Monterey — It’s hard to say exactly what qualifies as terrorism any more. Obviously, showing up in a public place with explosives and/or military grade firearms and using them is an act of unimaginable destruction. The untimely end of innocent people’s lives is tragic beyond comprehension. What does it solve, resolve, do? What’s the point?
In the case of the Orlando massacre, it’s not even clear if Omar Mateen’s alleged motives were political, religious, or psychosexual. Perhaps this is the point. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the exploding of these lives because of one individual’s misery and psychological distortion of reality dovetailing with his relative ease of obtaining tactical weaponry. The assailant laid waste to a public dance club in a psychotic rage for reasons that were not reasons at all. Terrorism implies some political agenda, albeit horrible misguided and disproportional. Was Omar Matteen a terrorist? Maybe. Was he a man with extreme mental health issues who was able to lay his hands on killing machines? Without doubt.
Watching what’s happening in the not-so-United Kingdom isn’t a blood bath. Comparing the two events is hyperbolic and does not properly appreciate the loss of life and limb at Orlando, ground zero. Still, the dissolution of the UK’s relationship with the EU is potentially very destructive to the quality of many lives. Blowing up something, even to the detriment of those detonating the blast, is an emotional act, not a rational one.
Well-versed leaders from across the planet agree that this move will be bad for the other nations in the European Union, sure, but also for Great Britain itself. The United States is not on board with it, and much of the Asian markets are dismayed and worse. But there it is. Ka-Boom. As the dust settles, it has turned out that many who voted for it are besieged with regret having not understood the ramifications of this decision.
When folks are unhappy, fed up, feeling disenfranchised they behave in a rash manner. “Screw it and Them!” becomes a battle cry, emblazoned on their standard. Loops of feeling thwarted, without remission gets a body to a place of hopelessness which paves the road to desperate, often self-destructive acts that appear to the cognitively rational human as counter productive.
That’s the crux of it. The battle between those who are acting on feelings versus those who are trying to allow their cognitive function to make the choices. It’s as if those in the second camp are playing chess while the first camp is having a food fight.
Having grown up in a large family, I must admit that such disputes are diverting. However, the mess left behind is anything but. Cleaning up is a drag. Yeah, we had to do that. The Parents insisted. And then there were the punishments. But I digress.
Or do I? The punishment for this move from our British siblings is likely to be shared by us all. In filial terms, it would be like my brothers had the food fight, but I had to help with clean up and get punished with them even if I didn’t participate.
The reasons for the decision in the British Isles is what troubles me most since it could happen here in the United States. Scratch that. It is happening here. The abandonment of the rational captain of our thinking and handing over the helm to the emotional second mate is a way of crashing the ship. Emotions are a valued informing agent, they should serve, not rule, until or unless there is an emergency and we have only instinct to guide us. Even then, panic tends to cause mayhem. Acting as if there’s an urgency when there isn’t one often creates emergency.
Being frustrated and fed up, ongoingly, underwrites a feeling of desperation that leads to doing something that brings on any change. This is tantamount to flooding the recreation room with toxic gas to get rid of a nest of rats. This may or may not accomplish extermination, if indeed such an infestation exists in the first place. It might, likewise, poison all the other living creatures using that space as well. This is a kind of terrorism too, on a national, continental, global level.
The existence of this “fed up” sensation reminds me of a line from that great film Network. The log line oft repeated was: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” That’s the kind of feeling I’m referring to. Those of us who are trying to listen to the rational captain should not dismiss or denigrate the potency of this emotion. It’s out there across the pond and on our beachhead as well. We need to pay attention, not obey but hear, those who are angry, upset, being stuck with limited options, who have repeatedly and ongoingly been taken for granted, taken advantage of, and just plain taken. If we don’t listen and appreciate their situation they just may blow us all up, even though it blows them up, too. Because that’s what terrorists do.
This doesn’t make sense. And that’s the whole point.
