Satire Confronts Myth

“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way.  I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.”  Jon Stewart, “The Daily Show”

Seth Rogen AGAIN

It’s no comfort, but my post of 6/29/14 (and maybe 6/15) on this subject was prescient.  While I am repulsed by North Korea’s attack against Sony, and it’s (and/or surrogates’) threats against theaters and moviegoers are highly reprehensible, and I understand George Clooney’s wanting actors, directors, and studios to take a stand against a chilling blow to artist freedom, there is a core element to blame.

Rogen’s idiocy in making the film, and Sony’s decision to back it/release it (rescinded at the last moment), need to be condemned in just as harsh terms.  A film that promotes, even in comedic terms, the assassination of a living, present leader of another country?  A country that is nuclear armed, volatile, and willing to use violence?  And from a film distributor that is at the core Japanese?  With all that would mean given the terrible history between Japan and Korea in the last 200 years?  And with the actors in the film actually coached by real CIA agents?

The sort of uninformed, brash or even arrogant stupidity displayed by Rogen/Sony is appalling but becoming too common.  Yet if it has even ANY elements of a CIA attempt to snub, warn, or make nervous North Korean leadership through a film vehicle, that’s even more disturbing.

Not Bad Enough?

The American people haven’t suffered enough or they would turn out to vote—and into the streets.

True?  Or do they instead keep believing something that is no longer correct, that things will get better or somehow “work out”?

Hollow

On this remembrance day, let us be on guard for the hollow pride.

We too often have the hollow pride of the spoiled boy who is haughtily arrogant about running the once-dominating business he inherited, and can’t grasp that the business is going downhill rapidly. 

Cold Water

Too many people think they will join the plutocrats some day, or at least have enough in common with them.

Here’s some cold water for that: THEY’RE NOT LIKE YOU, AND THEY DON’T LIKE YOU.

Plutocratic Playbook: Manipulate the Emotions and They Won’t Look Behind the Curtain

As a political scientist, I read a lot of letters to the editor.  Many of those for the plutocratic candidates are substance-less.  They will say a candidate has “earned our trust,” or “listens to us,” or “works hard for us,” or “is the common sense candidate,” or “stands up for us,” or “is a true problem solver,” or “will bring jobs and opportunity,” or “is strong,” and other meaningless statements.  No actual policies, accomplishments, or plans.  It’s all emotion-driven, and emotion-appealing (to prattle).  From both sincere people and plutocratic plants. 

Unrooted

Young men often don’t know how to act.  They think because they speak/write the wildest, craziest, sickest, misogynistic, most demeaning things in their online games that they can say anything via FB message, or other quick social media.

People would be appalled at what is said.  Specific public figures are wished to have some awful affliction or die in the worst ways. 

And they see nothing wrong with saying those things either.

We probably have a contributing lack of economic opportunity problem.  We also either have a social decorum problem, or we have a lot of malicious behavior underneath the surface of too many—and all that says for the potential explosions in waiting.

“Because I’m Uneasy”

The nation medicates itself, tranquilizes itself, diverts itself, to avoid dark, stark realities.

Those of us who perceive ourselves awake enjoy the holiday season a bit less because of the uneasiness from that awareness.

Patriotic Help

I was eating with a guy I work with.  A lady at another table apparently overheard us talking about our military time overseas.  After a bit, the waitress came and said the lady bought our lunch.  The restaurant is in the poorest sector of town.  Yet which is also the most patriotic part of town.  Is it irony, or something else I wonder, to be so patriotic for a nation that often does the least and cares the least for them?  

Give a F

Their strategy is brilliant.  They know our system well.  Our system is designed to be far more efficient at blocking things than it is at accomplishing things.  Elect enough blockers into office, and those who would change things to stop plutocratic power are thwarted.

Brilliant.  It can only be thwarted if people turn out to vote, especially in a non-presidential election year.  Will the distracted stay distracted?  Will the discouraged stay discouraged?  Will the apathetic stay apathetic?  Will the ignorant stay ignorant?  Stay tuned!

