You've thought about it. You've probably talked about it with a friend, in private, over a beer. You've constructed alternative scenarios in your head. Yes, you've critiqued the technique of a terrorist or a spree killer. You've thought of ways you would do it better. You don't talk about it in polite company, but it's harmless, an antisocial impulse shared by nearly everyone. If you haven't, you're one of those boring white people who cries piously about Evil, and you will gain nothing from the rest of this column.
One thing all your critiques share, although you haven't realized it yet, is an underlying theme of the incompetence of the perpetrators. Obvious mistakes that you would have avoided, real bush-league shit. No getaway car, no bug-out bag, not enough bullets, talking to police. If pressed, you think that this is the result of stress, anxiety or hubris causing the perpetrator to make stupid mistakes.
You're wrong. It's because they are idiots, and it is important that we realize that. Hollywood, media, police, and government are all lying: our enemies are small and incompetent and we don't need to be afraid.
In America, our conception of spree killers and terrorists is based in popular fiction instead of reality. The Joker in The Dark Knight is the most obvious example, as noted elsewhere:
"First, we find two empty buildings. Without the cops noticing, we'll secretly sneak in hundreds of drums of explosive liquids, and wire all of them to explode. Next, we'll orchestrate an attack on the convoy transporting Harvey Dent. This will involve blocking busy streets, blowing police helicopters out of the air and launching missiles at the armored car. All of this will be done, not to kill Dent (though that could happen at any moment) but to cause Batman to intervene so that he will throw me in jail.
Then, while the whole town is on alert, we go ahead and have our henchmen kidnap both Dent and Rachel Dawes and strap them in with the bombs in the two abandoned buildings. Then I'll send Batman after one of them, knowing that this will result in Rachel being killed and Dent being a certain distance from the explosion as to become grotesquely injured and disillusioned. Then I'll blow up the jail without accidentally killing myself. Gentlemen, it couldn't be simpler."
Fiction presents these types of individuals as geniuses who have circuitous plans mapped out ten steps ahead of everyone. This is the archetype for the murderous villain in everything from Speed to 24 to James Bond to Dan Brown.
In reality mass killers are impulsive idiots. Abortion clinic bombers are always caught because they always talk. Matthew Derosia's master plan for stopping abortion was to cripple himself driving his car into a Planned Parenthood. David McMenemy had the same plan, then afterward set the lobby of what turned out to be a woman's shelter on fire. Roeder knew enough about Tiller to know where he lived and worshiped and yet chose to shoot him surrounded by dozens of people.
The average exit strategy for a spree shooter is suicide. Harris and Klebold wasted time wandering around, built terrible bombs that would never have successfully destroyed the school even if they had worked, and didn't bring enough ammunition. Cho Sueng-Hui used a .22, wore no body armor, and chose to attack at random, not during a populated event. James Holmes bought the wrong type of vest and had a magazine known to be a worthless jamming mess. Nidal Hassan told idiots at a Texas gun store to give him whichever pistol had the biggest magazine, then bought hundreds of rounds of ammunition before attacking an active military base in broad daylight.
The FBI keeps pre-emptively busting terror suspects because they trust random strangers who approach them saying the informant has bombs they want them to place. Five men who planned to attack Fort Dix were caught because they took their jihad training video to a Walmart to be copied. Richard Reid's shoe bombs didn't work because his feet got sweaty. Timothy McVeigh was caught because he was driving a car with no plates and told a police officer that he had an illegal firearm. The Tsarnaevs had the plan of "dropping off two packages and walking away" in broad daylight with hundreds of witnesses, without disguises or any plan to escape. They got caught because they kidnapped a guy and maxed out his debit card's daily limit, then hit two other ATMs trying to get around the daily limit.
9/11 was an uniquely successful and frightening event because unlike anything else it had funding, manpower, and organization, yet the hijackers were boneheads who told flight instructors they wouldn't need to practice takeoff or landing, presumably while winking suggestively, and probably got away with it solely as a function of the greater incompetence of the government. Even still, one of the planes went down in the air, another hit reinforced concrete dealing negligible damage, and the worst consequence of the attack, the collapse of the towers, was unanticipated according to bin Laden.
