Alasdair Palmer, Marisa Urgo, Tim Stevens, et al., are endangering my life

Alasdair Palmer, in an essay published in frontpagemag.com, rightly takes the recent M15 report on terrorism to task.

The gigantic flaw Palmer detects in that report is its axiomatic rationale for casting such a preposterously wide net with which to catch potential terrorists that they effectively include every carbon-based being in England with opposable thumbs who also happens to be sufficiently unhappy with life problems vaguely connected to not being a descendant of King Arthur that they would be driven to suicidal mass-murder.

(Never mind that non-Muslim immigrants—unlike Muslim immigrants—have not been mass-murdering, have not been plotting to mass-murder, and have not been saying or writing that they want to mass-murder anyone for ideological, religious and cultural reasons.)

However, in doing so, Palmer himself succumbs to an analytical locution hardly less preposterous, born of the asymptotic analysis which is so deeply entrenched in our politically correct psyche, even 99.9% of the analysts on our side can’t seem to free themselves from it.

So he writes of the M15 report:

It conspicuously fails to mention the potential terrorist's most obvious “vulnerability”: adherence to an extremist form of radical Islamism.

While the M15 report’s dragnet is preposterously wide, Palmer’s is preposterously narrow. As if “Islamism” is not sufficient to distance ourselves from the wonderfully diverse mosaic that is Islam the “religion of peace” with its “vast majority” of harmless angels: No, we must pad this already padded Islam—“Islamism”—with further insulation, using the qualifier “radical”.

But wait—even “radical Islamism” does not suffice to allay our anxiety that we might be subsuming too many wonderfully benign Muslims in our terminological net: thus we must have a “form”, you see, of this “radical Islamism”—oh, but not just any “form” (of the various “forms” extant out there...?); nay, an “extremist” form. Yes, that’s the ticket!

Now we hope to have narrowed the field so minutely, we can allay our own anxiety about being “racist” and “bigoted” concerning that “vast majority” of peaceful Muslims who “adhere to” that wonderfully diverse “tapestry” and “mosaic” of a marvellously charming and harmless Third World ethnic religion called “Islam”.

The sarcasm the reader might detect, drenching my prose so much it oozes over the sides like a stack of pancakes slathered in an entire bottle of maple syrup, thinly disguises a fury with the imbeciles out there, whether in journalism, in academe, or in government, who are charged collectively in a time of war with helping to protect us and the West of which they are supposed to be a proud and productive part—but who instead generate asinine analyses that serve to render us more vulnerable.

Alasdair Palmer, in his own incompetent way, just as much as the M15 report from which he attempts to distance himself, along with asymptotic analysts of varying degrees of influence who pretty much support the axioms enshrined in the M15 report (such as Marisa Urgo and Tim Stevens)—not to mention everybloody else throughout the West in positions of influence—are in fact endangering my life, and the lives of my loved ones.

Of course, the more influential a person or organization is, the more culpable they are for their reckless stupidity—and so, M15 bears more of the blame for endangering my life and the lives of my loved ones (while the agencies in my country, the U.S.A., are that much more culpable for failing to do their job of protecting me and my loved ones). This does not, however, let the likes of Alasdair Palmer, Marisa Urgo and Tim Stevens off the hook: for, if they had more influence, they would surely wield their stupidity to more grievously influential effect.

Nor am I unduly picking on them: I am excruciatingly aware of the fact that they represent merely the norm among the minions of idiots that form the dominant mainstream of Politically Correct Multi-Culturalism throughout the West, in various positions of influence throughout Academe, Journalism, Politics, and that curiously amorphous and murky realm—which I suppose could fall under the general rubric of “Business”—an example of which Marisa Urgo offers on her website for which she has recently been awarded a job—to wit, as Senior Intelligence Analyst for Trinity Applied Strategies, a small, but growing risk management consulting firm located in Northern Virginia.

A casual glance at the website of “Trinity Applied Strategies” does not yield much to dispel the strange opacity of such entities: one can imagine its central location as a perfectly opaque, understatedly futuristic building with no windows, tucked away in some facelessly placid, upscale suburb not too far, but still comfortably remote, from busier districts throughout the unassumingly sprawling megalopolis of the Virginia Beltway. Perhaps even the furtively appealing contours—oriental but not too disorientingly so—of a mosque—a “moderate” mosque, to be sure!—stands peacefully ensconced in the shade of maple trees a few blocks away. My imaginative depiction, of course, is beside the point: even if “Trinity Applied Strategies” were an open, friendly, relaxed suite of offices staffed by normal people wearing jean and casual shirts, it would still be helping to do its small part to endanger my life (not to mention the lives, finances and properties of those it claims to help protect), through its evident choices of whom to put in prominent positions of terrorism analysis.