I do not know if my perceptions are accurate, but it seems to me that since trump started his overseas trip on May 20th that high profile terrorist attacks have increased. Maybe my perceptions are prejudiced, maybe they're correct, but a result of coincidence and not causality. I simply don't know and am willing to believe that they may or may not be correct.
In the past 14 days, there have been four very deadly and high profile terrorist actions. May 22nd, Manchester, England, 22 dead & scores more injured. May 26th, Egypt, 28 Christian pilgrims killed. May 31st, Kabul, Afghanistan, at least 90 killed and over 400 injured. June 4th, London Bridge in London, England, 7 killed and dozens injured by random stabbings and using a vehicle as a weapon. So, that's four high profile attacks in the span of 14 days.
What is the knee jerk reaction on an emotional level? .......... Kill the bastards. Well, that is just simply not going to work on many levels. How do we identify all of the terrorists in the world? If we kill known terrorists, others will become radicalized and take their place. Poverty, bigotry, exclusion, violence, the death of non-combatants, destruction of cities and dwellings, these and other actions serve to escalate the violence and terror. Stevie Wonder wrote a lyric for a song titled Pastime Paradise that noted the following as some reasons for why one group of humans is pitted against another:
Dissipation
Race relations
Consolation
Segregation
Dispensation
Isolation
Exploitation
Mutilation
Mutations
Miscreation
Confirmation, to the evils of the world
I would add deprivation, starvation, marginalization, manipulation, limitations, ostracization, filthy rich nations are more causes for wars.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again; 'you did this to me, so now I'm going to do this to you'. Round and round and round we go, and where we stop, nobody knows. We continue to lock ourselves into a perpetual cycle of violence.
Certainly we cannot sit idly by and watch atrocities. And guess what, those that we label terrorists think and feel exactly the same way. They see themselves as the good people, the injured parties, the victims. To stop this cycle of violence will take a long time. Probably on the scale of centuries and many, many generations. This is the human condition and we as humans (not we as Americans, or we as the civilized world, or we as the west, or we as the "3rd world nations"), but we as humans are going to need to make probably the largest paradigm shift in human history, in the way that we are going to live together, so we can do so peacefully on this planet.
I'm not nearly smart enough or arrogant enough to think that I know the building blocks for such a change. But, what I am convinced of is that even the rhetoric of a trump or a group that loudly speaks like trump, only serves to enrage those that the rhetoric is aimed at. Certainly the violence that is unleashed on people on each side of the divide only serves to beget the next violent act. In the martial art of Thai Chi it is taught that to meet force with force serves to continue responses of force and it follows that to back away from a violent confrontation will act to diffuse the aggression of the other party. But, again we can't sit idly by and watch the violence continue, by any party, but if we withdraw that will not mean a cessation of violence anytime soon. It's a nasty cycle we humans have trapped ourselves in.
Now, I don't think that anyone, not one person of any import will read what I'm about to write, but I'm going to write it anyway. Maybe, just maybe, we can make a start. As trite as it may sound, every journey starts with the first step. What we have now inserted ourselves into is a war in a region that has been embroiled in war for centuries. We have now found out that once your in, ya ain't gettin' out. Becoming isolated and xenophobic will not make us any safer, because everyone has to be safe before anyone will be safe. So, we start to take a defensive posture and attempt to thwart attacks with strong intelligence and at the same time start to identify people to speak with. Maybe reach out to Iran to be an intermediary, or someone in Saudi Arabia, or in Irag, or in Pakistan. Someone. Someone who can bring two people together from opposite sides of this divide, and start talking.
We need to have expectations and hope, but they need to be realistic. Like I said, this is going to take generations of humans learning that the "other" humans are ok. We need to work towards a world where everyone is taken care of. Where everyone is fed and nourished. Where everyone has shelter from the elements. Where no one group tries to exploit another group and thereby puts that "other" group at a disadvantage. I'm not saying that everyone has exactly the same amount of material goods, but that everyone has some reasonably defined standard of living. If we are able, in another century or two, to obtain this type of goal, we could be on the way to being one planet, where all humans are valued by each other and respected by one another.
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