Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Everybody saw this coming.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Petty moves from a petty man.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Republicans in disarray!

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

You are here: Home / Politics / domestic terrorists / ISIL Can’t Kill Us (But They Can Encourage Us to Kill Each Other)

ISIL Can’t Kill Us (But They Can Encourage Us to Kill Each Other)

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Charles P. Pierce, in Esquire:

…[B]efore we start talking about banning anyone from a Muslim country, or even before we wring our hands again about how easy it is to get your hands on an AR-15, a weapon that is built for, and exists only, to kill people in this country, we should all accept that, for all the advancements that have been made in ensuring equal rights for our fellow citizens who are gay, there is still a kind of virulent hate that we can see in its more polite forms in our legislatures and some of our courtrooms, and now we can see it in its most raw and unreconstructed form in our nightclubs.

The events in Orlando do nothing more than demolish our most treasured illusions about ourselves and our country and—most trivially—our politics. How many of the congresscritters now sending “thoughts and prayers” to the victims in Orlando, and to their families, spent a lot of time in their day jobs making the everyday lives of those victims more miserable than they had to be? There’s still an audience for clean-shaven, well-tailored bigotry of all faiths.

Yes, it appears that Mateen might have come to his violence through his religion, which will make him no different from practically any homophobe—including, I would point out, Eric Rudolph, who bombed the Atlanta Olympics. Allegedly, shortly before he opened fire, he called the local 911 operator and “pledged allegiance” (whatever that means to a guy walking into a club intending to slaughter 50 people) to ISIL, which has claimed responsibility, which is what it would do, under the circumstances.

The FBI also revealed Sunday afternoon that it had interviewed Mateen twice since 2013. After the FBI had delivered this news, an ATF official on the scene then explained why Mateen was still able to go into some gun store in Florida and buy a handgun and an AR-15 even though the FBI had talked to him twice in the past three years about his possible connection with alleged terrorists. The ATF’s answer, which I am admittedly paraphrasing here, is that this is America, and that’s how that goes.

It is never innocence which gets lost in these episodes. It’s illusions…

Brendan I. Koerner, in Wired:

… [A]s of now there is no evidence ISIS knew of the shooter or the attack beforehand. And the history of ISIS-related attacks in the US suggests that much about the Orlando tragedy will always perplex, no matter how much we delve into Mateen’s past or his hard drives. That is because when Americans perpetrate violence in the name of the Islamic State, they tend not to be strict adherents of the organization’s ideology, but rather disturbed individuals who hope to layer a political façade atop their personal grievances—grievances sometimes known only to themselves.

These people elect to wrap themselves in the Islamic State’s brand because of its unparalleled notoriety, an image that the group has cultivated through a sophisticated propaganda campaign that has taken advantage of social media’s power and pervasiveness. As I wrote earlier this year, the Islamic State’s media operation is focused not just on luring recruits to emigrate to the “caliphate,” but also on tapping into the psyches of twisted souls searching for meaning…

…[T]hese lone-wolf actors—terrorists like Mateen—have a historical precedent: The American airplane hijackers of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It’s easy to forget, but “skyjackers” commandeered nearly 160 commercial planes before metal detectors and X-ray machines became ubiquitous in airports. Many of these hijackers claimed to be acting on behalf of militant groups when they seized flights and demanded passage to Cuba or seven-figure ransoms.

Yet few had bona fide ties to those groups; they were, instead, people whose worldviews had been warped by personal crises, from run-ins with the law to romantic disappointments. In their darkest hours, they encountered play-by-play media coverage of other hijackings, which often dominated the evening news, and glimpsed a dramatic solution to their problems—a way to indulge their narcissism by becoming what America professed to fear most.

Once the airlines’ resistance to tighter security melted away, the hijacking epidemic was rather easy to curtail. That will not be the case with the open source system that the Islamic State has created, which will be studied and replicated by the organization’s inevitable successors…

The Islamic State wants us to question our commitment to pluralism, to make us view it as a vulnerability rather than a strength. Its greatest dream is that we turn against Muslims and Islam right now. In being vigilant about avoiding that well-laid trap, we can demonstrate why our vision for society is the one that offers the world a true way forward…

Chuck Toad, the Peter Principle made flesh.

Reader Interactions

128Comments

  1. 1.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Chuckles the Toddler is, all by himself, causing Huntley and Brinkley to rotate at near relativistic speeds in their graves.

    And I’ve had it with “thoughts and prayers” unless they are accompanied by action to de-militarize the streets of this country, as in a totally assault weapons ban and the confiscation of all existing assault weapons in civilian hands.

    Also, too, Donald J. Trump is acting as if he were an agent of Daesh. He is pushing their agenda.

  2. 2.

    Adam L Silverman

    I believe I made the argument here after the Paris attack that what the Islamic State is doing is using terrorism as Psychological Operations (PSYOPS). IS lacks the ability – they don’t have the ways and the means – to achieve their ends. So what they have to do is get the US, its allies, and its partners to over react and provide them with the ways and means that they lack to achieve their ends. The Islamic State is not an existential threat to America. Over reaction to the Islamic State’s actions, and those done by people claiming allegiance to IS, but with tenuous connections at best, is an existential threat to the United States.

