Trump Assisted Suicide of Liberalism

“If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress.”

-Barack Obama 

November 7^th 2016. 9pm EST
Obama won two terms and now Hillary is set to take the mantle from him. After electing the first black President, we are on the verge of making history with the first woman to occupy the Oval Office.

She will continue his legacy in this post-racial, post misogynist America. An America where success means “rethinking conventional ideas about masculinity.” And one where “men must resign themselves to working in “pink collar jobs”. An America where climate change is considered a far greater threat to life than Muslim terrorists mowing down nightclub revelers.

In this new America, we don’t take issue with the President circumventing Congress to pass far reaching legislation using executive power, or pushing it through the Senate without any bi-partisan support, because we know the President is a good man.

We justify these overreaches because the evil Republican Party has repeatedly dug in and refused to co-operate with him, simply because of the colour of his skin. And we have no concern with the Democratic Party's ignoring of long-held House and Senate conventions because they will always have a majority.

Who needs debate, discussion, diverse viewpoints and going through the hard work of consensus building to convince ardent and vocal opponents? These quaint and old-fashioned notions of democracy are no longer needed because it is clear to that the good people are in power and in their hands government must be trusted blindly.

We now trust our leaders with opaque domestic surveillance programs, increasingly frequent extra-judicial killings and the use of drones in Muslim majority and sovereign nations. The collateral damage caused by drone strikes is no longer reported or discussed in the media because the civilians being killed are being murdered in the name of good. Bush and Cheney’s drone operations were killing civilians in the name of evil.

We are laughing at the golden maned reality TV star who is upending the Republican Party. The media cannot get enough of Trump. They cover everything he says and does, every second of every minute, of every day - at the expense of all other news and world events.

Can you blame them? It is Trump’s fault for making it so easy for us to stand on our liberal-utopian pedestals and look down mockingly at the ignorance and stupidity of his followers.

Every off-colour comment and misogynistic statement is covered, scrutinised and analysed by panels of pundits on every TV channel, and then made available on the internet for a lifetime of public display. What harm could come of this – we know that nobody will actually vote for this buffoon. The mainstream media can have their clicks and eat it too.

The media are reveling in the fact that they can garner reality TV ratings for “news”. There is no longer need to waste money and precious resources on fact checking, or even verify sources before publishing stories. The media’s singular focus on Trump means they cannot waste ink on less important issues, such as the Obama administration's statement about the Russian government hacking the Democratic National Committees’ email servers.

No, “grabbing pussy” is a far more serious and weighty issue - more important than Putin trying to circumvent American democracy. We all know that Russian hacking stories cannot deliver the same clicks that grabbing pussy does – c’mon!

There is no need to waste energy dispatching reporters to investigate allegations of wrongdoing within the Clinton foundation because we know that they are good people. Unlike Trump, they save lives and have championed women’s rights. As for Bill’s minor transgressions, all those years ago, does anyone even remember the names of the women whose lives were so publicly destroyed?

Turn on any TV channel and Trump is on 24 hours a day. He also graces the front page of every respected newspaper and magazine; why not make hay while the mane shines!

It is fun to see Trump make Republicans like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio squirm and get into uncivil shouting matches and arguments about their manhood on the debate stage. This will be doubly priceless because Trump will destroy what is left of the evil Republicans by the time he is done. Not even Hollywood could have scripted this election.

This is so easy that Hillary doesn’t even need to waste time and energy crafting a campaign platform or coherent message for the electorate. There is no need for her to traverse the country shaking sweaty palms and hugging working class folks. She can simply stand on her coastal pedestal and reach out to connect with Americans by just simply bashing Trump. He has made Hillary’s long overdue coronation all but certain. 

American liberals are on a righteous path, and we already know that population trends favour our enlightened way of life. We would be remiss not proclaim that we are within touching distance of the land John Lennon imagined, right before he was so violently murdered. As for the small, ignorant minority of Americans who reside in the heartlands and support Trump – well, once Hillary wins they will fall into line, be drowned out, or will naturally die out.

