Side Track

I'm halfway through the Bill of Rights, but I have to take a moment to comment on Brussels.  Congratulations Belgium, you have now joined the club that no one wants to join.  It's sort of like the parents who have lost children club or the HIV positive club, it's utter crap, but once you're in you just need to learn to deal with it.
Let me just say Belgium, that you're really like the last country I thought would be joining this list.  I mean, who is next? Amsterdam? Switzerland?  Seriously, these ISIS clowns are now just picking on the little kids on the block.  Seriously, maybe Lichtenstein or Monaco is more your size you band of festering rapist bullies.
You know what? I'm tired of treating Daesh like a serious thing, I think treating them like a serious thing is counterproductive.  The more seriously we take them, the more our fear builds up, the more power they have over us.  So let's take stock here, the basic reality is that we are not going to be able to defend the entire civilized world from these goat-buggering fools, because they are terrorists and cowards and they attack theaters and trains stations and airports, and places where normal people do normal things, and they can look like normal people doing normal things, but with bombs and guns under their windbreakers and in their fanny packs.
Also, everybody hates these guys already, everybody condemns these perfidious anal warts already.  Muslims, Jews, Christians, Atheists and Hindus alike, all say that Daesh is scum, even the Buddhists and probably the Hare Krishnas think they deserve to be cast off of the wheel of existence, but here's the thing, hate feeds them.  Fear makes them strong.  If we let our hate and fear run us, they win.
We have to be better than they are, and I'm not talking about military might.  There is no doubt in my mind that we could, with the proper exercise of political will and military strategy, utterly destroy Daesh, wipe them off of the face of the earth.  We could do it without using nukes, or we could just take that shortcut.  Whatever, we've got the muscles, but guess what?  If we do that we lose.  We lose our humanity, we have let the subhuman filth of Daesh take our humanity, and that will not easily grow back.
In case you can't tell, I would like to spit on Daesh, but they're probably not worth the saliva.
The internet is exploding with the same sort of impotent rage and hopeful but useless platitudes about thoughts and prayers and such.  Here's an idea, let's take away their platform.  Let's not call them anything anymore, not ISIS, not ISIL, not even Daesh (which I understand they don't like), let's not allow them to take credit for this stuff anymore.
Let's pay attention and report what really matters: people died today in Brussels Belgium as the result of a bomb.  People were shot in a theater in France in November.  Lives ended tragically and senselessly. Deal with that, don't pretend that knowing who did it or why makes any difference.  It doesn't, treat it like an earthquake or a tsunami: a tragedy.  Let's treat them as an inhuman problem, because they are exactly that: inhuman.
I'm not saying they're a different species, I'm saying that they have given up any claim to basic humanity.  Their actions cannot be justified by the rules of their own religion, or by their political aims, or by their suffering and poverty, they have gone way past that line and become sadists and psychopaths.  They are profoundly immoral by the standards of Islam.  They are brutal to everyone in their path, even the ones with whom they used to share racial, ethnic and national identities.  They have left behind almost every marker that would identify them as a part of the human race, every bond of fellowship and commonwealth has been abandoned for rabid hatred and brutal violence.
My greatest fear is not that we will suffer more savagery at the hands of these cretinous deposits of phlegm, we certainly will.  My greatest fear is that we will allow them to define us, and suck us into the primordial ooze of hatred and violence, and we will become like them.
To defeat them, we must remain better than them, we cannot take the fight to their level, because once we go there, we have lost.  When we commit to the killing of innocents, even if we call it collateral damage, we have lost.  When we lash out in anger and fear, we have lost.  When we torture and violate human rights, we have lost.  When we distrust our neighbors because of their race or their religion, we have lost.  If this enemy drags us into any of those situations, they will have won, even if we succeed in wiping them off of the face of the earth.