  4. 4.

    JPL

    The person who was arrested in California with a car load of weapons and bomb material, appears to be bisexual according to friends. We now know that the killer in Orlando frequented the club a dozen times, over three years. Are we missing something here?

  5. 5.

    PST

    These people elect to wrap themselves in the Islamic State’s brand because of its unparalleled notoriety, an image that the group has cultivated through a sophisticated propaganda campaign that has taken advantage of social media’s power and pervasiveness.

    In other words, they’re like Trump supporters.

  6. 6.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @JPL: We’re still not sure what the motivation of the guy from Indiana arrested in California was. In the case of Omar Mateen, a guy in the closet who self-loathed seems to be the story.

    Either way the Daesh connection is an easy out for homophobic assholes.

  8. 8.

    PhoenixRising

    Where do I click to hit Chuck Todd with a carpenter’s angle and a box of microwaved burritos?

    Thank you. I thought I wasn’t going to laugh today. And Adam as always nails it: IS can’t hurt us, they can only make us hurt each other.

    Or, in the words of the late great John Henry Faulk, ‘Naw, chicken snakes don’t hurt when they bite, but some things scare you so bad you hurt yourself’.

  9. 9.

    PhoenixRising

    @JPL: no one who has ever met an anti gay bigot is missing it.

    We may not be ready to discuss it quite yet.

  10. 10.

    Ruckus

    Chuck and about 90% of the rest of the people who write journalist on their income tax form are in it for the money. They have no scruples, morals or whatever you call them. 2 or 3 decades ago we’d have called them whores, but that is demeaning to people who used to define that word. If we want to fix what ails our culture, one of the places we have to work on is the media. Nowhere is the media 100% neutral, they are after all people and they are getting paid to be talking heads. But many of those same countries, one notices that better information is presented. Not he said, she said but checked information and people who might actually know what they are talking about, not people with one sided political agendas.

  11. 11.

    Keith G

    At any rate, for those who were paying attention Hillary personified the balanced approach needed by someone who would lead up. Meanwhile,Trump showed just how far away he is from this ideal. Leadership matter and we saw quite a contrast.

  13. 13.

    Gin & Tonic

    I don’t have an overwhelming preference in this game, but I am both very impressed with and delighted for Shaun Livingston.

  14. 14.

    JPL

    @Villago Delenda Est: Because of recent court rulings, the right wing has made religious freedom a rallying cry. I have to wonder if that doesn’t cause some self-loathing. The killers dad didn’t seem sympathetic.

  16. 16.

    nutella

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    We (collectively) are doing precisely what Daesh wants us to do.

    And the press and many politicians, by ginning up as much fear as possible are doing a fine job creating feelings of terror in the general public. There’s a word for that, I think.

    (edited for clarity)

  17. 17.

    Mnemosyne

    I’m sticking with my description of ISIS support as “hashtag terrorism.” Basically, assholes are taking their existing grudges and adding #ISIS to make themselves seem less pathetic and petty. San Bernardino? Workplace shooting. Orlando? Homophobic hate crime. But add #ISIS to it and suddenly OMFG IT’S TERRORISM!!!

  20. 20.

    Mike J

    @Ruckus:

    Chuck and about 90% of the rest of the people who write journalist on their income tax form are in it for the money.

    What percentages do you assign to other professions? Shoe salesman? Day laborer? Bond salesman? Secretary?

    99% of everybody does what they do for the money.

  21. 21.

    Culture of Truth

    MSNBC reporting an ISIS inspired attack on a police officer in Paris, which only comports with Adam Silverman’s comment above.

    Chris Hayes reporting compelling evidence shooter was closeted. Which also fits with above.

  22. 22.

    Amaranthine RBG

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I would take this a step further and argue that the ease with which this attack was carried out actually underscores the fact that there are very few potential domestic terrorists who wish to do harm to Americans.

    In other words, one guy easily purchased two firearms a couple of weeks ago (and thus didn’t have much time to train with them) and killed 50 people. If there are so many domestic terrorists out there, why isn’t this happening every week?

  24. 24.

    Keith G

    Wait a fucking minute. The clip of that interview does not unfold as Raw Story states. The RS folks are either stupid or dishonest….both?

    AL…did you not click the link of a story you fronted?

    Here is a link that works

  25. 25.

    lamh36

    ABC News ‏@ABC 1h1 hour ago
    NEW: Pres. Obama to travel to Orlando on Thursday to pay ‘respects to victims’ families, and to stand in solidarity with the community.’

  26. 26.

    Brachiator

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Chuckles the Toddler is, all by himself, causing Huntley and Brinkley to rotate at near relativistic speeds in their graves.

    Look at the bright side; the spinning might provide a good source of sustainable energy.