In any case, nobody wants to listen to uneducated and ignorant bigots; especially since erudite and intellectually endowed minds on both the coasts are now in charge of the mainstream media, Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Wall Street, and are firmly leading the enlightened Americans to the Promised Land.

Just look at how well Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea have done by quashing all debate, discussion and alternate points of view. Just imagine an America without conservative viewpoints, religious backwardness or diverse and competing ideas.

We are on the brink of a golden age of liberalism. Tonight we shall sleep like babies and wake up on the morning of 8^th November with a big smile on our faces.

Bill Clinton is a genius for having convinced Donald Trump to run…sleep tight.

 

Four Dangers to Democracy Greater than President Trump

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." 
John Adams 

John Adams words are prescient for what is transpiring in America today. I understand that people are genuinely scared of Trump and while some of those fears are nonsensical, like comparing him with Hitler, others are genuine and based on his own words, bombastic tweets and wildly erratic behaviour. Yet, despite these realities we cannot ignore the fact that he is still the democratically and freely elected President of the United States of America.

For all the never Trumpers, it is important to remember that our system of checks and balances is designed to withstand the shock of rogue actors (not to prevent one from being elected) and we must put our faith in democracy to curtail Trump whenever he strays, but never break rules to fight him; or we will just play into his hands and prove his refrain that the rules are changed when liberals do not get the outcomes they desire.

So it is really important that no matter what people think of him personally, or how much they fear his actions, that we never circumvent due process, bypass checks and balances or colour outside the lines of democracy (especially when he does) in a bid to foil him, because our actions will have grave consequences and weaken our democracy for the long-term.

At the moment, I am seeing four dangerous trends, behaviours and precedents being adopted by the Democratic Party and the so called liberal “resistance” to Trump, and they must stop. The end result of continuing down these paths damages our democracy far more than any errant President can in four years.

One: Rogue Government Employees

When the parks department sent out a tweet showing larger crowds at Obama’s historic inauguration in 2008 versus Trump’s in 2017, most people viewed this as an innocuous act or laughed at Trump’s expense. However, what was at issue was not a single errant tweet but that of breaking a sacred rule – one where a government agencies should never show a partisan face in public. In the days after, we saw a slew of rogue twitter accounts springing up from within government agencies, from the EPA to NASA, that were clearly designed to humiliate Trump’s administration. The problem with this behaviour is that it compromises the integrity of each agency for the long-term by putting a doubt in people’s minds about government employees' abilities to do their jobs, irrespective of which party is in power.

Second, the manner in which Sally Yates (the acting Attorney General) acted was also wrong. First, let me be clear that I fully agree with Ms. Yates stance against President Trump’s ill-conceived travel ban, but my issue is the way in which she took action. The professional thing for her to do would have been to resign.

She had every right to protest the order by resigning, but it was wrong for her to refuse to fulfil her job responsibilities. By doing this, and even more worryingly, by ordering her subordinates not to do their jobs, she signaled to all Justice department staff that they too are free to disobey direct orders based on personal or partisan whims, rather than expected to always act in a professional manner and follow protocols.

We must consider the flip-side of government employees taking unilateral actions that disobey direct orders. For the short period that President Trump’s travel ban was in effect, there were numerous reports of US Customs agents harassing and detaining people that were not covered under the order. Like Ms. Yates did, these men and women might also justify their unprofessional behaviour and rule breaking as a moral obligation to protect the nation and keep all Americans safe.

We also saw a senior Secret Service agent publicly post that she did not want to take a bullet for the President because she supported Hillary Clinton. Imagine what would happen if police across the country started to behave in the same manner (the majority of local law enforcement supported Trump) and decided that they do not want to intervene when a riot broke out in a Democrat leaning district; this is a very slippery slope. Government employees going rogue, acting insubordinately and refusing to do their jobs, rather than using proper and professional protocols of redress must never be excused or condoned on either side.