Something to remember about not voting or being ill-informed when voting: In a country of “don’t give a f,” the zealots and the devious win.

In Form

If Americans continue to get “informed” about political candidates from 30 second to 1 minute ads in the month up to the election, they will continue to vote on emotion and distortion, and not from reasoned fact and careful consideration.

The political scientist in me looks at the data and says the odds are against good sense prevailing in the 2014 elections.  That I should not work myself up and cause more stress, expend time and energy when there is none to spare, or risk more friendships and other relationships.

Then I look at my daughter, and know there’s no letting myself off the hook.

Even if failure comes, and malevolence, ignorance, delusion, fear, selfishness, evasion, and escapism prevail yet again, I must be able to look at her and say I REALLY did what I could toward something different.

And know that, when enough individuals are determined like that, change becomes possible.

Emotional Traps For The Unwary

“Remember America’s Heritage” was the name of the group soliciting money from me as a veteran to help fight what they were SUPPOSEDLY enraged about.

It was the kind of emotional crap that we fall for too often.

“Obama is giving billions to illegal aliens while veterans die from lack of care” was their grab phrase. I wonder how many “patriots” opened up their wallets for that claptrap.

As if the VA mess was a creation of one government body, one party, or one man, and as if it wasn’t many administrations—and, to be more accurate—many mal-appropriating Congresses.  And as if it was this administration that solely sets policies. 

And that doesn’t even address the factual misrepresentations.

The clever but sleazy money vipers couch themselves in the words of patriotism, and cloak their organizations in similar verbiage. 

“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” Samuel Johnson said, and little has changed since his day.

From The Mouth of a Former Babe

My son: “Dad, you write a lot of complex stuff.  Seems to me a lot of problems are simply because there are a lot of old white people scared of changes.”

Hmm. Will think on that one.

Some Words For Literacy

Our reading of lengthy works is at an 80 year low. 80 years ago, those considered educated had a vocabulary of 42,000 words.  Today one is considered educated with a vocabulary of 8,000 words. 

Does that mean we communicate more clearly today, with little “unnecessary” verbiage?  Or does it mean we have more difficulty communicating complex subjects and so do not delve into them?  And one could easily surmise that not reading lengthy works and stunted vocabularies become intertwined, self-degenerative, ever-decreasing concentric circles. 

"Con! Con!"

Wait, that’s not what Kirk meant when he said that in Star Trek II? :)

Neo-cons.  They believed their own simplistic drivel, neither seeking nor caring to truly know about the world.  They saw the world through narrow eyes, and refused to accept contradicting evidence, even as it mounted.  They are testament about why America shouldn’t ever turn things over again to their myopic, delusional, self-centered, unexamining asses.  Certainly we shouldn’t listen to them, about the same sector of the world that they screwed up so royally.

Or maybe they were conning, pun intended, from the very first, intent only on enriching themselves and their friends, and driving the govt into weakness and unable to oppose them.

Either way, that the American corporate media still showcases them serves as ample evidence of who actually controls what.  An alien outsider would comment that no rational people not in servitude to another class would give credence to the discredited.  

Paying For The Lack Of Attention

A society too busy, too overscheduled, too hyper-involved, with too much personal burden and too little communal support, is ripe for manipulation.  By those who know that time cannot or will not be spent in gathering real information, in reflection, in calm discussion.  Who does that serve?

An Oily Situation

We have more supply, and reduced demand, of oil, but prices stay high.  Why?

Because 80% of the market is controlled by Wall Street connected speculators to keep prices high so they can make obscene profits.

Off you.  They would thank you for your addiction, but they don’t want the publicity.