  28. 28.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Amaranthine RBG: Exactly. This is much more a mass shooting based hate crime resulting in mass murder than an act of terrorism. But they’re going to have trouble walking the domestic terrorism bit back. The FBI SACC in Orlando leaned way to far out over the edge, the media jumped on it, and now everyone is stuck with it.

  30. 30.

    boatboy_srq

    @JPL: Sexual confusion, religious wingnutsery and violence are a toxic combination. This is not new.

  32. 32.

    EZSmirkzz

    @Adam L Silverman: It appears our man of action is even more complicated than you alluded to yesterday.

    Kevin West, a regular at Pulse, told the LA Times he had been messaging with Mateen on and off for a year on the gay dating app Jack’d. He says he never met Mateen in person until the night of the attacks. Also, one Pulse regular interviewed by the Sentinel said Mateen had been a regular at the club “for years.”

  35. 35.

    boatboy_srq

    @Amaranthine RBG: Anyone who has watched DHS and TSA perform their security theatre has known this for some time. Add to that the naivete of most Ahmurrrrcans about how stable, orderly and safe their nation really is.

  36. 36.

    agrippa

    @shomi:

    I understand that pov.; and, you are probably right.

    But, there are a lot of people who agree with him; or, vote for him because he is the GOP candidate.

  37. 37.

    Adam L Silverman

    @EZSmirkzz: Not terrorism at all. He reached a crisis point, whether he couldn’t come out or someone he met there rejected him or something else, he couldn’t resolve it, and he went over the edge.

  38. 38.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mike J:

    99% of everybody does what they do for the money.

    Bullshit, most hookers are into for the sex and degradation.

  40. 40.

    divF

    @Mike J:

    99% of everybody does what they do for the money.

    There is a famous quote by Lipman Bers to the effect that a person becomes a mathematician only if they find it inconceivable that they could do anything else.

  43. 43.

    Chris

    @Mnemosyne:

    Al-Qaeda was already this too, though on a larger scale. After it made a name for itself with the 9/11 attacks, terrorist groups all around the world were suddenly rebranding themselves “al-Qaeda in [wherever]” as a way to buff up their reputation. GSPC became al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib, Zarqawi’s grup became al-Qaeda in Iraq, etc. Whoever those guys were that did the London bombings in 2005 claimed it in the name of “al-Qaeda’s Jihad in Europe,” which had never been mentioned before and was never heard from again. This has been a thing for some time, it’s just becoming less and less organized and more “lone wolf” like.

  44. 44.

    BC in Illinois

    [A]s of now there is no evidence ISIS knew of the shooter or the attack beforehand.

    But for the narrative, it doesn’t matter. The murderer, in some way or part, dedicated the murder to them. That’s all the connection that needs to be there, for people to consider the murders to be “Isis-related.”

    Somebody ( I have long forgotten who ) once described a terrorist as “a murderer with a speech.”

    There are murderers who murder for profit, for revenge, for thrill. The murder is all; it has no further message. But the “murderer with a speech” considers the murder as a way to get our attention, so that we will pay attention to their speech. “Now, that I have your attention, I’d like to dedicate this murder to my friends in ISIS. I’d like to dedicate this murder to the evil of homosexuality. I’d like to dedicate this murder to the evils of the US Government.”

    What the terrorist-murderer, the hate-murderer, the murderer-with-a-speech, does not realize is that we don’t dive a damn about the message they want to convey. They killed somebody. THAT person is the one we want to talk about, to learn more about, to mourn. THOSE people are the ones we want to dedicate our lives to, to remember, to protect others like them.

    I really don’t care whether the murderer had a relationship with ISIS. I don’t even want to know a lot about why he targeted a gay club. I’m not sure I want to know a lot about his life of domestic violence, or the vile interior of his thoughts. And I damn sure don’t care who he wants to dedicate his murders to. I want the murders to stop. I want the people he hates to be safe. I want there to be fewer murders all around.

    To accomplish this, we need to talk about guns.

  45. 45.

    JPL

    @Adam L Silverman: It was still a terrorist act. He might have looked for an excuse but his action was that of a terrorist. On an earlier thread I disagreed with your apology about Howell. We know he was home schooled, but at this point we don’t know anything else.

  46. 46.

    Mike in NC

    ISIS is a joke since we’re all 100 times more likely to be killed by drunk drivers running stop lights.

  48. 48.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Chris: We built the legend. Newsweek’s “al Qaeda Inc.” issue and the multiple books describing it more like a multinational, which it wasn’t, and less like a logistics, financing, and training hub, which it was. A number of us tried to push back on this but couldn’t get traction because that didn’t make a good story.

  50. 50.

    schrodinger's cat

    Because its been that kind of a day. Listening to Gandhiji’s favorite bhajan Vaishnav Jan to Tene Kahiye by 15th century Gujarati poet Narsinha Mehta and sung by Lata Mangeshkar.

    Vaishnav (God’s person) is one who understands the pain of others
    And is not prideful even when he helps others
    He respects all but looks down on no one.

    Basically, Geeta in a nutshell, Krishna advice to Arjuna, on how to be a nishkama karmayogi*. See also, Kipling’s If..
    * A person who does the right thing without expecting any reward or praise but because its the right thing to do.
    Our current President comes pretty close to that ideal. Trump is light years away from it.