Two: Loss of Credibility of the Fourth Estate 

There is little doubt after the last election that the majority of the mainstream media skews liberal and favours democrats. We can argue this but all you need do is look at the sources all liberals use to make their arguments on social media and you will find the usual suspects.

That there is some bias in the media is not an issue; all publications lean one way or another. The issue arises when respectable mainstream media outlets go out of their way to play judge and jury, and do it through a blindly partisan and subjective lens. This is NOT the job of the media. We rely on them to hold a mirror up to society by reporting the facts, and to do so objectively after taking the time to verify the credibility of their sources.

 At the moment, we have a new leak from deep within the government almost every day. These leaks are suspiciously designed to embarrass Trump’s administration or target a particular official within it, and all conveniently cite ‘unnamed sources’. I am not defending Trump or his combative relationship with the media, but no matter how a President behaves, it is still the duty of the fourth estate to rise above juvenile and vindictive behaviour and to fairly and accurately investigate, find and follow the facts of every story. This is the only way the media can start to regain their credibility and, more importantly, hold the President accountable for all his actions. Otherwise they will continue to be seen by a growing majority as part of the rigged and corrupt system that Trump says they are.

It is most certainly NOT the job of the media to fill their pages with conjecture, baseless and hysterical opinion pieces, stories supported entirely by unnamed sources and “unverified facts” and even total falsehoods. The media seems to have forgotten that the biggest loser of the last year’s election was not Hillary Clinton but the mass media. Gallup found that “Americans' trust and confidence in the mass media "to report the news fully, accurately and fairly" has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history…”  

While there is no question that sites like Fox news and MSNBC are heavily biased and driven by political agendas, at least the majority of Americans trusted venerable institutions like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal because they upheld basic ethical standards in their reporting. Now these institutions are further eroding the scant trust Americans have in them by behaving like hysterical children. If they don’t start doing their jobs and once more act as the credible bridge for both sides by focusing on and ascertaining all the facts, they will be responsible for destroying a crucial check and balance and seriously weakening our democracy.

Three: Abuse of State Apparatus

If you followed the sequence of events that led to the resignation of Michael Flynn, the facts clearly show that someone high up in the government leaked highly classified information to the Washington Post. The Post first published the article about Flynn possibly being compromised based on a “… call and subsequent intercepts, FBI agents wrote a secret report summarizing ­Flynn’s discussions with Kislyak.” 

It may well be that Flynn is compromised but that is not the issue; what is concerning is what Eli Lake points on Bloomberg News about the leak itself: “Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets. This is for good reason. Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity. This is what police states do.” Once again this is another example of a very dangerous precedent being set in a fundamentally misguided haste by Obama era appointees to take down Trump’s administration.

As it turns out Flynn did not break any law and the FBI has confirmed that they don't believe Flynn intentionally misled them during an interview last month and they are not going to press charges. So it would seem that the media furore that led to Mr. Flynn’s resignation was an orchestrated political assassination from people within the government, who selectively leaked highly sensitive information. I am not defending Flynn - he lied and was rightly fired by the President. The point is that again this is a line that should never have been crossed. Once state power is abused and targets individuals, for purely political reasons, there is nothing stopping opponents from doing the same when the tables are turned.

Four: Democrat’s Blind Obstruction vs. Debating Issues

Democrats seem to have a short memory. Until recently they were decrying the Republican Party’s obstructionism during Obama’s tenure and now they are doing exactly the same with Trump. I encourage and expect both sides to challenge every President’s nominees, but it is wrong to attack anyone’s character; as Elizabeth Warren did with Jeff Sessions (and was rightly censured for doing so). I am not a supporter of Mr. Sessions, but Ms. Warren lost my sympathies and respect when she mounted a personal and subjective attack, rather than go after Mr. Session’s record and actions during his tenure in office. There is no excuse for such behaviour; this is the United States Senate, not third grade.

