Or shoot up a school, or join a far right group, or take out their frustrations on young women.

If a far right group espoused suicide bombing some of them would do that. In the 70s it probably would have been left wing terrorists.

The ideology of militant islamists is profoundly dangerous because of the level of destruction their followers and supporters aim for - but the mechanisms at play are the same as they ever were.

Facebook has become a nice recruiting tool for nutters. It all goes back to the failure of our education system. The localized extremists who should have slowly been extinguished by reality now have a larger platform for hate. I'm expecting much more trouble with homegrown nuts as they expand their meat world bubbles into digital. I guess the Feds can monitor them more easily this way.

I think you've nailed the reason why this kind of extremism is so persistent. When you look at the various revolutionary, and pseudo revolutionary movements in modern history, they mostly fizzle out or crash and burn, with just a handful rumbling along at a very local level. Look at the left wing revolution-inspired terrorism of the 70s.

Revolutionary movements have generally had at their core the seeds of their on destruction - either they succeed and become the establishment against which others revolt, or the new tomorrow fails to materialise and the troops get bored, grow up, lose faith and move on.

The IS model is kind of ingenious. They've successfully utilised modern technology to make their impact global, and have agents in every country and to maintain a startling air of immediacy and relevance.

Compare their reach and impact to the communist extremists who also had a global agenda and the difference is frightening.

I have right wing Christians in my bacefook feed. I'm often left wondering, do they know what they're saying? Is this a fantasy or an alternate reality they're describing? The words are the same as you get from crackpot Islamists but how many would take it to the next level?

Most of their frustrations are caused by young women, or the lack thereof, if they were getting laid they wouldn't have time to kill people.
In this case "fuck 'em" is not a dismissal, but the solution.
C'mon girls, for your community, for your country. :haha:

Ha!

Every time that happens here we are told it is a simple and obvious gun control issue.

Or bullying.
Or mental health infrastructure.
Or many other root cause discussions.

It think you'd be hard pressed to find a school shooting where coverage didn't include more than gun control.

Gun control is about harm reduction; it's a different topic from root causes. Both harm reduction and root causes should be addressed. You're never going to do well enough on root causes to prevent all incidents, and you're never going to reduce the damage from any incidents to the point where root causes are moot.

And here we have the real problem: left-wing elites bullying well-intentioned patriots with troublesome nuance.

JUST LET ME BE MAD AT A SIMPLE PROBLEM SO I CAN YELL IT AWAY.

You're both making good points, but only one of you is talking about stuff that can improve the situation.

That's one way to look at it, but have you considered that if Liberals would just SHUT UP, all the problems would just go away by themselves? You know, like problems do.

Could it be that suicide bombers expecting to get 72 virgins in heaven are now selecting venues where they can choose some virgins to take along with them?

Oh I forgot you were here! See you in July, everyone.

Have any of you ever considered that if you quit separating yourselves according to left, right, liberal, conservative and focus on fixing the goddamn problems you're bitching about, instead of looking for whom to blame it on, or who the reason is we can't fix it, or who caused it and why, or why we should fix it this way and not your stupid, retarded way, that something might actually get done?

This why I refrain from politics, and it's why I hate people.

Yeah. I have. I try to be mindful of the more important ideas and not just the shiny / loud / popular ideas. I have some success. I definitely have room for improvement.

It's also often the case that the right thing to do / right way to view an issue is also satisfying. Sometimes it's right to call out the other side and challenge them on the facts.

I don't hate or love politics. I accept the fact that political considerations are often unavoidable. Sometimes they're present but merely in the way. Sometimes they're part of the problem, maybe a big part.