  51. 51.

    Mnemosyne

    @JPL:

    For myself, I still draw a line between “hate crime” and “terrorist act.” To me, a terrorist act is meant to provoke government action of some kind, while a hate crime is an expression of animus towards the targeted group. To me, this was very clearly a hate crime, even if the killer tried to gussy it up as “terrorism” to try and polish the turd.

  52. 52.

    Emma

    @Mnemosyne: I am not as cynical — or maybe I’m twice as much. Because Trump jumped in and trash-talked, and the press (for now) does not seem wiling to cut him a break, there might be some push back.

  53. 53.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JPL: No, now it is looking less and less like a terrorist attack. And a personally driven hate crime. To be an act of terrorism there has to be a larger political component. It looks more and more here like there wasn’t. And he claimed allegiance to so many different and contradictory Islamic extremist groups and movements that even that component can be discounted.

  54. 54.

    JPL

    @BillinGlendaleCA: I didn’t sleep at a Holiday Inn, but imo, I think there is a lot of pressure on closeted gays,because of the recent rulings and the religious right back lash. The lack of acceptance in itself creates self-loathing.

  55. 55.

    Adam L Silverman

    @BillinGlendaleCA: That is a good possibility too. But right now its all speculation as the allegiance to IS or AQ or Hezbullah or the Peoples Liberation Front of Judea (SPLITTERS!!!) component begins to come apart.

  56. 56.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: I am not particularly inclined to make the distinction right now. I could rant on, but that sum up my position right now. Mass shooter for politics, for religion, for what-the-fuck-ever is still a mass shooter to me. And the case that he wanted to may LBGT people afraid to appear out in public is plausible. If that was even part of his motivation, it is terrorism. Michael Collins once said that the point of terrorism is to terrorize.

  57. 57.

    Mike in NC

    @Mnemosyne: Here’s hoping that President Obama gives a memorable Farewell Address where he finally calls out the disloyal Neo-Confederate opposition and their years of trying to undo every decent program he tried to enact to help the lives of the American people.

  59. 59.

    Chris

    @BC in Illinois:

    I’ve read somewhere that it used to be dogma at the FBI, in the seventies and eighties when international terrorism was really getting off the ground, that terrorism was a crime and should be treated as such with no acknowledgment of political content whatsoever. The reasons being, first, that we didn’t want to do anything to play into the “revolutionary idealists defying the system” narrative that might help glamorize and romanticize what they were doing. And second, that for the purposes of democratic governance, it was critically important that everyone see and understand that the reason they were being tried and convicted wasn’t because they were racists or separatists or communists or fundamentalists, but because they were killers.

    We could do worse than to use this mentality nowadays.

    @Adam L Silverman:

    You’re right, I remember the “multinational” narrative, and I don’t remember the “logistics and training” one at all.

  60. 60.

    JPL

    @Adam L Silverman: That’s the definition but for most, it depends on fear and the repubs campaign on fear. In my opinion, I just want consistency. BTW.. Is it possible that Howell and Mateen are more alike than different? If so, how do you combat that?

  62. 62.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JPL: I don’t know. I don’t think we know enough about either yet to say much more than we’ve said.

  63. 63.

    Amaranthine RBG

    @Adam L Silverman:

    My personal pet peeve is when there is a coordinated attack somewhere in the world and the media talking heads immediately start talking about how “sophisticated” the organization must be to coordinate an attack at multiple locations at the same time.

    Yes, that means they have achieved wristwatch technology.

    Terrorism does present a risk to America and Americans. No question. But the desire to fetishize and inflate that risk is perverse.

  65. 65.

    Cacti

    Former college classmate confirms to Palm Beach Post that Omar Mateen was gay.

    The classmate said that he, Mateen and other classmates would hang out, sometimes going to gay nightclubs, after classes at the Indian River Community College police academy. He said Mateen asked him out romantically.

    “We went to a few gay bars with him, and I was not out at the time, so I declined his offer,” the former classmate said. He asked that his name not be used.

    He believed Mateen was gay, but not open about it. Mateen was awkward, and for a while the classmate and the rest in the group of friends felt sorry for him.

  66. 66.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Chris: When you actually mapped out the organization and what it was doing it was clear it was a logistics and financing network for potential revolutionaries, insurgents, and terrorists outside of Afghanistan. This was paired with a training capacity inside of Afghanistan. For instance, the hard core, radicalized Chechen separatists trained there. And the final component was the connection to the Pashtun community, specifically the portions of that community involved with leading and running the Taliban. But Newsweek, other news publications, and a number of authors depicting the organization like a multinational organization: al Qaeda Inc, even though there wasn’t a lot of actual evidence to support this narrative. But it was a great narrative, so…

  71. 71.

    gf120581

    @Cacti: Fascinating. Personally, once I heard he called 9/11 and did the ISIS pledge, I instantly thought, “This is just him trying to cloak himself in a cause to make what he’s about to do seem righteous.” When in truth it’s looking more and more likely that this was a self-loathing closet case taken to the extreme.

