Rational fear, irrational reaction

November 18, 2015 by Brosephus

Map showing all terrorist attacks in 2014. Click image to see full details including links to report.

Russia, Beirut, Paris, and Nigeria have all been targeted by terrorists recently with deadly results. It’s perfectly rational, and I’ll say reasonable, for people to respond to such heinous acts with fear and trepidation. Acts like blowing up airplanes, shooting up concert halls and restaurants, or blowing up markets where people shop to carry on in their daily lives tend to open our eyes to the notion that a terrorist act can take place anywhere at anytime. People respond to fear in different ways, but we all react to it whether we acknowledge it or not.

Fear of the unknown is something we all have to deal with at one time or another. Everyone has something that their afraid of or have been in a situation where fear has entered their mind. That’s human nature. Most people are also aware of the human “fight or flight” response to stimuli that causes fear. There’s nothing wrong with having a fear of something or being afraid in situations where you are. How you deal with that fear is where people differ, and that is to be expected because we are not all robotic clones of each other.

For those who think the best course of action in light of recent events is to stop Syrian refugees from entering into their countries, I offer one question. What will that stop? When you have an organization reaching across borders using technology to reach people in countries they’ve never come close to setting foot in, what good does stopping people fleeing from getting killed do?

I understand the idea and even acknowledge there’s the ability for terrorists to blend in with refugees escaping death and traveling to other countries to do harm. Our politicians are all jumping on that bandwagon that stopping Syrian refugees from coming to America is going to keep us safe. State governors are saying they won’t accept any refugees from Syria in order to keep their people safe. Some politicians have what I would call dumbass reasoning, but that’s their prerogative to do so. They represent the people who elected them. I offer a short list of names to these politicians:

If any of the names sound familiar, that’s because they’re all terrorists or have been arrested for terrorist-related plots. They were not Syrian refugees. They were not even immigrants. They were all Born-In-The-USA Americans, every last one of them. Stopping immigration would not have stopped them. Shutting the borders would have done nothing.

I’m not posting this to suggest that nothing can or should be done. My point is that irrational reaction does nothing to make any of us safer than we were the day before yesterday. I’d even go as far to suggest that caving to anti-immigrant and/or anti-Muslim rhetoric does more to aid terrorists in indoctrinating new terrorists than anything we can do to stop them. Our irrational reactions do more to aid and comfort the true enemy than what we realize.

Bombs and bullets cannot kill ideas. I am a firm believer in that. One idea can only be defeated by another idea. For example, we defeated Hitler’s Germany in WWII, yet Stormfront still exists. There are still anti-Semitic, White Supremacist organizations around pushing the same ideas that Hitler did with his Aryan Nation idea. Assassinations and bombings did not stop the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s either. I can remember hearing about Middle Eastern terrorist organizations when I was in grade school, so it’s not like the current groups originated this whole thing.

We need to stop those who wish to do harm to innocent people, not just us. It doesn’t matter what nation, religion, or ethnic group those innocent people are a part of. We have to think about our actions in how we go about fighting these groups because the things we do can end up leading to us having to fight a larger group in the future. Bullets and bombs are short-term remedies for short-term problems. In the long run, you can’t bomb an idea out of existence, so we will have to beat the idea with an even better idea if we want to win this battle. The anti-everything rhetoric isn’t going to be a winning idea when the opposition uses that to further entrench their idea that we’re at war with each other. Hopefully mankind will soon realize this and change pathways.

Map of cities at risk of terrorist attack in 2015 as compiled in a report by Verisk Maplecroft which was released on May 25, 2015. Click on image for more info.

How NOT to win arguments and impress your family

July 15, 2014 by Brosephus

From Michigan Live:

A 51-year-old woman accidentally shot herself in the face after she slammed the butt end of a shotgun on the floor, causing it to discharge, the Tuscola County Sheriff’s Department reports.

Deputies were called about 10 a.m. Monday, July 14, to a house on Waterman in Fremont Township for a report of a gunshot victim.

Upon arrival, deputies found that a family dispute had taken place and the victim, a 51-year-old woman, told officers that she had taken a shotgun out to “make a point.”

She told police she slammed the butt end on the floor, the gun discharged, and she was shot in the face.

