From a good piece by Paul Waldman:
Also, scapegoating sucks all around.
Our relative safety from terrorism comes from our geographic isolation, but mostly from the fact that there simply aren't that many Americans who want to commit these kinds of acts. Unlike what we see in many places, American Muslims are overwhelmingly assimilated and patriotic—and maintaining those feelings in the last 15 years, in the face of government harassment and widespread bigotry, is pretty heroic. The reason ISIS hasn't been able to inspire or direct more attacks like the one in Orlando is that in America, there just aren't many takers for their hateful ideology.This is one our better strokes of fortune. Especially since we've got military grade hardware like the AR-15 floating around. If Omar Mateen had walked into the Pulse with a handgun the outcome could still have been tragic, but not on the same scale. His potential to harm would have been less, and there would be a chance that someone might be able to tackle him. (Don't take that as an endorsement of any "If I was there I woulda..." type assholes, even in more human-level crime scenes.) The kind of firepower he had meant that no one could get near, nor could they get far enough away.
Also, scapegoating sucks all around.
2 comments:
i was very un-surprised to find out that it's as likely as not that the shooter was something of a regular at the club. very reminiscent of the san bernadino shooter, who was an employee of the department holding the event. any connection to isis, whatever, i'd say is at best a weak, desperate attempt to justify in their own minds what are the acts of men who have obviously lost their way, & no longer place any value on either the lives of others or their own...
we can attempt to minimize, & reduce in scale, incidents like this one by banning weapons, & implementing an effective social services safety net (as many other countries have), but, unfortunately, one cannot 'make things right' for everybody all the time. life can be a rough, & sometimes soul-crushing, experience. & as long as there's anger, desperation, & loneliness out there, there will be tragedies such as this one, & one needn't be an official terrorist to qualify...
The ISIS connection is drawn - I mean besides the killer's ethnicity and family religion - from his own mouth, including a call he made to authorities the night of the attack. He said the brothers who did the Boston Marathon bombing were his "homeboys" - no, really. This is obvious, desperate-cry-for attention behavior. I don't know if he hoped someone would stop him, but he definitely was trying to promote the idea that he was a bigshot. That happens a lot.
One of the great things about life is that it contains events that you couldn't have predicted. It's also one of the most terrifying things. Some are excessively focused on the latter while others refuse to acknowledge it. Which is a long way around of saying that while we can't eliminate crazy black swan events and in some cases are better off not trying, we can learn from those taht occur. Learn both cauthion and compassion, among other things.
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