    And the more information that comes out, the more it becomes clear how badly Trump shot himself in the foot today. No wonder it seems like most of the GOP has gone dark and gone to ground. I understand McConnell, Ryan, etc. are refusing to talk to reporters right now. I can’t blame them. They’ve got to be furiously brainstorming a response.

  72. 72.

    Cacti

    @Mnemosyne:

    G suspects there are going to be stories about various unsuccessful attempts by Mateen to pray away the gay.

    Wouldn’t be surprised if some stories came out about the old man trying to beat the gay out of him.

  73. 73.

    Jim Parish

    @divF: When I was finishing up my undergrad work, my advisor took me aside and asked me why I was studying mathematics. He told me I’d never get rich, famous, or powerful; all I’d get was… being a mathematician.

    He was right; and that was all I wanted.

  75. 75.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: It doesn’t matter to the dead, wounded, their family, friends, etc. It does matter for how we respond to the event – from law enforcement responses to policy to popular understanding. That’s where getting the right nomenclature is important. Otherwise the press runs with the wrong thing and the politicians and others that are so inclined to demagogue off of the event.

  77. 77.

    MazeDancer

    Chris Hayes show filled with actual reporting showed most likely Orlando shooter was a self-loathing, closet gay guy with a crazy father.

    Shooter was on gay dating apps for years. At Pulse bar many times. (Possibly ansers: How did he get in? They recognized him)

    ISIL/Boston Shooter “allegiance” phone call likely covering-up with wacked, homophobic, fundamentalist dad til the end.

  79. 79.

    rikyrah

    @JPL:
    The killer was gay.
    Went to a club 118 miles away, because he did not want “the gay life” to conflict with “the normal life”.
    Despised who he was
    Had a propensity for violence
    Being that this is America, could get his hands on weapons of death.

    I have been chastised for making this a story about an in the closet gay person. But, the man went and got two wives, frequented a gay bar and gay dating apps…what is that, if not the closet. Yes, his self hatred boiled over in violence.

    I am a Black woman who has watched a self-hating Black man on the Supreme Court take out his hatred of Black people through the law. Self hatred can express itself in many ways.

    In this unfortunate case self hatred combined with violence.

  81. 81.

    Mnemosyne

    I’m going to go read about Jane Austen’s England for a while, but my Facebook encounters today are making me wonder at what point we as a society decided that if assholes are going to try and murder people, we should make it as easy for them to do that as possible.

    Next up, we decide to put heroin back on the shelves of every corner drugstore because, hey, people are going to get addicted anyway, so why shouldn’t we make it as easy as possible for people to become addicts?

  84. 84.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: I am quite aware, unfortunately. But sometimes it is the repeated attention to the small details that can make the difference over time.

  86. 86.

    Cacti

    Whether this was a “terror” attack does matter because words mean things.

    Dylann Roof’s church attack was terrorism and a hate crime, as it was steeped in political and philosophical white supremacist beliefs, coupled with personal malice toward black people.

    In this case, Omar Mateen’s declaration of fealty to IS is coming unraveled within 48 hours. This was hate crime, by a man with toxic self-loathing.

  88. 88.

    Elie

    Trump is gonna be so surprised when Obama strips off his bark. Of course, it will be at a day and time of his own chosing. His approach is primitive but sets him up for certain things… No need to go after him quid pro quo… just wait for the right time and the right “shot”. Meanwhile there is deep research on this motha… . just to expose those “opportunities”.

    In bullfighting, the bullfighter spends the first part of the match seeming to stick relatively low impact barbed picks into the bull’s back and neck. They don’t do anything mortal to the bull, but they harass it and the cumulative damage makes the bull drop his head. Over time, and exhausting small attacks to its back and neck, the bull’s head drops enough to expose its spine such that the matador can do the kill shot — sword to the spine, ideally severing the spinal cord. Until the kill shot, there are a lot of other moves that do not by themselves mortally wound the bull but wear it out, making it unable to keep that head up.

  91. 91.

    Wapiti

    I think calling in to 911 and declaring allegiance to IS just screamed “suicide by cop”. I think LE and the Feds have to be prepared to filter more, because it will keep happening.

  92. 92.

    Eric U.

    @Wapiti: maybe he just wanted to hurt his father as much as he could. Unfortunately, I have a child that thinks this way sometimes. What better way to do this than pretending to wage jihad?

  93. 93.

    Ruckus

    @Mike J:
    And a vast majority of that 99% at least try to do a good job.You can’t make that statement about a lot of the journalists I was talking about.

  97. 97.

    Lamh36

    @rikyrah: yep…I remember you saying that Rikyrah

    So, this is looking more and more like a personal attack…Domestic terrorism, but brought on by some sort of rejection or self-hate.

    Hell, for all we know, the two men he saw kissing, while with his wife, may have been someone he’d seen at the bar he frequented, or who he’s seen on a gay social app.

