FTT Off-Topic: Giving Terrible People What They Want

Not sports, big Internet, yada yada. You know the drill.

So with yesterday's latest proof that People Are Terrible (in re the attacks in Paris), the following terrible things have been said. By any number of people in your and my social feed, and by people that get airtime on the media, and so on.

1) That this proves that people who believe that anything other than Being At War isn't the most important thing ever.

Look, I get that we seem to think that if we just kill the right people, everything will be fine. But we've got a very large sample set of data that says that this just makes more of the right people. At the core of things, if we heat up the planet to the point where everyone is knee deep in what used to be ice, that's actually a bigger problem than if some criminals kill some people.

2) That this proves that gun control is wrong wrong wrong, and if only everyone were pistol packing bad asses, we'd have a lot of dead bad guys and steely eyed good guys having celebratory beers over their dead bodies.

Movies and television shows are not documentaries, you twerps. When you give civilians deadly force, even the ones who use their weapons routinely and might actually have tolerable aim, it gets much worse, because they tend to shoot each other, and give the authorities many more active shooters to consider. This is why, even with yesterday's count, the US makes the rest of the world look like sad little puppies when it comes to to death by firearm. Also, why the rest of the world has absolutely no interest in being more like us on this count.

3) That this proves how Border Security is the be-all and end-all for fixing the problem. (Whatever problem you like, really.)

Refugees did not flee into a country, then decide to arm up and mass murder. Refugees, as a base rule of thumb, are running the hell away from people who arm up and mass murder.

4) That this proves that Muslims are The Worst, and only Brave People are willing to say this, because The Media are all raging left wingers.

No one has done more to harm the day to day life of Muslims than these asshats who call themselves Muslims. You know, the same way that no one has done more to harm the public image of Christians than the asshats who somehow bridge those beliefs with a KKK hood, or the political belief that America would be all better if we just Operation Wetbacked an eight figure amount of people over the border.

Oh, and if the media are all raging left wingers, then why are they all consolidated monopolies with relentless profit motives who don't spend their days railing against all of the stuff that you never hear about, outside of drum circles?

5) That this proves that we need to have boots on the ground in Pick Your Favorite Country We So Need To Invade, with or without the approval of anyone else in the world.

Here's a fun fact: military adventures cost money. A lot of it, actually. So, for that matter, does paying for the impact of climate change, and the healthcare of returning veterans, and honestly, there's very few things that I'd rather spend my tax dollars on then taking care of a veteran for the rest of their life. I'd rather they, well, did not need health coverage for the rest of their life. Maybe from not being involved in a military adventure in the first place.

Beyond the economics, there's this: why do you want to give the Terrible People who did this exactly what they want? How the terrorists win -- and make no bones about this, they are going to win a lot from this week's events -- is to create a world in which everyone who lives in their part of the world sees things as The West Vs. Islam. Which is what Boots on the Ground causes. Every goddamned time. For 14+ years after 9/11, because Nation Building never works, because everyone knows that's just Christmas for contractors. And by contractors, I mean war profiteers. You can do that by making schools and gas stations, just as easy as you do with weapons.

Here's what actually works when dealing with criminals: treating them like criminals. Not nations, not mystic bogeymen, not indicative of any greater movement or consideration. Just criminals. Take away the money they need to commit crimes -- say, maybe from energy diversification that would drain the entire terrible area of the oil money that fuels all of this while also helping to drive the climate change -- and start capturing them while they are alive. Stop martyring them, putting them in secret super special prisons, or stamping their express passport to the afterlife with the virgins. Oh, and stop pretending that killing them with remote control robots, while you kill lots of other people around them, is going to do anything more than make more asshats.

(Tangent: have you ever had sex with a virgin, and how did it compare to relations with someone who actually knew what they were doing? I've been fortunate enough to sample from both consumer groups, and let me tell you, Experienced Was Way Better. Moving on.)

If and when you can lock these asshats up, and give them decades of dullness, the way you should for people that show themselves incapable of living with other people... well, then no one wants to be like them. Even idiots, and even people without anything more to live for, and even people who are dumb enough to see other people as just stuff they can shoot in the pursuit of some asshat belief.

Treating criminals as criminals isn't easy. It doesn't lead to exciting visuals. It doesn't make you look as He-Man Rough And Tough as the people who want to treat them like the greatest threat to civilization ever, until we get Bogeymen 2.0 next week.

It just works. A hell of a lot better than the idiot things we've been doing for the past 15 years.

And, in all likelihood, what we're going to do more of real soon.

Because that's the thing about Terrible People.

No faith, area, or part of the world has a monopoly on them.

And when you do what they want you to do, terrible things happen.

Over and over and over...