The making of a Terrorist

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People ask all the time what it must be like to be the parent, former teacher, wife, or girlfriend or former classmate of a Terrorist like Timothy McVeigh...

I tell them this.

What's it like to be a parent period ?
What's it like to be a teacher period ?
What's it's it like to be a spouse period ?
What's it like to be a sibling, period ?
What's it like to have friends in school, period ?
What's it like to go to school ?

The reality is, there is no difference.
Classrooms are filled with both future cops and their future arrestees.

Childhood is the past of everybody.

But a few differences can be there, not with the future terrorist...
But with the parents.

The path to creating a Terrorist, is not books on bomb making and instructions to carry out attacks...
It's much more subtle than that.

It starts with a parent, who tells a child concepts that are both false...
Are not there in society, and has no official merit and never has had any merit.

For example, a father who is a fireman, who works for the government...
Who spent years in an all white firehouse which is illegal...
Gets a gets a black coworker... Who may not not have scored as high as a white competitor..
But the black guy got the job..

The father comes home huffy and puffy about it..

And starts talking a bunch of anti government crapola, about how the government is supposedly turning its back on American values...
That equal outcomes to equal effort should not exist..
That America all about doing your best, and facing competition..


Here's what what is wrong with that scene..

First of all, a kid doesn't understand what is America or what any other society is about...

And the father is filling the kids head with lies right from the word go...
Also the kid doesn't understand complicated political concepts, and social and economic systems.

The lie told to a kid, that the black guy got a free ride just because he's black...
While he's held to highest standards..

And then telling the kid that it's okay to create a racial caste system..

Creates the adult Nazi, creates the terrorist..

Because the kid turns into an Adult that hates America, hates the people in it...
And doesn't understand the truth about America...
That America is not about division and conquest and caste systems...
But about Equal Teatment and Equal Opportunity.



So bottom line...
Don't go home huffy and puffy about work and workplace politics.
If you don't like...
Leave.

Another scenario...

Telling kids a falsehood that they're allowed to walk around armed to the teeth...
That's somehow their second amendment right...

This is a falsehood, and when the laws are enforced...
It creates a Terrorist out of the guy who falsely thinks that his rights are being violated.


It all goes down to this..

Big mouth parents who don't explain things, who rant and rave to children who doesn't understand...
And doesn't know..
And takes everything literally.

Period..

That's how terrorists are made.

I heard a saying once:

One person's terrorist is another persons freedom fighter.

Maybe McVeigh's parents nursed him on him anti-government propaganda. Didn't McVeigh say he blew up that building and killed all those people cause he believed that it would inspire some sort of righteous overthrow of the US government? I know of people who actually applauded what he did as some kind of twisted vote of no-confidence and seriously thought he was some kind of hero.

Personally, I think he was a nut-job, an arseh*ole and a mass murderer and earned his death sentence.

The following is a brief summary of salient points extracted from A Case Study -- Why People Turn to Terrorism.  (World Politics in the 21st Century, 1st ed., by W. Raymond Duncan, Barbara Jancar-Webster, and Bob Switky, Chapter 10.)

1. There is no such thing as a "typical" terrorist.

2. The actual backgrounds of terrorists is complex: (a) Some terrorists may be poor, mentally unstable, or criminals who also engage in violent political-oriented activity; (b) Some terrorists are educated and come from middle-class or well-to-do backgrounds; and (c) Many terrorist leaders come from middle or upper classes and have trained in technical fields, but their followers tend to be working-class dropouts.

3. Terrorists may or may not be motivated by a religious ideology.

4. The crusading terrorist is neither a dummy nor a fool, neither a coward nor weakling.  Instead, the crusading terrorist is frequently a professional, who is well-trained, well-prepared, and well-disciplined in the habit of blind obedience.

5. Certain characteristics make terrorist movements attractive to individuals.  All terrorist movements require three components, (a) Alienated individuals, (b) A complicit society or community, and (c) A legitimizing ideology.

6. Terrorists initially motivated by a "universal revolutionary creed" can continue terrorist activities for more mundane reasons.  While many terrorists are driven by some passion, terrorism can actually become a career as well.  For some, the mission changes from idealism as terrorists become more interested in money, political power, status, or attention.