What does it matter what we label radical religious extremists?

Let’s take the power away from terrorists. Let’s stop giving their twisted versions of their so-called religious beliefs any sway over our lives. It’s never made much sense to me that we treat terrorists any different than common mass murderers. Who cares what we call it? The simple fact is that if you’re dumb enough to think the asshole who shot up the Orlando nightclub represents all Muslims you have deep, psychological and emotional issues because that is pure, generalized bullshit and you know it.

I’m sick and tired of the semantic argument over which phrase is better because the simple fact is the barbarians carrying out these attacks are supposed to be the ones who care about the religious aspects of their motivations. The rest of us shouldn’t view terrorists as any different than Ted Bundy, or Richard Ramirez or John Wayne Gacy. Because at the end of the day, what possible difference does it make what the motivations were, seriously?

If someone said, “I’m inspired to kill 50 gay people because I eat Cap’n Crunch cereal every day,” that would be fucking lunacy right? Well, there’s really no difference between that and “I’m inspired to kill 50 gay people because I read the Koran every day,” or “I read the Bible every day and so I feel inspired to write laws about where trans people are allowed to poop.”

See what I did there?

To listen to conservatives, like my favorite Dildo Wielding Clown, Will Ricciardella, who helps run the super-duper biased right-wing bullshit Facebook page with the most ironic title ever, Unbiased America, you’d think that literally just saying the words “radical Islam” would solve the problem of terrorism. Because apparently to DWC’s like Ricciardella the world operates on the Beatlejuice principle. Just say something three times and magic happens.



I truly don’t see the point in classifying terrorism as anything other than common criminal activity. It’s when we start giving this murderous psychopaths mythical powers and heighten their profiles that we start behaving in a state of group panic, feeding right into what they want. These people want us to be so freaked out by them that it destroys not only our way of life, but everyone’s way of life. But I wonder all the time why we don’t treat terror cells like organized crime and just let regular law enforcement run its course.





Look at the asshole Boston Bomber brother who actually survived. He was brought in, arraigned and convicted within the normal auspices of judicial due process. The War on Terror seems to me like a nod to our War on Drugs. We use boogey man language and then scare people into being okay with absolutely obliterating our civil liberties in the pursuit of so-called “justice.”

But nothing we do can bring the dead back. All we can really do is make an effort to lessen the chances of more people dying. Asking a clown like me, you’ll get a couple answers as to how to fix this, both of seem really obvious.

Better regulate who gets a gun and how quickly. This is what I call the “Hur Dur” initiative. Because seriously, you don’t have to take away guns to make sure new gun purchases are as sound as possible. Stop bombing people for peace. Stop drone striking wedding parties in pursuit of one terrorist. Start using resources and assets smartly, in a more surgical and targeted way. Get warrants Work with international policing agencies. You know, make an effort not to look like cowboy dipshits in general in an effort to make us the sympathetic figures we want to be.

You know what won’t ever solve this problem of terrorism though? Either generalizing about all Muslims being evil or pretending as if religious beliefs can’t be perverted and that there are a very small minority of Muslims who do in fact want to murder the world. The simple truth is that any ideology, when taken to an extreme and given room to foment hate, can become what ISIS and Al Qaeda are. Just ask the Ku Klux Klan.

Let’s just be real — the level of anti-gay sentiment within your average red state is not much different than the hate that drove that bastard to murder in Orlando. In fact, considering the shooter was an American citizen, one could just as easily argue that some Americans’ attitudes toward the LGBT community had just as much, if not more, to do with his rampage than his religion did. Oh, and if the Gawker piece is true and he was basically a closeted “thou doth protest too much” type, then we’re right back at the point in the road where hardcore Islamic and hardcore Christian people share the same backwards, ruthless beliefs that LGBT people are less than human.

Whether or not President Obama, Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump use whatever magical phrase conservatives think they need to in order to win the War on Terror is irrelevant, really. We don’t live in a world where simply classifying something means a damn thing, other than to those who can twist any turn of phrase around into the propaganda they want it to be, and that is not a problem that only presents itself with radical religious extremists of any denomination.