I was equally vehement when the likes of Ted Cruz and Bobby Jindal attacked Obama personally, rather than his record and failed to address policy disagreements with him. John McCain is the only politician in recent times that showed character in refusing to let a woman at his rally personally attack Obama, when running against him in 2008. There can be no room for public personal attacks in politics; it only lowers the standard of discourse, leads everyone into the gutter and ensures that all Americans lose.

Also, Democrats did a great disservice to another check and balance when they permanently changed the rules in the Senate “so that federal judicial nominees and executive-office appointments can advance to confirmation votes by a simple majority of senators, rather than the 60-vote super majority that has been the standard for nearly four decades. “ This is a necessary check to ensure that candidates from both parties are only confirmed after the necessary hearings and debates are held to evaluate and convince a majority of the Senators to support them. This is how democracy works - by driving consensus across the aisle.

Thanks to Democrats, we are now left with a lopsided rule that hacks democracy and allows any party, with a simple majority, to advance their picks without sufficient debate. Such measures are short-sighted and only weaken democracy by removing safeguards designed to protect it.

Finally, the Democrats would do well to remember that “obstructing” is not a winning strategy. The GOP learnt this lesson only after the total annihilation of their party; one that ended with a hostile takeover by Donald Trump. Democrats need to win voters based on the strength of their ideas and not blind obstruction. And this is the only way to succeed because unlike Communism, Capitalism is about ideas, not ideology. If Democrats do not heed this warning, they will suffer the same fate as the GOP did after George W. Bush.

The bottom line is that no matter how people feel about Trump, the election is over, and they have no choice but to abide by the results and live with the consequences for the next four years. That is democracy and there are no exceptions; otherwise, we must stop calling ourselves a democratic society.

For all those who believe that Trump is evil and must be removed from office, they are entitled to their views, but have only two options to get rid of him, one entirely out of their hands. They can vote him out of office in four years and use the mid-terms in two years to elect Democrats to both houses that can curtail his power and stall his legislative agenda.

The other is to wait for Trump to commit a crime that leads to his impeachment and subsequent removal from office; Clinton was impeached but this does not automatically lead to removal from office. There is no other way to get rid of a democratically elected President that does not involve a military coup, which is never good for democracy.

This does not mean we need to rollover and accept everything the President does, or not fight back when his administration strays. We must hold every President to task like we did with Watergate, the Iraq War, domestic surveillance overreach, etc. However, respecting our democracy also means we never simply get to remove a President because we find him distasteful or vehemently disagree with his views – that is anarchy.

 

How the Grand Old Party came to reside in Donald Trump’s Trousers

“I mean, let’s be honest. Who wants to hang out with guys like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich, when you can be with Rush Limbaugh!”
Mitch McConnell, CPAC Speech, February 2009

That was the minority leader of the United States Senate arguably embracing a conspiracy-theory-brewing, hate-spewing right-wing entertainment radio jockey during a speech he gave at one of the most important gatherings of conservatives. A few months prior to the 2010 midterm election, and barely two years into Obama’s first-term he also declared open war when he told the National Journal’s Major Garrett that “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." (Source: Washington Post article).

There has been much consternation among political pundits, outrage from the so-called establishment and heated discussion on Fox News about how Donald Trump has managed to become the front runner in the Republican presidential primary contest. Nobody seems able to understand or explain why he was able to best the Koch brothers and many other powerful and well-funded candidates backed by the party intelligentsia, brain trust and even billionaire donors; Trump even managed to end the run of a powerful dynastic candidate.