All this incompetence is a major cause of so many people screaming about how this or that attack was a false flag, because why would a terrorist mastermind fail to wear a disguise? He wouldn't, but there is no such thing. Notice how unassailably competent the United States military is even with infinite money, bodies and weapons,
Recognizing this truth is a big step to coming up with proportional responses to this kind of thing. Boston was shut down precisely because of people believing the fictional framework of mass killing. The city needed to be shut down and everybody needed to hide because what if the surviving brother had accomplices or hidden bombs?? Except he didn't. He was instead a single unarmed teenager bleeding to death under a tarp, surrounded by hundreds of police. He didn't have those things because they never do. There's been no instance of a real domestic terrorist plot involving pre-set trap bombs, or secret accomplices. In every case of domestic terror or shootings, the maximum number of perpetrators is two.
The media pushes the fictional narrative to boost ratings during a crisis; speculation about other bombs or international conspiracies is a lot more interesting than wondering if there are two guys and if so which guy is the depressed loser who is just going along with it and allows them to fart racist cliches about the sinister Mohammedan octopus.
It's time for us to recognize that we are dealing with morons who can't disrupt life unless we let them. And maybe to recognize that if these utterly incompetent jags can do so much damage, maybe a competent effort can really destabilize things? lol jk fbi, capitalism rools *peels out on vespa*
Edited by Goethestein ()
also why not the Shining Path lol
The attempted June 2007 bombing of Scotland's Glasgow Airport may have produced the most enduring image of terrorism failure. Two men tried to ram a Jeep filled with propane canisters through the front doors of the airport in order to set off an explosion inside. But the car got hung up on the door frame, so the two men got out and tried to light the car on fire using gasoline. Instead, they only managed to set themselves alight before being subdued by extinguisher-wielding civilians and arrested. News footage worldwide was filled with images of the burned-out hull of their car stuck just outside the airport entrance. The driver of the car, Kafeel Ahmed, died from his burns, but Bilal Abdullah, an Iraqi doctor, was sentenced to at least 32 years in prison for his role in the attack.
ilmdge posted:the unabomber was a genius and never really slipped up. he got his manifesto published in the nyt and wapo. leftists (who, by the way, are analyzed to not very positive conclusions in the manifesto) could only be so lucky
American leftists treat their ideals as little more than narrative devices in their perpetual bildungsroman.
prohairesis posted:the RAF less so
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrenpoint_ambush
they were heavily funded by expatriate irish-americans in boston, of course...
Panopticon posted:the IRA in their glory days were fantastic at funnelling british troops into killing zones/secondary bomb sites
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrenpoint_ambush
they were heavily funded by expatriate irish-americans in boston, of course...
Two men arrested after the bombing, Brendan Burns and Joe Brennan, were later released on bail due to lack of evidence.
IRA member Brendan Burns was killed in 1988 when a bomb he was transporting exploded prematurely. IRA member Joe Brennan was jailed in 1982 for carrying out an armed bank raid to raise funds for the organisation. He left the IRA in 1986 and went on to become a successful property developer and novelist.
Edited by mustang19 ()
mustang19 posted:
mustang19 posted:Leftism is not new, there have always been conspiracies among beta primates to disrupt the social hierarchy in a desperate attempt to change their condition. For them, any change, no matter how destructive, cannot lower their status.
^ Speaking of betas LOL
mustang19 posted:Prikryl, I'm sure you're capable for more of a response than "u mad".
VoxNihili posted:breivik's absence is quite conspicuous
more evidence for the truth of the master race
mustang19 posted:Leftism is not new, there have always been conspiracies among beta primates to disrupt the social hierarchy in a desperate attempt to change their condition. For them, any change, no matter how destructive, cannot lower their status.
If I were born a gorilla, I would be a big strong one. My gorilla mommy would have breastfed me rather than use formula, and I would spend lots more time outside instead of doing cursive practice.
mustang19 posted:Leftism is not new, there have always been conspiracies among beta primates to disrupt the social hierarchy in a desperate attempt to change their condition. For them, any change, no matter how destructive, cannot lower their status.
God doesn't care. But I guess you'd still defend the gnostics against Paul.
God doesn't care. But I guess you'd still defend the gnostics against Paul.
Technically I would have to because Jesus was never physically crucified but they're both polytheist positions.
As for the organizational principles of gnosticism, they were correct in that democratic centralism and spontaneism are both flawed ideas; even Rhizzone pretends to acknowledge this.
