Sometimes we should listen to musicians!

        My good friend since second grade, Richie Reiter, posted what I believe to be a cogent analysis of the current situation. https://www.facebook.com/reiterjazz/posts/10154578417465995

 Just goes to show that well-informed artists are probably the best commentators going.

       There are a lot of comments on Richie’s post, a couple of which I want to respond to at length.  Rather than writing too much as a comment, I am going to just link this blog.  My comments  follow the text of Richie’s post.

Richard Reiter

After WWII, everyone assumed WWIII would be the nuclear holocaust. I don't think so. I think WWIII has started and it could last 100 years. Radical Islamic terrorism is WWIII and it's not just going to go away by water boarding someone. There are deep forces at work here: the upheaval in Middle Eastern countries that have long suppressed freedom and opportunity leaving young men enraged without much hope, looking for a scapegoat; the internet that sucks in suicidal mentally disturbed men and women around the globe; the availability of weapons to anyone.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Americans were horrified and confused. We realized that life had changed and we had to rally. A huge factor in our success was our technology -- we developed weapons and built them in VAST numbers; we broke enemy codes. Today we need to take a deep breath and adapt to this new war. Technology will probably be the main element in our success: surveillance of enemy communications, detecting weapons…And recognizing that we're in a global war. Paris should never have allowed vehicles in the area where masses of people were celebrating France's biggest patriotic celebration.

While this bizarre radical Islamic WWIII is horrible, remember that the odds of a particular person's being harmed by a terrorist are small. So we need to keep living our lives and creating LOVE, the best antidote for hate.

Ira Allen Good analysis, Rich, but by and large Islamic terrorists are neither poor, poorly educated, nor deranged. And terrorism has been a tactic at least since the American revolution. So something else is at work.

My response to Ira Allen: I think you overstate here.  ISIS, like past anarcho-revolutionary movements, is made up of members of the disaffected upper classes (like Osama Bin Laden) and, for want of a better phrase, I would call the New Lumpenproletariat.

 (Those in the 21^st Century lumpenproletariat are different from the 19^th and 20^th Century versions in that while they may not have been pushed below the traditional working class, they are displaced in a way that makes them feel that they may not be productive or that their former positions as respected members of society are threatened.) 

What typically happens is that the upper class revolutionaries who initially fund and/or inspire the movements out of ideological or pathological inspirations, use the lumpenproletariat as cannon fodder.  Of course, without the lumpenproletariat, the upper class revolutionaries cannot accomplish very much.  The upper class revolutionaries do not and cannot create the lumpenproletariat.  The latter, which includes now some people seemingly from middle class backgrounds, are created by other forces.  This is where Richie has it right.  The forces of technological change, globalization, and the destabilization of traditions (including traditions we may think are barbaric or unfair) have created increasingly frustrated people upon whom the demagogues coming from any religion or no religion can and do prey. This dynamic is not unlike the collapse of German society in the 1920s and early 1930s that enabled Hitler and the Nazis to come to power. 

One might call this social trend a Revolution of Declining Expectations on the part of those who began to feel comfortable in the wake of World War II and the decline of formal colonialism, only to fall backwards for reasons that could only dimly comprehend.  This is the soil that enabled ISIS to form (helped considerably by the total destruction of Iraqi society by the ill-considered Bush/Cheney War); it is also the soil that is fertile for right-wing European parties during the last several decades and for Trumpism. They are angry that their expectations have declined, and are desperate to find ways to reverse the trend.

Rich Szabo And Obama and Hillary want to let more into our country.

Joe Lupis Quite right. I know we are not politically compatible, however, don't you think our president should be doing more to neutralize these folks?

My response Rich Szabo and Joe Lupis: Not very many immigrants from the horror of the Middle East are actually coming into the country, and those who are are being checked.  Of the handful of Muslim mass killers in the U.S. after 9/11, I believe that only one (the wife of the San Bernadino county employee who began the shooting rampage there) was not born here.  Blocking all immigration would do more harm than good, giving ISIS the kind of “us against them” propaganda ISIS desires to help their recruitment.  

Second, what more should we do to “neutralize these folks”?  We are already drone bombing all over the Islamic world, maybe even creating more terrorists than we kill.  And we seem to already be watching home-grown terrorists pretty closely.  We could do better, and I think that is the direction the Obama Administration is taking.  By being careful to not alienate the entire Muslim community in America, we are in a better position to identify terrorists and to make it less likely that more will be created. 

Third, it bears remembering that the Oklahoma City federal building bomber Timothy McVeigh and the Charleston Mother Emanuel Church shooter Dylan Roof were white Christians who were part of the New Lumpenproletariat.  In the long run, we, here in the United States, may be at greater risk from more white Christian McVeighs or Roofs than from terrorists who cloak their evil in Islam.