Terrorism Begins at Home

Watching Good Morning America whilst burning off some anxiety this morning, I saw the story of an older politician and his young girlfriend. Apparently, things didn't work out between them, so he had her killed, then went to a cemetery and slit his own wrists. Tragic story, but missing a key component: it wasn't reported as terrorism.

There were warning signs, apparently;  a pretty clear agenda by this psychopath, and he carried them out even further than anyone would have suspected. Next, this horrible story is carried nationwide on the major networks, which reminds us that anyone can snap at any time. Classic terrorism.

We don't hear about the heroic, coalition-building efforts of a senator that passes a droll bill to curb corporate pollution, but we do hear every bit of information on a politician who killed his girlfriend. It's not a shock to me that people in other countries think we're crazy. We kill our own fairly frequently. Our representatives are just as dangerous as their constituents.


Somehow, we're able to live with street gangs in our towns. Police do their best to curtail gang impact, but in general, we just know it's a part of our society that probably won't go away. On occasion, gang activity spills into the civilian world, and someone innocent dies. I've not seen the same fervor toward eradicating gangs as I have around "terrorism". In fact, we hardly ever see gang activity equated with terrorism, and it's the very definition. The main difference is that the Latin Kings have not openly stated that they want to bring down the U.S., I guess.

We go through weeks or months where a neighborhood is terrorized by a mugger or rapist before he's caught. That's terrorism.

Gacy, Kaczynski, McVeigh, Klebold, Kazmierczak, Rader (and plenty more) - all domestic terrorists. Worse yet, like with the politician, we see every grisly detail of the murders, the murderers' lives, and how helpless each victim was. Terrorism depends a lot on PR. 

I guess this post came up after hearing the debate on whether profiling should be allowed for security measures. What would that profile be? Would it include "pasty white nerd"? How is that even remotely American?