That party says he does not represent true conservative values and that they do not support his blatant xenophobia and unabashedly racist comments. They say the that Republicans are not racist and have unequivocally disavowed the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups that have flocked to their party’s front-runner. Yet, nobody has asked that Trump be ex-communicated from the Republican Party. Sure Mitt Romney made a speech lambasting Trump but suggested they try to get to a brokered convention (rather than oust Trump) , and Lindsey Graham has also been launching into Trump, but nobody in the party has come out and said that he has crossed a line and that the party should disown him and let him run as an independent candidate because something bigger than winning an election is at stake. In fact, at the end of the last debate all the candidates on the stage pledged to support Trump if he became the party nominee.

It is not secret that there has long been a vocal minority within the Republican ranks that believes this country has been on an unimpeded road to liberal hell and damnation; dominated by feckless Democrats and lily-livered RINO’s (Republicans in Name Only). This group is blamed for enacting welfare policies and creating a culture of dependency through handouts, slowly destroying the once strong moral and God-fearing social fabric of America.

In the mind of this group, the attacks on 9/11 presented the perfect opportunity, and George W. Bush the perfect patsy, to implement an ultra-conservative agenda. One driven by a strike first and ask questions later foreign policy, and one that was to be followed by an audacious reversal and re-drawing of society and domestic policy to lead us towards the conservative promised land. However, as we all know this dream of a conservative utopia did not quite pan out, or come close to reversing sixty plus years of American policy in Bush’s two terms.

Reeling from the botched and hugely unpopular Iraq war, Bush started to distance himself from Cheney and the Neocons. He began to soften his rhetoric, seeking diplomacy in both North Korea and Iran, and seeking council from Condoleezza Rice over Dick. By the end of his tenure, the Bush presidency not only looked and felt like an unmitigated foreign policy disaster, but Bush had also presided over an unprecedented growth in the size of government, never before seen deficits (financed by borrowing from China), he had championed immigration reform, that would allow current illegals to stay, provided government handouts, the largest corporate bailout in history and even extended unemployment assistance. And there was no more tough talk or threats of war with Iran or any other axis of evil powers.

This betrayal of almost every dearly held conservative principle by Bush led to further disenchantment within the Republican ranks and gave birth to the Tea Party. The Tea Party called itself a grassroots movement and was founded on the promise of being anti-establishment, which was a good thing. However, it quickly became about grandstanding and portraying themselves as anti-government, anti-spending/bailouts/stimulus, anti-immigration and anti-compromise on every major issue, offering an ideological way or the highway.

Initially, the GOP establishment was happy to bring them on board, as it helped them win back the House. Party elders also likely believed they would be able to strong arm the Tea party into submission if they could not find middle ground with them. But on every issue – from reducing size of government, bringing down deficit spending, simplifying the tax code, to reducing personal and corporate tax rates and repealing Obamacare, the Tea party refused to compromise or discuss a jointly agreed path forward. It was clear that their only agenda was to block any hint of compromise with ‘liberals’ and in doing so also hijack the GOP by yanking them much further to the right.

Politics is about compromise; ideology is not. By holding a gun to the establishment GOP, the Tea party really only succeeded in making it the party of ‘NO’ and providing Obama a free pass; even though he has done little to reach out and seek compromise himself. This growing rebellion within the party also forced every GOP presidential candidate to lean further and further to the right in an attempt to appeal to the evangelical and extreme base of the party. 

We saw how John McCain’s VP pick, intended to placate this vociferous and growingly powerful base, turned out. We also saw a once moderately conservative and imminently electable Massachusetts Governor forced to expend considerable time and energy trying to prove that he was conservative enough to his base. Romney even embraced the ridiculous and racist birther controversy, born in conservative talk show land and pushed by Trump at that time.

The GOP welcomed this ideologically driven group into their fold, expecting to tame it, but should have known they were opening Pandora’s Box. There is a reason why not ONE Republican Senator or Congressman endorsed or lent support to Ted Cruz’s candidacy, prior to Donald Trump leading the primary race. Most members of his own party openly show disdain for Cruz’s views, his histrionics and zero-compromise political tactics.

