Albiscuit

I was contemplating it (Supposed to be visiting my Dad for his birthday!) 
I'll let you know if I go (won't be in the ghostbuster suit this time!) - I know a bunch of the guys from Berkshire Airsoft are going.

I hear what you are saying but normal life now is far different than it was during the IRA bombing campaigns so I would certainly say that given time things WILL get back to normal. As far as I can see, terrorist attacks here are still not "normal" because they are still headline news.

While it seems a glib thing to say, carrying on as normal is the best response. Terrorists are aiming to disrupt everyday life and create an atmosphere where people turn against Muslims so creating the environment where radicalism can grow. They want other Muslims to see us shouting about deporting people and "rounding them up" because it causes tension that eventually leads to sympathy for their cause.

And yet you'll put a vapid comment on here about the world going to shit or - like the other chap - asking for a soldier on every street corner: These aren't productive contributions and are born from a place of fear and ignorance of what it all means - I'm no exception to this, and it's certainly understandable short-term to be so outrages, but when you take a look at their impact you'll realise the vast, vast majority isn't in human life but is instead self-inflicted after the fact but I also know when to not play into their narrative. This isn't helped in this day and age where one can learn about every bad bit of news within about 10 clicks but lose focus on reality, and that reality is that these guys are nothing but a small blip statistically but for some reason are given more attention than every other bad thing that we actually can negotiate with.

Like Lozart says: Sympathy for their cause doesn't come from you, but they'll use what you and others say as ammunition and as a part of their rhetoric for recruiting. Mourn the dead, but don't let it get to be any more than that if you can help it. If it helps at all then on the longer-term you can view their impact simply on numbers. Whilst 1 death is as bad as 100, you'll never see headlines that don't quote a figure so if they're important to you then just remember that the total number killed in terrorist attacks in the UK from 2000 until the present makes up less than a fraction of a percent of all the deaths we've had in road traffic accidents from last year. If you keep that in mind then you'll always be wary of just how much these twats rely on your own imagination to be effective, because they're such a small-minded minority that they'll never have a significant impact otherwise.

Hey, Alb, I'll try to keep this short as I'm sure you know my comment was benign even if provocative.

What happened in London, is simply not comparable to what’s happening in the middle east every month this year in terms of loss of life to ‘terrorism’ and I for one think a lonely “more” is a little too sheltered in this increasingly Brexit world, had you said “more UK/EU/Western” I’d have been right there with you, but what happened in London is only a terrorist attack (imo) because terrorists took responsibility. But its not comparable to what happens monthly in the middle east and while you assuredly meant no harm, going “world” greatly amplifies what happened on Saturday beyond it’s meaning – and plays into their hands by making their attacks here as meaningful as their attacks at home; eg 100 dead in a market plus wounded is a big deal, and by making these small attacks big, it encourages more small attacks, bigger attacks are more likely to fail, but if all it takes to polarise the west is small, cheap, low risk attacks, that’s what they will do (and it will get more common), and if we become used to minor attacks as “a big deal”, we’ll develop apathy for those same big attacks in the middle east – more so than we do already, and apathy for formerly-big-deal-minor-attacks sets the stage for pent up irrational rage when the big attack really hits, and irrationality will take over and as others have noted, turn us against innocent people just by their religion.

Thus perspective is really important; say world when you mean it, or say more words to make your indignation have merit.

Am I alone in having sympathy for the attackers’ children?

I hope you did not spend too much time on your unposted essay Alb, I certainly, did not mean an offence, but I couldn’t (as I don’t use Twitter/FB to post) leave a statement which implied worldly indignation at something the state still hasn’t proven to be terrorism as on the same stage as what was in the middle east news last week.

We good k?