Spinning the threat of terrorism.

[ZeSpectre]

The shooting in Salt Lake (and other incidents) recently have me pondering something, namely how this sort of thing gets spun for use.

Let's assume, for a minute, that Salt Lake is the beginning of individual terrorist activities here in the United States. Running that scenario through my mind I see two basic courses of action that might happen.

Scenario One : A paniced populace that has had years of being trained into "learned helplessness" says "My GOD, somebody needs to protect us" and turns to it's leaders for solutions. Said leaders begin a propaganda barrage of "it's okay, were here for you and we'll take care of it". A lot of high visibility "lawmaking" and "regulation" show up (Bread and Circuses?). The slumbering giant of the United States grumbles, rolls over, and goes back to sleep unaware that it may be bleeding to death.

Scenario Two : A solid core of American citizens look around at what is happening and decide that maybe self-protection would also be a good idea and start promoting that idea. The general populace runs headlong into the RKBA restrictions in place and, furious that their own gov't is keeping them disarmed in the face of foreign attack, either have said rules removed, or simply begin disregarding them en-masse.

I think my point is that the threat of "terrorism" has been used pretty effectively to DIS-arm us but with some work it could be used as an equally effective tool to RE-arm us.

Or do you think it's too late?

 

[MattC]

I know this won't fully adress your questions, but something to consider is that the terrorism scare knocks down the "us vs. them" mentality of past wars. Now, it is an "us vs. someone" where anyone could be a terrorist. The government has the final say in who is or is not a terrorist, and with that power they can uncover whether the guy in Salt Lake is a terrorist, whether your neighbor is a terrorist, or if you are. This terrorist threat, although at first it rallied a nation, has now pitted Americans against one another, afraid of eachother and what they might not know. Everyone becomes a suspect. So do people want to protect themselves against their neighbors or do they want their neighbors disarmed, since they are perceived as possible threats?

 

[ZeSpectre]

Ouch, divide and conquer. So obvious once you mention it and yet a big blind spot when I've been pondering this stuff.

 

[Autolycus]

Your second scenario will not happen. People are sheep and a bunch of guns being sold to everyone will only add fuel to the fire. People are panicy and jumpy after an incident. Remember after 9/11 all the businesses and everything shut down?

I am sorry but we are to depndent on police and the government to actually see a change. And its not the threat of terrorism that lost us our gun rights but the threat of crime and our own bad reasoning. Reasoning like... nobody needs an AW or a .50 cal gun.

Terrorism is just the new bogeyman we use to scare us into giving up our rights.

 

[ZeSpectre]

Terrorism is just the new bogeyman we use to scare us into giving up our rights.

But that's exactly my point, it -could- be used in the other direction...couldn't it? (or maybe I'm just having an optomistic day <sigh>):banghead:

 

[308win]

Number two will not happen because (1) it would be a threat to the vested interests and (2) the majority of the public will not under any circumstance accept responsibility for their own safety preferring instead to self delude with the assurance that the 'authorities' will keep them safe and accepting the rationalizations when the security breaks down.

 

[Caimlas]

I know this won't fully adress your questions, but something to consider is that the terrorism scare knocks down the "us vs. them" mentality of past wars. Now, it is an "us vs. someone" where anyone could be a terrorist.

An astute observation.

I've been railing on honesty in terminology for a while now. I sinscerely think we need to call things what they are; it is intellectually dishonest to call these enemies "terrorists". They are Jihadists (in this case) and quite possibly just "divout Muslims" - I'm still not 100% decided on that, but it is obvious to me that the enemy is jihadists and their society.

Not just the individuals and specific terrorist organizations, but their entire support culture - just as World War II wasn't just against the SS and German Army. Just as WWII was against their entire support infrastructure and the politics which supported them, we need to face the music and fight against the full force which is pressing against us, not just the extremities.

We are trying to fight a world war without acknowledging it is a world war, using cold war proxy conflict tactics.

As for me, personally, I will never go anywhere unarmed again, if I can so much as help it. The mall? The grocery? Work? Absolutely. It has been said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself; this is true, but preparing to prevent the attacks which prevent that fear is not indicative of fear. It's indicative of fangs and the will to use them against an agressor.

