The New Face of Terrorism

[Geee]

American Spectator:

There is something very disconcerting about the faces of the five young men arrested in Cleveland last week for planning to blow up a bridge on a federal highway. Ordinarily we're accustomed to seeing the faces of bearded Middle Easterners with some kind of turban on their heads and malevolence in their eyes. Instead, these were home-grown Americans. Granted one had a weird hairdo and they all looked pretty scruffy, but it wasn't anything you wouldn't encounter in your average grunge band.

If this is the new face of terrorism, we're in big trouble. And it seems very likely. You see lots of the same type among the crowd at Occupy Wall Street crowd or in those fanatical environmental groups that chain themselves to a grove of trees or burn down a luxury condominium. (In fact, these five were first tailed by police after talking anarchist violence at Occupy Cleveland.) There's a kind of helpless fanaticism to all these young men, as if the world is stacked against them and only the wildest act of desperation can have any impact.

America seems to be producing a lot more of these types today. My guess is that most of them have grown up without fathers and seem to have no connection with any adult male. The world of Father Knows Best is unknown to them. They're angry at not having role models but they've also incorporated their divorced mothers' jaundiced view of the world of men. In terms of personal and social roles, they have nowhere to go.

Ordinarily you would hope such wayward youth would eventually find themselves, settle down, get married and raise a family. But we no longer live in that kind of world. We've already had one Fight Club generation, "raised by women" as the Brad Pitt character put it, and it looks like we're headed for another by default. These young men are not very good marriage material. Television watching and video games are their major vocation. They haven't done well in school -- but then most boys never did. In the old days, however, there was always a factory job or outdoor work that offered the possibility of making a living. These jobs no longer exist. Unless they have a father or an uncle who's in some father-and-son labor union, they're out of luck. They're the kind of whom their girlfriends will say, when they finally gets pregnant and decide they don't want to get married, "it would be like having another child."

[Valin]

Ordinarily you would hope such wayward youth would eventually find themselves

 

Oh they're gonna find themselves

Say hello to your guide

[nickydog]

Oh, no! That is disconcerting to see my name on his neck!

[RandyM]

Oh, no! That is disconcerting to see my name on his neck!

 

Then I'm glad it's you he's looking at and not me!!

[Casino67]

Oh, no! That is disconcerting to see my name on his neck!

 

If you keep running with those crowds, you are going to get admirers.