Tsarnaev gets bloody Nick's treatment by today's bolsheviks

It's been impossible not to notice the visceral negative reactions among leftists on social media sites and the like to the recent Rolling Stone cover showing the younger tax-eating terrorist from crapistan who helped set off bombs in Boston. We're talking about marathons in Massachusetts, not skeet shooting in Chattanooga--SWPLs were really upset by the bombings. There just isn't much sympathy for the devil on display for this one. Portraying one of the instigators in such a way was bound to garner a lot of attention, but then again car crashes garner a lot of attention, too, but they're usually not good for the drivers.

Sure, there is perspicacity in the observation that some women are attracted to killers and the attention they receive for being identified as such, and the crapistani is no exception. But let's not lose perspective here--for every one girl who wants his nuts, there are hundreds or thousands who would like to put them in a vise. And in fairness to the ladies, if Nina Dobrev's doppelganger did something this nefarious, how many men would masturbate with her in their heads as they read about and watched the subsequent trial unfold? Because we're sophisticated enough to separate love from lust, though, we'd still be fine with having her hang from a lamppost after we were through with her, unlike the crapistani's aspirants, who would like to spend their energy trying to domesticate him instead! Really, before it becomes ancient history to them, ask some female SWPLs about the punk. The reaction is similar to what you'll get if you ask them about Fred Phelps.

For pundits on the mainstream right (that excludes darkly enlightened, red-pill popping HBDers, of course), this should signal the start of a field day. For one, the incident itself is exactly what the polite right opposed to amnesty and open borders dreams about--terrorist activity committed by a white (nothing racist about our anti-amnesty position!) immigrant who was given the green light to stay in country and then subsequently given naturalized citizenship, both far too easily, who targeted an event leftists love in a city leftists love. Moreover, an iconic, cultural standard-bearer for the degenerate baby-boomer leftist worldview not only lines up on the wrong side of the issue, but is perceived as glamorizing evil incarnate in the process.

Parenthetically, I realize the article isn't hagiographic, but in a world where attention spans max out at around 140 characters, few people are going to get that far, and media types like the editors of RS know this, so that's a risible defense.

Islam's media presence over time

In a Taki's Magazine column, John Derbyshire writes:

Plainly Islam was not, up to 1976, anywhere near the front of anyone’s mind in conservative intellectual circles.

The same was still true in 1986. By 1996, I think, there had been some modest awakening. Now, of course, we are all up to speed. Book-reading aside, the ordinary attentive reader of newspapers, magazines, and websites has taken in a million or so words on the topic of Islam this past few years. We all have our ideas now, though no doubt some are better-founded than others.

For as long as I've been paying attention to the world around me, a point in time that corresponded closely with 9/11, Islam has been a perennial media subject. But I'm aware that that coincidental timing will leave me with a skewed understanding of Islam's historical importance with regards to the country that is my home if I don't force a little perspective.

I assumed the war in Serbia, Desert Storm, the barracks bombing in Lebanon, the Iraq-Iran War, and the Iranian hostage crisis would cause spikes in attention paid to Islam, but figured 9/11 would dwarf them. Thanks to Agnostic, I have a handy method of quantifying (and improving) that generalized conception.

Utilizing the New York Times' online article archive, the following graph shows the number of articles containing at least one of the three words "Muslim", "Moslem", or "Islam" as a percentage of all articles written that year:

It's my understanding that Zionism was, in the late forties and fifties, largely an issue supported by the American left but over time lost its luster as the greatly outnumbered Israelis obliterated their Arab neighbors in every conceivable dimension--economic, political, cultural, military--causing the progressive David steadily morph into the imperialistic, merciless Goliath. So I'm surprised to see that the Muslim world was given so little media attention in Israel's early days, though it's also my impression that, prior to the sixties, the Establishment didn't much care about the world's backwaters. The American public presumably didn't either. Today, the difference is that the Establishment now clearly does care about the third world, though the public remains largely uninterested, as the Derb recently noted by pointing to Eastern Congo. In any case, throughout the fifties, fewer than 1 in 200 articles mentioned Muslims or their religion.