I've personally lost hope for much of the United States, specifically urban metropolitan areas, and broader urban support structures - and not just restricted to the Blue States. West Coast cities are being overwhelmed by illegals, and we do nothing. South Western cities are surrendering to California. The Southeast is awash with illegals almost as bad as the Southwest. The Northeast is licking the boots of avowed surrender monkeys like Hillary Clinton. Even many Midwestern states are surrendering to 'status quo socialism' - if they're not almost completely bought into it already.

The more I look at the situation and think about it, we're probably faced with several scenarios; here are two:
1) We're attacked in a major way (sleeper cells, widespread mall/school shootings, nuclear attack, etc.) after engaging with Iran. The press and the socialist surrender monkeys start crying, "See, we brought this upon ourselves!" We promptly roll over, or best case scenario have a punative Clintonesque campaign resulting in the same basic thing.
2) We're attacked in a major way before engaging with Iran. The result is the same as in #1: Bush Derangement Syndrome wins, and the fault lies on Bush. "See, Homeland Security didn't keep us safe! The Patriot Act is just against us!" - and on and on. They'd be largely correct, ironically, because those who give liberty to gain safety deserve and tend to receive neither.

This is going to happen, largely because the more populous centers - leftist, socialist bastions - have the political voice in this country fairly well controlled.

I think there's still hope, at least for parts of the US and Canada (as the Western and Midwestern states of both countries are more similar than they are alike, and more similar to each other than they are to their own coastal areas). The South, too - if we can reverse the trend of Southern Invasion sooner than later. States like Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Kansas, and Utah (to name but a few) are all still quite thoroughly American, even if it appears they've been stiffled by politically correct metering. I do think there's hope, but I'm skeptical just the same.

 

[longeyes]

The third path is the most likely: anarchy.

 

[ArfinGreebly]

Spinning

Lemme see . . .

I've got quite a bit of "white noise" going on in my head regarding this sort of thing, and I'll probably have to start a separate thread to deal with the thought process, but let me see if I can say something coherent.

Clearly, the socialist-leaning politicians who have been systematically disarming us for decades, predicated on their promise to protect us from bad things, have failed to deliver on their promise.

It now evidences as plain that it was not a promise they COULD keep even if they meant to, and it's likewise apparent that they really never meant to either.

Any time you have a body of people or an individual who is responsible for delivering general or specific results, and you give them several decades to deliver those results, and they don't deliver, you don't give them yet another opportunity to explain why "it's complicated" and that "we need more money" or that "I would have but these other guys kept interfering."

You do what any responsible owner does: you fire the management.

We elect our management. Our management lies to protect their jobs.

Our job: tell the electorate the unvarnished truth that, once again, those promising protection and security have failed, that they have failed for decades, that they don't need "another chance" or "more money" or "more and stronger laws."

One functional definition for insanity is "continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results."

We've done the "same thing" with these guys for decades. They've built their careers doing the "same thing" for those same decades.

Clarity is this: They are not getting the job done. There is no reasonable expectation that if they continue on their current (socialist) vector that they will ever get the job done.

In business, when something is failing, you examine your history to see what worked and revert to that.

We were secure in our persons and as a nation when we allowed people to run their own lives and held individuals accountable for their actions.

So that's what we push: the "new" social experiment isn't working; we've tried it and it's failed; now we go back to what worked.

Leave ideology out of it. We're looking at results and workability.

"Give me another chance" is something you only get to say for the first twenty years of your screw-ups. Twenty more years of screw-ups only proves you can't get it done.

I don't care if you lied or if you're merely incompetent, you're fired.

 

[ZeSpectre]

Clearly, the socialist-leaning politicians who have been systematically disarming us for decades, predicated on their promise to protect us from bad things, have failed to deliver on their promise.

It now evidences as plain that it was not a promise they COULD keep even if they meant to, and it's likewise apparent that they really never meant to either.

