Melbourne Attack: Cognitive Dissonance in Democracy Does Not Protect Us From ISIS-Inspired Christmas
Why is it that Western democratic governments and their security forces try to downplay the terrorist threat that so imperils our democracies? Is it wishful thinking? Is it an attempt to not over react to the threat? Is it dogma that Sunni Islamic terror only occurs as a group activity and not by the individual or so-called ‘lone wolf?’ Or is it just plain ignorance about terrorism and the challenges that it presents to democratic institutions? Whatever the cause of the apparent cognisant dissonance, every time government says, ‘no, it is not a terrorist attack’ they lose the confidence of the very public that they are sworn to protect and that knows otherwise.
Take for example, the latest Islamic State (ISIS)-inspired terror attack in Melbourne, Australia. A 32-year-old Australian of Afghan origin drives a vehicle into a crowd of people and injures 19 innocents in a busy center of town shopping district. The individual is arrested by police and found talking about Allah and complaining about the treatment of Muslims. Nearby, police detain another man filming the event and carrying a bag with three knives in it presumably getting ready to ‘collect for the Red Cross.’ So far, Australian authorities say that there is no link to terror, and no link between the two detained men. Australian authorities were also quick to point out that the attacker had drug dependency issues and mental health concerns to getting at motive, never mind the religious motivations he uttered as he was detained.
It would be easy, I suppose, to call this something other than terror had ISIS not threatened attacks in major Western cities over the holiday period, and even threatened to go after Christian families in their homes. You would also have to ignore several other busted Australian terror plots that center on Christmas and New Years Day. Or the recent terror attack in New York where the bomber was angered by Christmas and inspired by ISIS. As well as today’s plot in California busted by the FBI where the ISIS-inspired terrorist planned a shooting rampage at Pier 29 in San Francisco. Those random busted terror plots in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Russia all centered on the Christmas holiday season would also have to be generally ignored as part of a trend and ISIS Christmas season offensive. Thus, at the end of the day, with cognitive dissonance at its height, you could ignore facts, trends, calls for Christmas terror attacks and actual attacks themselves, to conclude that Melbourne is not terror-related, but the only people fooled by these charades are the blinded and gagged democratic authorities that promote them. Sadly, the rest of us know the truth.
The rest of us, at these terror attacks and simply posit ‘what else could it be.’ We can find all kinds of excuses like our friends in democratic society who suffer from cognitive dissonance, but at the end of the day, we know what it is, we know it is Islamic-inspired terrorism. We know that this holiday season, very sadly, is going to be a bloody one.
