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What’s In A Name?
Over at The Corner, Jim Talent has a terrific post on the Democrats’ willful blindness regarding the ongoing threat of Islamic terrorism:
It’s hard to overcome any problem in your life if you refuse to recognize essential elements of the problem; in fact, one of the first objects of psychotherapists is to get their patients to face the real issues that are disabling them. It’s even harder to win a war if you won’t permit yourself to recognize whom you’re fighting — and not only because, as a practical matter, you have to know your enemy to properly assess his plans and tactics
Until the Democrats realize that our enemies mean what they say and say what they mean, they can’t be taken seriously on national security. In ISIS’s own words, the real reason they are attacking us isn’t because of global warming, Gitmo, a YouTube video, or the designated hitter rule. ISIS is attacking us because we exist, and because our values are different than theirs.
To be fair, all of us fall prey to this same problem in our daily lives, albeit on a much smaller scale. We don’t notice the clues that our lives are about to change for the worse, because we are grips of “normalcy bias.” As such, we are blindsided and unable to deal with what is happening to us when change comes.
This happen to my wife and I when we bought our first house together in a neighborhood in north-central Chandler, Arizona. We bought a townhome in what was then a nicer middle-class neighborhood near a Target and a movie theater, and we enjoyed walking through the streets at night pushing a carriage with our first son wrapped up snugly in it, dreaming about the future.
But things changed. My truck was broken into not once, but twice (the second time, the thieves stole my Bible. I hope they took some time to read the “Thou Shalt Nots …”). Then, the house next to ours was broken into, and the townhouse across the street from ours was raided by Chandler PD for ties to a meth lab.
While all of this was going on, we never once thought “Gosh, we should move, because the neighborhood is getting rough.” As it happened, a crime wave had started-up in our neighborhood, brought about by the Mexican gang wars affecting central Chandler. That meant that criminals were ranging further afield for targets of opportunity, and moving into our neighborhood.
We’ve since moved out of that townhouse, first to a house in a nicer area of town, and now all the way out to Florida. We learned our lesson, though. Now when things seem out of place and out of the ordinary, we note what’s going on, try to assess if it’s a part of a larger pattern, and adjust our lives as needed.
This is a part of learning situational awareness, and it’s a critical element to staying safe if you’re worried about the safety of your neighborhood or the safety of your country. The Democrats aren’t just unaware of the threat of radical Islamic terrorism, they’re willfully ignoring the danger.
Blindness can sometimes be cured, but there is no possible way to help those who choose not see.
Published in General
To the Democrats, WE are the enemy. All their efforts are gathered to defeat US. They can finally have that perfect society they believe they can achieve, once they defeat US. They have trouble seeing other threats.
I think they believe they can defeat us by swamping with with new citizens from other counties. We’ll be diluted.
Exactly.
Racist!
Lily beat me to it once again. What you aren’t taking into account is that this problem as you call it, isn’t a problem for Democrats. It is just the mess you need to put up with to make an omelet. The power structure of the Dem party live in areas that are isolated and insulated from ISIS, BLM, Occupy Wall Street, etc.
They are actually quite fond of the idea of death and destruction. Remember, their whole world view is based on a tiny pie that everyone is fighting over. ISIS and the others are just a mechanism for population control. They feel that once ISIS has taken care of most of their common enemies that they can easily be eradicated. Its sorta like the French revolution. Get the rabble roused. Use them to topple the power structure. Behead the rabble.
Where’s the problem?
I feel the need to explain that I am not anti-immigrant – not at all. But a healthy immigration system, one that benefits all sides, and would require thought and control – we’re not getting any of that, which is why our current immigration ‘process’ is turning into a disaster for this country.
I don’t think there is anything sinister going on here. They deny the obvious because the consequence of accepting reality goes against their faith. They have spent 15 years denouncing Bush’s choices, to their profit. Why give that up? What’s a few mass casualty attacks among elites.
They are more afraid of the reaction of the public. When the public demand military action, they can be pretty compelling. Hillary et al voted to support Bush because in their calculation, it was the least risky political choice.
I wonder how many massacres away we are from an overwhelming demand for some old time Jacksonian retribution?
Not convinced that naming it would result in any difference in actions on the ground. Ok, we name it. Now what? What would you do differently here or in the Middle East? Probably not much. Long term, we have to work for more open and tolerant regimes in Iran, Saudi etc. The rest will fall in place.
They must avoid this conflict to survive psychologically.
The kind of thinking that’s behind radical Islam, and even some mainstream versions, is antithetical to a liberal society. The left stands on the shoulders of liberalism, and even though it employs classical liberalism selectively, it cannot resolve the conflicts that this absolutist faith presents. So they are ignoring it as best they can.
Regardless of their stated views, these liberal ideals are still derived from Judeo-Christian fundamentals.
There is also a category conflict for them. How do you tolerate intolerance? Well, you don’t have to if it comes from the Republican bigots descended from slave-owners who stole wealth from the poor. This was a corrective measure, they believed.
But when intolerance comes from immigrants, a minority, from the oppressed, then it’s rationalized as having roots and justifications. The left is so invested in tribalism stemming from the days when they were righting wrongs with American prejudice and racism, that they have now been fully co-opted by it. Now, foreigners can come here, claim victimhood and Democrats will be their champions.
Tribalism, ethnic identity and clan doesn’t reconcile well with America as a place for individual freedom. Importing another set of laws that have long ago been rejected by our successful, liberal, society they have come to live within doesn’t make sense, and the Democrats know it – they just can’t admit it.
And just as the Democrats ignore America’s enemies, seeing other Americans as the greater threat to them, Republicans seem to ignore this, seeing other Republicans as a greater threat than Democrats. Internecine warfare is so much more satisfying.
I suspect an evolutionary foundation. Sibling rivalry writ very, very large.
I think there’s a lot of this involved. I also think that ever since the Vietnam War or thereabouts, progressive dogma stated that there was nothing wrong in the world that couldn’t be blamed on America. Pollution/Global Enwarmening, the Ayatollah, Contras, Nuclear Proliferation.. you name it, it was our fault.
And along comes the rebirth of Wahhabism, which has its roots not in what America has done but rather something the Saudis themselves did, and the left has absolutely no clue on how to handle something that can’t be traced back to a Republican.
Viewed from the Biblical/familial narrative, Ishmael’s descendants have been saying “I wuz robbed” for the last 1500 years, and by this all subsequent raiding and conquest of the last 1500 years is thereby justified.
I come at this from a slightly different angle. Many of my Republican brethren seem unwilling to recognize the gravity of the domestic threat from Democrats. I don’t see other Republicans as the threat. I only see them as naive if they think Hillary Clinton isn’t an existential threat to us (the US as it was intended at the founding).
Exactly, exactly, exactly.
Why do we all accept willful blindness?