    Whatever the case, the media and let’s face it, the local media and local FBI were very quick to jump on the ISIS angle, and now all this stuff is coming up, but now thx to the usual suspects, the cat is out of the bag and won’t go back in.

    While focusing on ISIS angle, GOP able to not confront it’s anti-LGBTQ platform and agenda, and ignore their anti-gun control stance. Make it more hate crime than radical Islam and they are left with having to condemn the act of violence but then have continue their “gay is evil” and deserves to be hates in the face of this massacre

  99. 99.

    hovercraft

    Josh Barro’s take on todays speeches.

    The speeches Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump gave on Monday in response to the Orlando, Florida, terrorist attack laid out the key distinction in visions between the two candidates.

    One vision calls for doing approximately what we’re doing now, with some improvements on the margins. The other vision is dystopian, urging our society to reject outsiders and arm ourselves to the teeth to protect against threats that are allegedly inherent in Islam.

    You don’t have to like the status quo very much to prefer the former approach over the latter.

    Clinton’s view is that America’s society, institutions, and international relations are broadly working, but that they require tweaks to protect us. She says that we must make it harder for certain people to buy certain kinds of guns, spend more on certain kinds of intelligence, disrupt terrorism financing, and intensify the military campaign against ISIS.

    Trump’s view is that everything is going to hell and that we need a radical, authoritarian shift to protect ourselves. He says that we must seek to exclude Muslims from the US and arm ourselves personally to protect against violent attack, because Americans and Muslims have a fundamental and unbridgeable difference in values.

    Trump indulged in fever dreams, saying that “Clinton wants to allow radical Islamic terrorists to pour into our country.”

    Clinton is a Democrat, but as the conservative writer Matthew Continetti put it, she was speaking up for a bipartisan post-Cold War consensus on security and international relations, a consensus Trump is proposing to chuck.

    So the question before voters is: Do we want Trump’s anti-Muslim revolution, or do we want to stay the course?

    For me, the answer is easy. I was horrified by Trump’s speech – it was the stupidest and scariest speech I’ve ever heard him give, which is a high bar.

    Trump, who has previously said that “Islam hates us,” accepts the ISIS frame of a fundamental struggle between Islam and the West. Trump’s choice of this frame will increase sympathy for jihad among Muslims abroad, making it easier for terrorist groups to recruit. It insults millions of Muslim citizens of the US who love their country. It surely also scares them, since Trump’s words are likely to inspire anti-Muslim hatred and violence.

    All that said, Trump’s appeal stems in part from the fact that the bipartisan post-Cold War security consensus for which Clinton speaks has had high-profile failures, including the September 11, 2001, attacks and the Iraq war. There is a strong sense among Americans that what we’re doing isn’t working, and that we need to do something else.

    I get that impulse, but here’s the thing: “Something else” is not a policy. If we are to abandon the status quo, we must replace it with something specific, and what Trump is proposing is far worse than the status quo.

    US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump delivers a campaign speech about national security in Manchester, New Hampshire. Thomson Reuters

    The specific ideas Trump advances – a combination of isolationism and aggression, of vitriolic rhetoric and neglect of allies, of treating Muslims as an enemy and yet also saying that it would be OK for Saudi Arabia to have a nuclear weapon – are worse than whatever we are doing right now, even if you do not like exactly what we are doing right now.

    Several politicians, including Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, have framed a hostile stance toward Islam as necessary to protect the safety of LGBT Americans. It is reasonable to raise concerns about global Muslim attitudes about pluralism, and particularly about treatment of LGBT people in Muslim-majority countries, some of which sanction the death penalty as punishment for homosexuality.

    But those who do raise these concerns, including Trump, should note that opinion among Muslims in the US is very different than it is abroad.

    A 2014 Pew survey found that 45% of American Muslims think homosexuality should be accepted by society, a higher figure than for Mormons or evangelical Christians. That was up from 38% in 2007 – reflecting the fact that Muslim Americans, like all the American religious groups studied by Pew, are becoming more accepting of gays over time.

    That is, we don’t need to ask whether Islam can be compatible with a modern, pluralistic society that protects the rights and safety of LGBT people. In the US, we know that Islam is compatible enough – approximately as compatible as various other major religious traditions whose compatibility with Americanism we do not routinely question.

    There is a reason the attacks in Orlando and San Bernardino, California, though apparently based in extreme Islamist ideology, were not supported by a local terrorist network like the attacks in Paris and Brussels. The reason is that America’s Muslim minority is well-integrated, well-adjusted, and not disposed to harbor people who would harm other Americans. Lone-wolf attacks are a risk, but they are a risk mitigated by American Muslim communities, not exacerbated by them.

    All of which is to say that America’s Muslim communities are an example of how our pluralistic society is working pretty well, not of how everything is broken.

    It’s hard for people to be optimistic right now, but Clinton is right to take the view that we are better off with small changes than large ones, that we are better off being open to each other than identifying specific religious groups as threats, and that America has a pretty good thing going that we shouldn’t just throw away for an authoritarian approach to “safety.”

    This is an editorial. The opinions and conclusions expressed above are those of the author.

