Terrorism, Intolerance and Polarization

I was staring at a photo of a 17 year old girl and her husband now dead in Russia. He was killed in Chechnya in December and she was a suicide Bomber in Moscow last week. The photo of the two of them felt like they both were very much in love with each other and in love with an extreme ideology because they were both holding guns in the photo. Her burka did not hide her face and her love and ideology was clear in her face. Now they are both dead, he in December and she as a suicide bomber in Moscow. I don't know their history other than the likely fact that both were Islamic and from Chechnya.

I thought about this last night and realized something important. Extreme Terrorism creates extreme polarization in all factions. So when one side embarks upon terrorism it forces all the more extreme and paranoid of their enemies to become terrorists of one sort or another. So, I realized that terrorism of any group creates terrorists within the opposing group or groups.

Over the last 20 years, for example, we have seen a polarization unlike anything except what we saw during the cold war. There really is no logic to it at all. It is all about paranoia. And Paranoia takes the western world only towards bankruptcy. We may already be there in a de facto way.

For example, if I think about what is the opposite of Islamic Terrorism in the western world? I immediately come up with some of the guests on Fox News in the U.S. Now there are those of you who might think this is a good thing. However, I see it only as a way for a whole lot of people to die on both sides without anything at all really being accomplished.

I see the paranoid on both sides as products of child abuse both real and institutionalized through hundreds and thousands of years. I suppose one way to look at this is just natural selection and that those who are just too paranoid on both sides will kill or maim each other eventually and both ends will be removed from the world's gene pool.

So, those of us who see the value of education, sanity and even tolerance worldwide hopefully will prevail whereas the most extreme and paranoid on both sides likely will cancel each other out.  And this works only if one side or the other doesn't get a hold of nuclear weapons and use them.