Is it normal to wish to put forward some thoughts?
I hope this passes moderation as a few of you might like to understand WHY the slaughter in Paris happened.
It is long, very long, but this is important stuff if you wish to understand the why of today's terrorism.
The cycle of violence may be vicious, but it is not pointless.
In the wake of a terror attack, Step One is to forget about "the score" completely...
Whenever some notorious rapist is caught, exactly 100 percent of the conversations or Internet comment sections about the subject will say, 'I hope he gets raped in prison, because that would “even the score.” But even five seconds' consideration demonstrates how monstrous that idea is: “rape is awesome, as long as it's targeted toward people who deserve it!” No, the cruel reality is that if that guy gets raped, the score isn't: Rapist 1, Society 1. It's really: Rape 2, Society 0 ...
So the next time you turn on the news and see that terrorists have blown up 10 children with a car bomb, that's the first step: Realize that the scoreboard lies. It will tell you that winning the game means dropping bombs that you know full well will splatter ten times as many children as collateral damage. The score — the real score — would then be:
Violence Against Children 110, Humanity 0
When a bunch of terrorists blow up a restaurant or shoot up a concert hall, do you think it's because they don't know we have guns and bombs and drones? You think they do what they do because they believe we're “too weak to strike back” and that we thus need to “show them how strong we are?” ...
They know exactly what we're going to do: We're going to overreact. We do it every time, EVERY SINGLE TIME! If we had captured Bin Laden in Tora Bora and declared ourselves satisfied, we could have gained stature, even in much of the Islamic world. That's why they do it. So stop, step back, and understand something that most of America doesn't:
They do what they do, because they know we're too weak to RESIST striking back.
Our knee-jerk, bomb-dropping reflex is our weakness. They are trying to exploit it, because retaliation bombings are how they recruit more terrorists to their side. And please note that when I talk about their “side,” I'm not talking about Islam, or even Islamic terrorism. Their “side” is what I'm going to henceforth call Team Violence. The bully doesn't fight because he wants to win; he fights because he wants a world in which everything is resolved by fighting. It doesn't matter if he loses — the moment you chose to fight, his side already won, and the world becomes more like the world he wants to live in. In other words, “We can't beat them, unless we become more like them.” It's like a doctor telling you he's going to get rid of your tumor by growing a bigger, meaner tumor next to it. Even if it works, Team Cancer wins, and you just fell for a scam that has been tripping up humanity for 200,000 years or so.
Soon after an attack, commentators will appear on every screen in your home explaining in snide, sarcastic tones how the courageous choice is to hate Muslims — like they're the lone, brave voice in a world afraid to hold such a controversial opinion.
The reality ... is that your most automatic, unthinking reflex is always to hit back, and that growing up means resisting it ...
It's the thinking part — the human part — that says to stop, resist the initial urge, and actually think about what action will make the world better.
is it normal to understand this stuff?