The 1973 oil crisis, putatively precipitated by the US' favoring of Israel in the Yom Kippur War, represents the first noticeable spike in coverage. The Iranian hostage crisis pushed Islam near the 1 in 50 articles range, a level it wouldn't return to until the onset of the Bosnian War more than a decade later. When the World Trade Centers were brought down, 1 in 35 articles mentioned Islam. It has fluctuated modestly year to year from that point since 2001, hitting its historical zenith in 2006 when the bloodletting in Iraq was at its worst.

Tangentially, it is at some point in late 1988 or early 1989 that "Moslem" is replaced with the contemporarily favored variant "Muslim". For the last couple of decades, "Moslem" has been a relic. I understand the change was a result of "Moslem" translating into something nasty in Arabic, while "Muslim" is quite flattering. I wonder if any readers are aware of where the push for what was apparently a very acute change came from. If so, please edify your humble host.

Like most international terrorists, Mutallab and Hassan were well off

Umar Mutallab and Nidal Hassan, the underwear bomber and Ft. Hood shooter, respectively, are two more recent, highly visible affirmations of former CIA officer Marc Sageman's finding that rather than coming from the dregs of society, international terrorists tend to be more educated and affluent than is most of the population in the countries they come from:

Most people think that terrorism comes from poverty, broken families, ignorance, immaturity, lack of family or occupational responsibilities, weak minds susceptible to brainwashing - the sociopath, the criminals, the religious fanatic, or, in this country, some believe they’re just plain evil.

Taking these perceived root causes in turn, three quarters of my sample came from the upper or middle class. The vast majority—90 percent—came from caring, intact families. Sixty-three percent had gone to college, as compared with the 5-6 percent that’s usual for the third world. These are the best and brightest of their societies in many ways.

Mutallab's father is a former bank executive and one of the richest men in Africa (though his father is not a villain--he warned the CIA that his son had cut off communication with him and was a potential threat). Mutallab was in college on his dad's dime. Hassan is a second-generation Palestinian who grew up in a Virginian middle class household where his parents owned a restaurant. These guys are not mired in destitute poverty, adopting 'extremist' views due to a lack of prospects for the future. Their comfortable lives are not exceptions to the rule--they are the rule.

Sageman also found that most (73%) were married, although Randall Parker and Dennis Mangan, among others, showcase compelling arguments that sexual frustration may play some role as well:

In Israel we have much experience with Arab suicide bombers and violent street mobs. One of the most effective remedies to the Intifada suicide attacks was to limit work permits in Israel to Palestinians over 40 and married. (That was improved upon by building a fence around Israel, which completely stopped that phenomenon). We cannot stop them coming to pray in the Jerusalem Al Aqsa Mosque, and every Friday prayer used to end in bloody confrontations with the police.

So now, when the Arab street gets excited, Israel allows the entrance of only people over 40 and married. About 50% of the Palestinian girls are married by the age of 18, while men usually have to build their house to marry, which is around 30. Marriage is generally an exchange = you have to supply your sister in esxchange for a bride. That's why "honour killings" are so common - if the sister does not agree, she "brings shame on the family" and the brother cannot marry. Whores are killed by the "morality police". The consequence is that sexual perversion (goats?) and murderous acts of running amok are quite common in the Arab society, but who cares? They are never reported not here nor in the USA which is OK. I am sure if Major Hassan had been married he would have reacted with less violence.

An assessment similar to the the one done by Sageman based on more recent terrorist profiles would surely be informative.

Parenthetically, the contemporary stigma surrounding men who are sexually frustrated is such that serious discourse on the subject rarely takes place. It is almost inconceivable in contemporary Western society that a well-off, healthy guy with a moderately prestigious occupation whose agoraphobic social awkwardness has left him sexually frustrated could be seen as more deserving of sympathetic pity than a chronically unemployed, uneducated cad who's been in and out of jail. The former is a loser deserving of ridicule while the latter is to be coddled and cared about, despite the fact that the burgher who can't get laid does a lot more good for society than the prolish thug who can't hold a job does. Yet for most people sexual fulfillment is one of the three most important elements (health and wealth being the other two) necessary for realizing contented happiness.