Edited by mustang19 ()
mustang19 posted:God doesn't care. But I guess you'd still defend the gnostics against Paul.
Technically I would have to because Jesus was never physically crucified but they're both polytheist positions.
As for the organizational principles of gnosticism, they were correct in that democratic centralism and spontaneism are both flawed ideas; even Rhizzone (pretends to) acknowledge this.
If ilmidge was worth his/her salt he'd light you afire for heresy. Christians of the world unite.
wasted posted:mustang19 posted:God doesn't care. But I guess you'd still defend the gnostics against Paul.
Technically I would have to because Jesus was never physically crucified but they're both polytheist positions.
As for the organizational principles of gnosticism, they were correct in that democratic centralism and spontaneism are both flawed ideas; even Rhizzone (pretends to) acknowledge this.If ilmidge was worth his/her salt he'd light you afire for heresy. Christians of the world unite.
I've already had this debate with getsfiscal, he's under the delusion that the son of God can be both fully human and fully divine. You're the third christian I've met on this board and you're all late on your jizya.
Edited by mustang19 ()
wasted posted:If ilmidge was worth his/her salt he'd light you afire for heresy. Christians of the world unite.
It doesn't harm our cause that mustang is representing Islam.
ilmdge posted:the unabomber was a genius and never really slipped up. he got his manifesto published in the nyt and wapo. leftists (who, by the way, are analyzed to not very positive conclusions in the manifesto) could only be so lucky
Kaczynski did not spur an anti-industrial revolution and he got caught so we can't say he acted with competence. He killed three people, injured 23 and became a crazy hermit all to get a handful of curious intellectuals to read what amount to edgy forum posts.
Goethestein posted:It's time for us to recognize that we are dealing with morons who can't disrupt life unless we let them. And maybe to recognize that if these utterly incompetent jags can do so much damage, maybe a competent effort can really destabilize things? lol jk fbi, capitalism rools *peels out on vespa*
There is no point to killing a bunch of people to raise awareness that America is involved in questionable military activity, that people are poor, that trees are cut down or that the West has lost its Christian identity. Everyone already knows these things.
In committing evil you associate your views with evil, so terrorism is inherently stupid. The appropriate path of activism is speaking out. If you audit your views, communicate well, behave with civility and are actually correct then you will gain influence.
Holmes, who was clearly influenced by the movie you referenced, did actually set up a bomb trap in his apartment. The core message of the movie is a battle over the soul, a question of whether you accept nihilism or not. Holmes made his choice, yelling "I am the Joker!" after spraying rounds into the audience. Peace be with you
anyway this weird like 60 year old scottish seperatist guy emailed bomb threats to my school last year dozens of times a day for some reason and got caught
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2189173/Jailed-Scottish-separatist-charged-University-Pittsburgh-email-bomb-threats.html
Unbeknownst to him, Mr. Busby wrote the book himself and published it on the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement under Mr. Leslie's byline, infuriating the reporter.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/neighborhoods-city/pitt-threat-suspect-called-publicity-hound-649720/#ixzz2SZ94RH9d
lol
"That is his MO to a 'T,' " said Mr. Leslie,
it was all p dumb and ridiculous but the most actually fucked up part (beyond old people and blind kids having to evacuate v tall buildings multiple times a day) was that police harassed this transgender couple who had been kicked out of Pitt after they tried to use the right bathrooms and some asshole in the administration basically went on a crusade against them.
so they were basically suspects and questioned a bunch and made to look suspicious and crazy just because the school had fucked them over
acephalousuniverse posted:unabomber was dumb, only evidence u need is that he was a primitivist, tho i guess he did avoid getting caught for a long time
anyway this weird like 60 year old scottish seperatist guy emailed bomb threats to my school last year dozens of times a day for some reason and got caught
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2189173/Jailed-Scottish-separatist-charged-University-Pittsburgh-email-bomb-threats.html
oh man fuck that guy although i did appreciate having take home exams and not being expected to come to class for like 3 weeks
i was the only one laughing at the cartoonish bin laden-alike as other theater patrons shifted uncomfortably in their seats
ChristianRosencreuz posted:this is all over the new iron man movie
i was the only one laughing at the cartoonish bin laden-alike as other theater patrons shifted uncomfortably in their seats
yeah it was a refreshing change from the Nolan batmans about superantiheros who have nullified ethics, removed free will from followers, and are essentially omnipotent.