Certainly, the level of vitriol today cannot be blamed entirely on the GOP. The democrats have done nothing to change the tenor of the conversation or offer olive branches; they too resorted to personally attacking Bush and each other in 2008. The result of all this has been eight years of vitriol, no compromises, government shutdowns, a mainstream embracing of conspiracy theories and open attacks on elected leaders character’s, and not their policies. But right now the Democrats do not have a potentially authoritarian demagogue as their leading candidate.

Night after night on Fox News, I have watched the likes of Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs show open disdain for Obama, the man. This while the network has also been routinely whipping up frenzy about terrorism and Muslims; many times with half-truths and even pure falsehoods - like their reporting that many cities in Europe had become Muslim ‘no go zones’ (Source: Washington Post article).  Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana, even mentioned the same blatant lie during his brief and ill-fated run in the GOP primary (Source: Guardian article). A report by 2015 PundiFact found that on Fox and Fox News an alarming “60 percent of the claims checked have been rated Mostly False or worse.”(Source: PolitiFact article).

Republicans have long been playing a dangerous game, while the plight of most working class Americans has continued to worsen in this hi-tech digital economy and world. The party has spent much time and energy trying to block everything Obama did, almost always unsuccessfully, while their base has continued to grow angrier about the loss of jobs, stagnating wages and has continued to become more and more disillusioned with their seeming inaction. Consider that during six of Bush’s eight years, the GOP controlled the House and the Senate (also for the last six years of Clinton’s term). They won back the House after Obama’s first two years in office, and have controlled it for three quarters of his presidency; and they won back the Senate in 2014.

It does not matter that GOP leaders have never used Trump’s blunt language or xenophobic vitriol, but the fact that they have never distanced themselves from the extreme voices within the party and media surrogates like Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter and most of the shows on Fox News makes a difference. Even Rubio has consistently and angrily decried that Obama is willfully and consciously destroying the principles and values that America was built on – and this has the same effect of making the man an enemy, not a political opponent.

So, I for one do not understand why the GOP is now behaving like they are surprised and shocked by the rise of Donald Trump and the immense popularity of Ted Cruz (who is right of Trump on a number of issues). Both men are attracting and energizing the anger within the base, one that the party has quietly and dangerously coddled, ignored and nurtured of extremely conservative, evangelical, angry, non-college educated and predominantly white men.

Trump is merely a manifestation of the cancer the GOP created and then failed to treat. Instead of scratching their heads and feigning ignorance or deluding themselves into believing that they can somehow ‘control’ or work with Trump - they need to disavow him. Even if that means breaking up the party (which is more likely to happen if he wins) and losing the election.

This is a moment in history when a party needs to put country before self. This is not just about another election; Trump has made it about the kind of country America wants to be in the future and the belief and values it holds most dear.

The Enemy in Our Midst

“Fighting terrorism is like being a goalkeeper. You can make a hundred brilliant saves but the only shot that people remember is the one that gets past you.”
Paul Wilkinson

While the Republicans and Democrats continue to expend time and energy fighting and arguing about what to call terrorists. And Conservatives blame misguided left wing political correctness for using soft terminology and for lack of profiling, the world and the profile of the Extremist is being totally re-defined with every new homegrown terrorist being caught in America and abroad. It is becoming increasingly and frighteningly clear that our old rules, profiles and profiling definitions no longer apply. The terrorists are now recruiting and succeeding in creating a totally new breed of monster: people who are virtually impossible to sniff out or detect, most times until they actually commit an act of terror.

