killing. When are we going to get it? When are we going to understand that every act of violence and revenge that we yearn for only makes things worse? When are we finally going to practice what we preach?

The death toll rises

We're stunned, and we should be. We're shocked, and we should be. We're feeling vengeful, and we should not.

What happened in Paris last night deserves our strongest condemnation: the killing of innocent civilians, for whatever reason, is a reprehensible act of barbarism. There is no justification for it. None. And yet, it our shock and sadness and, yes, anger, we must beware ... of ourselves. Can we -- you and I -- become what we hate. We must be careful, for it can happen all too easily.

Two mistakes must be avoided right now: identifying one, singular, unified enemy and blaming victims. I'm concerned that both are about to raise their ugly heads.

Let me repeat: last night's actions were committed by individuals, acting together, it is true but hardly representative of anything but themselves and their own distorted vision of reality. It will most likely turn out that they will have claimed adherence to one particular flavor of a faith, and in our anger and lust for vengeance, we run the risk of placing all adherents of that faith into one basket. There is not a single religion on the face of this planet that is singular, monolithic and the same to all of its adherents. Every religion has its major and minor groupings and individually accented believers. Such diversity is celebrated in one's own religion, but too often mistakenly denied to others. That would be a mistake. We in the West celebrate the individual, and we need to carry that view over to those with whom we disagree and, above all, to those whom have done us wrong.

It would be just as mistaken to use this incident to justify a rejection of the flood of refugees coming to Europe at this time. First and foremost, the vast majority of these refugees find themselves in Southern, Eastern, and, most recently, Central Europe, not in France. It would be naive, to say the least, that there are no terrorists or terror-inclined individuals amongst that flood. The thing about terror is that it has the ability to take advantage of all opportunities it finds. These refugees are fleeing from precisely that terror -- the unreasonable, unexpected, sudden and drastic taking of human life -- that we are mourning today, only they have experienced it longer and on a much larger scale than any of us. They are not fleeing for the fun of it. They are being driven. The refugees are the victims of a greater terror and we need to acknowledge that.

A pitiless, merciless retaliation -- as has already been promised -- is hardly the appropriate response. It is said that and eye for an eye can only make the whole world blind, and although we are getting there, we are not all blind yet.

We can not respond in kind to senseless, irrational actions. What terrorists do is meant to instill fear, but it is the light of reason that keeps us from falling into the darkness of fear. Terrorist, regardless of how murderous and bloody their actions may be, act for a reason, they feel justified in what they do. Until we recognize that and deal with those reasons, we can only expect more of the same.

I don't know about you, but I've had more than enough of this insanity.

Expert terror

You know what scares me more than anything else? Experts. Lord knows we got enough of them. Some of them have respectable credentials. Most of them are only self-proclaimed. Yeah, that's one of the risks you take when living in an age when any opinion is as good as any other. That's where we are, aren't we? Yeah, unfortunately. Well, that's how we wanted it.

Our real problem is that we can pick and choose what we want to believe. It's not a matter of accepting any more. It's not a matter of the better argument, the more valid research, the more reliable information ... no, it's all about belief. We've long outdone the early Middle Ages, the Pre-Renaissance ... we're way past that. We're so much smarter than any of those poor misguided souls could have hoped to be. Yep, universal education, and not a bright person in the house. Should one actually show up, s/he'll get shouted down by the masses faster than you can say "liberal educated elite".

Me? I think we get what we deserve. We don't want it any different than we have it. If things don't work, it's really because we don't want things to work. C'mon ... gridlock is much more interesting than actually solving a problem. Holding to your hokey principles is much more important than actually making the world a better place. No, me? I have no sympathy for anybody anymore. Oh sure, I'm depressed by the fact that there are more have-nots than there ever will be haves. I'm bothered by the fact that too few take too much for themselves and are willing to leave the rest behind. I'm disturbed by how widespread true ignorance is. But, I can't say that I'm all upset about it. I figure is the systems doesn't work any more, feed it. It'll implode. It has to.

As a matter of fact, I actually think we're moving to a new level of crime ... not ignorance: that' been around long enough, and it has tradition, in fact. (If you don't believe me, try reading Hofstader's Anti-intellectualism in American Life (if you can get past your own anti-intellectual prejudices that is) for a cogent portrayal of a phenomenon that has been going on much longer than any of us can afford.) No, we are, I believe, moving from crimes of now to crimes against the future. They're not new, of course, but they are becoming ever more evident.

Absurdity

Many years ago while taking my MA at a German university, I took a course in modern literature dealing with theater of the absurd. We talked a lot about absurdity that semester, and oddly enough, that in itself seemed absurd to me. After all, the world made sense, we were all going about our lives, there was tomorrow, what was the problem? In one way or another, I've been asking myself the same questions ever since ... but from the other side? When will the absurdity end?

The absurdest idea that I have to deal with is "terrorism". I mean, just look at the word: the root is "terror": abject, unwarranted fear. It doesn't matter what you are afraid of; what matters is that you are afraid. It's legitimized by the "-ism" on the end, like a system, a philosophy, a way of life. And, I suppose it is, for some ... for too many. What is it that we have to fear?

Some will say everything. Maybe they're right, but I don't think so. If you are afraid, two different groups of people have an advantage over you: those who are causing the fear, and those who know you're afraid. They are sometimes, but not always, the same groups. And, just what is it that they use to extort that fear? Property (if you don't secure it, someone will steal it), security (if you don't protect it, someone will take it away from you), or your physical well-being (we can always kill you). Well, I just don't get it. Going in the reverse direction: we're all going to die, we don't know when, so if it is as the result of some "terrorist act", what difference does it make? My security is gone the moment that someone claiming to look out for my well-being invades my privacy. Am I more secure, the more you know about me? Not really. The opposite is true. And, to any materialist, to anyone who defines himself by his possessions (which are more often than not not his or hers at all, but the lender's) ... well, what can I say?

So, in far-away Norway, in one of the most peaceful, social, balanced, low-profile places you can imagine, a right-leaning, Christian fundamentalist eliminates nearly one hundred innocent victims. Is this an act of terror? Not in the least. It is pure and simple absurdity. But ... and I think this is particularly important to note ... it's an absurdity we created. It didn't come out of the dark unknown, the secret chambers of reality to stalk and hunt us down. It came from us, from the meek who hope for all the wrong reasons that we'll inherit anything, maybe even the earth. The perpetrator wasn't some strange, other, dark-skinned, false-believing, foreign, depraved, mind-twisted, extremist. He was, in all probability, the guy next door. How absurd is that?

The point is in the end, that absurdity has become the norm. What Pynchon, Beckett, and others were telling us was as ignored as anything we've been told up until now. The sheer absurdity of our interaction with others, with those around us, with those with whom we can no longer relate because we know only what we know, with anyone who isn't me, with ... well with everyone ... is what should shock us even more than the violence this one single individual may have perpetrated.

We abhor the violence that we see, but we welcome the violence that is hidden. We put ourselves first, we envy our co-workers, covet their possessions and accomplishments, desire what they have, ignore all in need, find weakness in compassion, believe Spencer's spin on Darwinism is the way to go, reject anything greater than ourselves and firmly and doggedly believe that money can solve our problems. That all sounds like absurdity to me.

No, terrorism isn't our greatest threat. It's a red herring. What we need fear more than anything else (if we need fear anything at all) is absurdity. When do we simply say that enough is enough, just a little bit of sense couldn't hurt? We can't as long as we're afraid, but what we're afraid of is simply ourselves. How absurd is that?