  100. 100.

    hovercraft

    @Elie:
    Back in 2011 Obama simply kept his cool while the Donald ran his mouth, but when he hit back he shut him up. Ever since Donald has refused to discuss the birth certificate. Trump thinks that because he beat a bunch of incompetent fellow orcs in the primary, that the democrats will be just as easy. Threatening to hit Hillary, Bill, and Obama really hard is dumb, hasn’t he been watching for the last 24 years? The orcs have thrown everything they have at them and they are still standing.

  103. 103.

    Death Panel Truck

    @Mike J:

    What percentages do you assign to other professions? Shoe salesman? Day laborer? Bond salesman? Secretary?

    At least the majority of people working in those professions put in an honest day’s work. Chuck Todd is paid to regurgitate GOP talking points. Nice work if you can get it.

  105. 105.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: He should be intensely proud of how many he shepherded to safety, but, I think, is more likely to be haunted by his inability to save more people.

  106. 106.

    Peale

    @Omnes Omnibus: perhaps. Although the preferred form is to send a vision? Is this the question on the chastisement of Rikyah? Cause there was good reason for that at the time, even though I weren’t the chasitser.

  107. 107.

    magurakurin

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The Islamic State is not an existential threat to America.

    It is looking like Daesh isn’t an existential threat to any country at this point. They are on the run on all fronts.

    Sneaking out of Fallujah

    Losing ground south of Mosul

    surrounded in Rojava

    Pushed out in Libya

    It’s only the bed wetters in the States who actually fear these assholes. Everyone else…including the US Military and Obama….are busy killing their worthless asses.

  109. 109.

    Adam L Silverman

    @magurakurin: Yes, I alluded to this in my post, between the speech posts, earlier today. I am well aware of the current strategy and how it is being applied.

    Ask me no (further) questions and I (won’t) have to tell you any lies.

  110. 110.

    Miss Bianca

    @Adam L Silverman: is it a bad thing that it’s being called “domestic terrorism” even if technically it’s a “mass shooting”? (God, my gorge is rising as I write those words). I’m asking as someone who doesn’t all the way grok the difference – I guess I’d be thinking, “well, not all acts of domestic terrorism are mass shootings, but all might not all mass shootings be considered an act of terrorism?” Or is motive just a much bigger part of the distinction than I’m grasping?

  111. 111.

    Seth Owen

    @Ruckus: @Ruckus
    No, 90% of the people who write ‘journalist’ on their tax form are slaving away in small local weekly and daily newspapers, radio stations, small market TV, local cable, newsletters, boots, etc. for low wages. They are not in it for the money but doing it as a civic duty so that good citizens such as yourself can have a fecking clue.

    Judging journalists by a few highly compensated celebrity examples makes as much sense as judging with disdain the local barbershop quartet or jazz trio because they are musicians just like the Rolling Stones.

    I worked at four daily newspapers and a weekly. Nobody was in it for the money.

  112. 112.

    Miss Bianca

    @Adam L Silverman: Never mind my previous question – I think you’ve pretty much answered it. I have to stop attending to these threads when I’m too wiped out to read closely.

  114. 114.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Cacti: By now you know that only people with melanin surpluses or belief in the incorrect Abrahamic religion can commit “acts of terror”. White Christians cannot be terrorists; they can kill dozens with the intent to impose their fucked up beliefs about a woman’s right to control her own body and it’s not terrorism, by definition. They’re not organized, they’re not inspired by bigoted assholes who have half hour shows on Faux Noise, they are “lone wolves” or “mentally ill”; their motivations are ignored. But be brown or Muslim, and as sure as the sun rises in the East, they’re terrorists, probably part of a Daesh or Al Qaeda sleeper cell here to make America safe for Mezzikans to steal our jerbs.

  115. 115.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Seth Owen: Chuckles the Toddler must be in it for the money, as he doesn’t have a shred of civic responsibility anywhere in his worthless goateed body.

  117. 117.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Miss Bianca: Mass shooting is a term of art. The widely accepted, though not systematized definition, is a shooting where four or more individuals are shot other than the perpetrator shooter. Usually it is applied in place of the actual technical criminological term mass murder. A mass murder is one where four or more individuals are purposefully targeted and killed, regardless of the manner, excluding the perpetrator and where the victims may not have been selected for a specific reason. As in they were not necessarily selected because the perpetrator/killer had a specific type that he was seeking to victimize. This differentiates mass murder from serial murder. A serial murder, which is also a technical criminological term with a specific empirically based definition, is a premeditated killing of multiple victims at different times and, sometimes, in different locations, by a perpetrator/killer that has chosen his victims for a specific reason or set of reasons. Specifically that they fit some sort of type or preference of the killer. There is a subset of mass murder, spree murder, where the perpetrator/killer goes on a prolonged and extended over time set of attacks at multiple sites. So the DC snipers, for instance, were spree killers.