There’s a couple of issues here that I see fault with. First of all, you don’t pull a gun out unless you intend to use it. What kind of family debate was going on that necessitated the introduction of a loaded shotgun? I don’t think this is what Joe Biden had in mind when he made his statement about using a shotgun for home defense. If you’re arguing with family and you think you need a gun to make a point, then you need to step away from the argument and do something to calm yourself down.

Next thing, why would you slam a loaded gun down on the floor with the barrel pointing up at you? That’s basically the equivalent of putting Darwin on speed dial. I don’t understand the callousness that people have with loaded weapons.

The story says that she will survive, but I imagine there will be physical and emotional scars left over. This isn’t the first “accidental discharge” of a shotgun, and it will unfortunately not be the last either. At what point do we stop long enough to read the news and heed the lessons learned from others before we stop repeating the same thing over and over?

Dumb follows stupid

May 14, 2014 by Brosephus

I guess that, for some strange reason, a Liberal group didn’t want GOP supporters to be the only ones cashing in on all things Benghazi. For the love of all things sane, can we get back to debating issues, and leave the sensationalism stuff alone? It’s one thing to discuss whether the investigation of Benghazi deserves additional hearings or committees, but it’s entirely something different to put that tune to a fundraising solicitation.

It was stupid when Conservative groups put out fundraisers using Benghazi as bait, and it’s even more stupid for People for the American Way to do it after the ruckus generated by the conservative groups. PFAW give stupid an entirely new definition, if you ask me just for the tone-deaf appearance of this. I guess this is why I find it harder and harder to identify with any political groups. I refuse to associate myself with stupidity as best as possible, and it seems as though some people think stupid is the way to go. I don’t want to seem like I’m lumping all people in the same piles as there are some good groups and people on both sides of the aisle. It seems as though the loudest voices come from the people who should be amongst the quietest.

If your ideals, goals, or principles are not enough to elicit interest, then maybe you should reevaluate what you’re trying to accomplish.

Benghazi as a fundraising tool? Seriously??

May 7, 2014 by Brosephus

You can tell that it’s an election year. This week, Lois Lerner has been held in contempt of Congress for exercising her Constitutional rights. Then, there’s the go-to, defacto, base rousing scandal known as Benghazi.

It seems that the original accusation by Republicans that accused the Obama administration of playing politics with the death of 4 Americans has flipped 180 degrees with Republicans now playing politics, using dead Americans as fundraising tools. Here’s three different screen captures that I took less than an hour ago.

National Republican Senatorial Committee

Just click the green button in the upper left hand corner. There’s nothing political about this.

National Republican Congressional Committee

Who knew that demanding answers from Congress would set you back $25 at a minimum?

The American Center for Law and Justice

If you demand the truth from the ACLJ, they'll save you $5 off the Congressional going rate.

If you demand the truth from the ACLJ, they’ll save you $5 or more off the current Congressional rate.

The common thread between those three screens has to do with the word “DONATE”. If you’re very passionate about demanding answers, you can turn your donation into a monthly tax-deductible gift. How can you claim that the Obama administration was playing politics with this attack when you’re using it as a fundraising tool? Did anybody stop long enough to contemplate the optics of this, or does the GOP operate in a vacuum-sealed, logic-free environment? I see that Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) did, but obviously, he doesn’t hold any sway within the decision-making apparatus of the GOP.

What happened in Benghazi was a tragedy, nobody’s debating that. What I don’t understand is why there is such a focus on how the talking points were formulated as opposed to what should be important, finding and capturing the people responsible for this. To date, it’s reported that eight different congressional committees have looked into the Benghazi attack. There have been more than a dozen hearings, 50 briefings, and more than 25,000 documents have been examined while investigating the attack. Now, we’re going to have a select committee do another investigation based on an email that talked about the talking points.

When does America get to hear what Congress is going to do to ensure the safety of our fellow citizens abroad? What legislation have they enacted to put programs in place so there is a quick response force within distance if one is ever needed? When do we hear about the great programs enacted to defuse tensions between America and other countries all around the world? What has the president done to reassess and reinforce security for our personnel in dangerous and threatening environments?

I can’t speak for any other Americans, but I can honestly care less about damn talking points. I want to know what has been done to avoid another situation just like this. To date, I don’t recall any type of security legislation that has been passed by Congress to actually address security and safety issues for Americans working overseas, but please continue to dazzle us with bullsh*t and use the death of Americans as a means to pad your campaign coffers. That’s the new age American Exceptionalism at work.