In the last year alone, all the men (and a few women) who have been arrested in the act of committing an act of terror, planning one or are already trained and hardened members of Al-Qaeda - not one of them fits the old profile of disenfranchised, poor, uneducated, Muslim and non-American. Omar Hammami, was born to a white Southern Baptist woman from Alabama and a Syrian immigrant father. He had the most normal middle class childhood and upbringing in Daphne, Alabama until he showed up in a Somalia Al-Qaeda terrorist propaganda video one day with his nom de guerre, Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, “the American” (The Jihadist Next Door - New York Times). Bryant Neal Vinas was an altar boy who grew up in a middle class suburb on Long Island, New York, with a passion for baseball and the Mets. His father is from Peru and his mother Argentinean. Vinas was arrested last year in Afghanistan and confessed to being trained and assisting Al-Qaeda in a plan to bomb the Long Island Rail Road. Friends describe Vinas as a sweet, charming, young boy with a kind heart, who was perhaps a little gullible. David Coleman Headley has a wealthy former Pakistani diplomat for a father and a white American Pittsburgh socialite mother. By all accounts he had a very privileged childhood. He lived with his father in Pakistan until the age of 17, when he arrived in the United States to live with his mother. In 1998 he was convicted of smuggling heroin into the US. As part of a deal for a lighter sentence, he agreed to work undercover for the Drug Enforcement Agency, which gave him unfettered access to Pakistan, India and the United States. It is now clear he was training with Lashkar, raising the possibility that he had made contact with militants while still working for the DEA. He has admitted to helping plot the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Bombay, in 2008. Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, better known as the underwear bomber, is the son of a former minister and chairman of First Bank of Nigeria. He lived in a four million dollar apartment in Central London, and was an Engineering student at a prestigious London University. His teacher and friends remember him as model pupil and “very personable boy". Faisal Shahzad, the terrorist who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square is the son of a former Air Force vice marshal and Deputy Director of Civil Aviation in Pakistan. Shazad graduated from the University of Bridgeport, came back to earn a Master’s in the same school, and was working with a marketing and consulting firm as a junior financial analyst. He became a US citizen in 2009 and married a Colorado-born girl with Pakistani parents. They have two children. He is the epitome of the “average student, employee, and neighbour” that litters the suburban American landscape today.

The list goes on, but what is most alarming to me about all of these men is that they have only one thing in common. Not one of them fits into any of our pre-defined categories or profiles that have been established and used by law enforcement for more than two decades for the hard core Jihadist. Yet to consider them anything less would be a foolish mistake. After 9/11 we were all painted a picture of the poverty-stricken, opportunity-less, uneducated Muslim male as the person we should fear most to be a likely terrorist. We were told that these men could be found in poorer cities and villages in Muslim countries. And we were led to believe that the focus was on preventing these men from penetrating our borders, not that they already reside within them. Or the fact they are from upper or upper middle class backgrounds, clean cut, born and bred American and some even non-Muslim. So what the hell happened and how did our governments get it so totally wrong? “There's clearly been an acceleration in radicalization in the United States," said Mitch Silber, the director of intelligence analysis at the New York Police Department. He says that Bryant Neal Vinas and many of these men are “poster children for the process, the unremarkable nature of the people who might go through this process and the potential to link up with al Qaeda and the danger that it presents" (‘The radicalization of an all-American kid’ - CNN). Clearly, the internet has made it much easier for people to access and find Al-Qaeda or radicals around the world and more frighteningly the reverse is also true. There was a long held belief that integration and assimilation of the population was not an issue in the United States as it has been in Europe, but that myth, too, has been shattered by among others the Fort Hood shooter and the Times Square bomber. What is clear is that we are witnessing a totally new phenomenon and one that has caught International law enforcement by surprise. But what is far more frightening to me is that it is seemingly impossible to find a common thread between all of these men or a common motivation to profile them in any meaningful way. Without an understanding of their motivations or the turning or tipping point as it may be, we are totally defenseless to identify these men or track them down until after they have shown the demon within them, which most often is too late.

I leave you to ponder the words of author Michael Marshall from his book, Blood of Angels: “Terrorism isn't James Bond or Tom Clancy. Even Al-Qaeda is looking old school these days---now it's just some guy with a bomb. He walks the same roads as us. He thinks the same thoughts. But he's got a bomb.”