    Terrorism is different. Here’s what the National Institute of Justice says:
    http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/terrorism/pages/welcome.aspx
    Terrorism
    Impact of 9/11

    The pressing need to respond to the disaster of 9/11 shaped NIJ’s research, development and evaluation agenda. Learn more about the impact of 9/11 terrorist attacks on research.
    The search for a universal, precise definition of terrorism has been challenging for researchers and practitioners alike. Different definitions exist across the federal, international and research communities.
    Title 22 of the U.S. Code, Section 2656f(d) defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.” [1]
    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”
    Both definitions of terrorism share a common theme: the use of force intended to influence or instigate a course of action that furthers a political or social goal. In most cases, NIJ researchers adopt the FBI definition, which stresses methods over motivations and is generally accepted by law enforcement communities.
    Note
    [1] U.S. Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Country Reports on Terrorism, April 30, 2007.
    Date Modified: September 13, 2011

    (Full disclosure: The National Institute of Justice convened a Special Conference on Violence and Terrorism in late 2002. The theoretical/definitional paper presented at that convention was written by myself and Ron Akers, PhD, now Professor Emiritus of Criminology and Sociology at the University of Florida. It was based on the definitional/theoretical chapter in my doctoral dissertation. The proceedings of the conference – all the papers presented – were subsequently collected by the conference coordinators and published as Violence: From Theory to Research. Margaret A. Zahn, Henry H. Brownstein, and Shelly L. Jackson (eds). Cincinnati: Anderson Publishing, 2004. The chapter that Ron and I wrote is entitled: • “Toward a Social Learning Model of Violence and Terrorism.” At the end of the conference the subject matter expert attendees were asked to weigh in on what they thought was the most appropriate theoretical explanation/definition presented during the conference and the choice was that it was our theoretical explanation and definition. I was paid a small stipend/honorarium by the National Institute of Justice for my involvement with this project.)

  121. 121.

    Ruckus

    @Death Panel Truck:

    Nice work if you can get it.

    Only if you don’t mind selling your soul. And even if you don’t think you have one to sell it still sounds like a shitty job to me. And I’m the guy who offered to shovel cow shit for the rest of my life in deference to reenlisting in the navy. To the XO who was signing my discharge paper and told me I’d reenlist because my kind always did. That was a good day. Getting discharged and telling a pompous asshole to shove it in the same minute.

  123. 123.

    Kathleen

    @rikyrah: Brilliant observation. And I think self hatred is the root of so much of the hatred we are witnessing, whether it be through the words and deeds of Rethuglicans or these horrible crimes.

  124. 124.

    J R in WV

    @Amaranthine RBG:

    My personal pet peeve is when there is a coordinated attack somewhere in the world and the media talking heads immediately start talking about how “sophisticated” the organization must be to coordinate an attack at multiple locations at the same time.

    Yes, that means they have achieved wristwatch technology.

    And time zones, don’t forget that!!!

    I don’t know how many phone conferences I missed because I got the time zone changes backwards !! I’m just glad that none of those meetings I missed did any real damage to my work accomplishments.

  125. 125.

    J R in WV

    @father pussbucket:

    Dear FBI Director Comey:

    I have a neighbor who has begun to act strange. He is claiming all kinds of crazy things about other folks in the larger neighborhood, like they want to attack him for his beliefs. I am afraid he is encouraging others to undertake violence to advance the odd political beliefs they seem to share.

    His name is Donald Trump, and he lives in an apartment building in New York City called Trump Tower. It should be easy to find. You should look into this man, as he is not to be trusted with the levers of power, much less powerful firearms like the M1A1-Abrams or the B-52!!

    Thanks for your prompt attention to this scary and hate-filled person!!

    Sincerely,
    The American Public

  126. 126.

    J R in WV

    @efgoldman:

    Imran Yousuf is a hero. The fact that he cries for those he was unable to rescue speaks so well for him.

    I wish there was some way to console him, point him to the good he did, not his failure to save everyone. No one could have saved everyone. He deserves a medal for what he did, and more public recognition.

  127. 127.

    Shalimar

    Re: Self-loathing, from everything the father has said since Mateen was identified, it sounds like he was aware of how much his father would loathe him if he was ever outed or came out of the closet. Who knows how much that played in to it.

  128. 128.

    donnah

    nightclub

    The sounds
    music, laughter, song
    pouring from the club
    spilling onto the street

    Brightness, flashes of light, colors
    bouncing off the walls
    and across the faces of the young, happy dancers

    The sounds
    gunshots, screams, crying
    pouring from the club
    spilling onto the street

    Blood, flashes of gunfire, red lights
    splashing off the walls
    and across the faces of the young, terrified dancers

    The sounds
    moaning, sobbing, sirens
    pouring from the club
    spilling onto the street

    phones ringing, ringing, ringing
    in the pockets and purses of the dead
    unheard pleas from loved ones
    calling, calling, calling
    unanswered

    and the wounded
    bloodied and broken
    pouring from the club
    spilling onto the street

    The dead
    lying in piles on the dance floor
    where they had danced
    happy
    music, laughter, song

    silenced

    except for the ringing, ringing, ringing
    of unanswered phones

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