As a student of history I actually believe that some, possibly the majority, of the people who started us on this path genuinely believed that they were doing the right thing and had good intentions.

but you know what they say about good intentions

So that's what we push: the "new" social experiment isn't working; we've tried it and it's failed; now we go back to what worked.

Leave ideology out of it. We're looking at results and workability.

Man would I love that, even given the short term chaos that would result!

 

[Zundfolge]

Running that scenario through my mind I see two basic courses of action that might happen.

Scenario One :...
Scenario Two :...

I expect both will happen. Some localities will seek to protect the people by eliminating their liberty and some will expand their liberty ... same thing with the mindsets of the people. Some will crawl to mama government on their bellies, others will "cowboy up".

Thus exacerbating the deep devision in this country between statist (both on the left and right) and libertarians (the small "l" type).

Terrorism is just the new bogeyman we use to scare us into giving up our rights.

I agree that is happening, the problem is that too many people that say that kind of thing are ignoring the fact that there ARE millions (possibly billions) of people in the world that want us dead and a percentage of them that will kill us.

Terrorism may be used as a ploy to increase government power, but that doesn't mean terrorism isn't a real threat.

Of course as far as I'm concerned, a well armed and free populace is the best defense against terrorism.

 

[Keith Wheeler]

The third path is the most likely: anarchy.

Yep. Just like England and Israel descended to utter anarchy during their periods of intense terrorist activities.

 

[pacodelahoya]

Let's assume, for a minute, that Salt Lake is the beginning of individual terrorist activities here in the United States

Ok, but then we would have to forget about the DC snipers, The guy at the synagogue in Seattle and the guy at the Safeway warehouse in Boulder(I think that's where it was). Oh yeah, the suv dude that ran over those kids at the college down south

And just for the record, I am a devout atheist, I could care less about anyone elses religion as long as they don't push it on me.

It's about individuals who are out to kill me because I don't believe what they do.

 

[Diamondback]

Originally Posted by longeyes :

"The third path is the most likely: anarchy."

In response Keith Wheeler says:

"Yep. Just like England and Israel descended to utter anarchy during their periods of intense terrorist activities."
__________________

...BINGO !.......this prediction really indicates how a particular individual is more likely to behave under the speculative scenarios rather than how its entire citizenry will !

- regards

 

[pacodelahoya]

England may not have fallen into anarchy, but they have certainly fallen into something.

I would take anarchy in a heartbeat then be turned into an emasculated blithering subject.

 

[Wes Janson]

All of this is ridiculous.

First off, attacking Iran is not going to occur. Things would get very dicey if a nuclear attack occurred in DC or NYC, but short of that it simply isn't an option. Where would the troops come from? At what cost would victory come? No, Iran is someone to hurl accusations and blame at, not armored divisions.

Second, all of those ideas are based on the premise that we'll see widespread terrorism in this country in the near future. Sorry to burst the wonderfully exciting bubble, but once again I have to assert that the threat of domestic terrorism has been massively exaggerated. We can argue causes for the reason we've not seen any further attacks: the war in Iraq, widespread command decisions by the terrorists, a lack of capability, or something else, but in the end the simple fact is that plotted on a graph, 9/11 comes across as a statistical blip, not the beginning of a third (or fourth, or fifth) World War. Another way of phrasing it is: what if 9/11 was not symptomatic of a sudden new threat to our society, but rather an unusual confluence of luck, intent, and planning?

A nuclear attack would be truly significant, but one does have to ask why, if our enemy is so determined and powerful, they have never succeeded in acquiring and detonating a warhead from the former U.S.S.R.? What would they have to gain by stealing a weapon and then not using it? Unless there is some good reason for them not to use one, it would seem plain that in the last 16 years the terrorist organizations we've been engaging were either uninterested or unable to steal even so much as a single warhead from the thousands sitting in virtually unguarded shacks in the middle of Asia.

One last thing: as disheartening as it is, I truly doubt that we possess the means to influence public opinion in this country sufficiently to create the results mentioned. The intertia that would have to be overcome is just too great, not to mention the inevitable opposition from the gun control groups.