The United States is not yet so bad as France where, a few years back, Muslim thugs burning cars all over their country were called simply nameless “youths” (les jeunes), as in “boys will be boys,” making all their mayhem just a — perhaps oversized — version of fraternity hijinks.
But we are getting there.
Here our political and media leaders take a more psychoanalytic tack, defining those who do violence to us as unfortunate neurotics unable to fit in — misunderstood failures ill-equipped to adapt to our fast-paced, licentious lifestyle.
So they are.
And so was (Godwin’s law alert) Hitler. Hitler was a failed painter. Tamerlan Tarnaev was a failed boxer. No wonder they sought vengeance on a heartless world, poor devils.
The problem with this psycho-drivel is that practically every human being is a failed something or other. I know I am. And I don’t know anybody who isn’t.
Forget Hitler. If we all acted out on our failure only on the level of Tarnaev, civilization wouldn’t even last a day.
The real question should really be what most compels violence among the almost unlimited number of neurotic individuals in the world with some grievance or other.
In our time it is unquestionably Islam, exponentially more than anything else. It’s almost as if that religion were designed in its ideology to attract the disaffected and turn them into violent animals.
A website with the politically incorrect URL of thereligionofpeace.com tracks these things. According to them, as of May 2, 2013, there have been 20,794 deadly attacks by Islamic terrorists since September 11, 2001. Here’s only the last three days via the same website:
Amazing, isn’t it? Those events, all at least as murderous in head count as Boston and in most cases far more, did not make even a ripple in our media. Dog bites man, I suppose. But I guess it’s a good idea, when in Thailand, to stay clear of Buddhist convenience stores, even if you forget your mantra.
Kidding aside, what do we do about this grisly litany? What is to be done with this information?
We live in a country whose leadership, almost twelve years after 9/11, still does not name our enemy. They will do anything but, often to the extent of comic absurdity. Too bad that nonstop uncomfortable head count dampens the levity.
The justification for this extreme bowdlerization by our leadership and mainstream media, I’m assuming, is that to name Islam — and often even radical Islam — as the culprit is to make matters worse, to stir them up.
This attitude is actually racist. By making Islam immune to criticism, you are treating its adherents as if they were children (mere “wogs” in the unattractive parlance of the British Empire), unable to correct or adapt their ideology and join modern civilization. Consciously or unconsciously, you are saying they are just not up to it.
And in that case, they certainly won’t be. Those who fail to criticize Islam are enabling it.
Something is wrong here, very wrong. And you don’t have to read thereligionofpeace.com to know it – but stopping by once in a while is a grim reminder.