Vacuousa a la Roma

The ethical decline of selfish “elites,” and the spiritual vacuousness of the West in general, and the US in particular, are demonstrated in how many non-elites are willing to join anything with a sense of surety, even if that surety comes with a violent and regressive nature, as with the Islamic State group.  If that surety is also trying to overthrow the often corrupt and often self-serving Western and Western-supported order, it finds even more attraction.  Those willing to join have morphed from Middle-Eastern related people to people of all kinds.  Will this cause the West, and especially the US, to look at itself?  Unlikely.  What is more likely is that the West will merely escape into more diversion, denial, and blind reaction.  A foundational crisis—already in motion from environmental and other factors—could be in the offing, and failing to meet that crisis would signal the decline and fall, however slowly or quickly, of Western civilization.  Ironically, just as much of the world wants so many elements of that civilization. 

Rather like Rome less than 2000 years ago.

Help With The Head Scratching

The new pan-Arab Muslim caliphate in forming seems to have thrown the establishment and everyday Americans for a loop.  While far too complex to delve into in a few lines, here’s some points to consider, although, like many such ponderings, it might make you uncomfortable:

1.     When populations are kept in poverty and ignorance, the simplistic appeal of those with certainty and determination/fanaticism will increase.  It isn’t all about terrorism or fear.

2.     When divisions and sectarianism predominate, “us against them” can get a population to overlook much.

3.     When “Great” powers are content with, or even foment, local strongmen or the corrupt instead of justice, they earn the disdain of the oppressed.

4.     When “Great” powers intervene, and especially when they intervene arrogantly and with little knowledge, care, or respect, let alone whether the intervention is even warranted, the second and third order effects they create can sometimes be gargantuan and disastrous.

5.     When those who are dismissed as merely fanatics or terrorists get basic services (electricity, water, transportation) to consistently and reliably work for a population, you don’t have to have in-depth knowledge of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to understand why a populace might give tacit support.

6.     Movements, even deeply flawed or questionable movements, don’t grow by terrorism and fear alone; look to the above for some reasons why they can be strong and why those who oppose them may not be.

Civic Duty

The common refrain from people is that their lives are too busy, that they have so many other things to accomplish, they can’t devote time to making things right or opposing those who are doing injury to the common good.  I think the right answer was perhaps best summed up by the professional woman who turned out to join the Occupy protesters:  “This is my civic duty.  This is my day off.  I am the 99%.”

Amazing That It's Not Amazing

I have people tell me, with a straight face, the most fantastical things.  They say these things even though they know I am a PhD.  Like I should believe them, based on an article they supposedly read that was allegedly written by some supposedly smart-whip scientist, instead of believing what 97% of scientists have concluded.  Most of the time I find something else to do rather than poke on their emotional, factless, mis/disinformation bubble, but occasionally I’ll ask where I can find the article.  Most of the time, they can’t recall.  The few times they can, it’s not from some scientific journal, but only something on a website NOT affiliated with a government, educational organization, or research center.

GD America, quit showing Hedges to be correct.  Because I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to be correct!

Skin In The Game

I travel a lot.  On one of my recent trips, I found myself with a little time.  Watched what appeared to be a hardworking (strong, calloused hands) black man in tan overalls and a hoodie waiting for his ride to pick him up.  The looks he received, even the stares.  The cops who came to ask questions. 

There is a lot that an African-American male, especially one of the poor working class, typically has to go through.  Things that we with the melanin-deficient skin rarely consider.  Like consider what an assault on one’s psyche that must be…

Parentis

There is no love—and there is no worry—like that of a parent for their child.  Of any age.

Right Or Wrong, "The Strong"

It is a destructive human weakness, even more prevalent in men than women, to follow "the strong," blindly if necessary.  And to wave away or dismiss afterwards the grievous errors, illegalities, injustices, and destructive things they did.  The only focus seems to be this emotional fixation that they were “strong” and “tough.”

It would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic, but the same people afterwards are only too ready to condemn all the others in other places for doing much of the same thing.  Blind hypocrisy and lack of self-examination is far, far too common.

Disposable Labor Units

We burn out far too many of our good middle class professionals.  Use them up.  Take away their enthusiasm for life with the endless grind and needless change at work places severely under-labor staffed.  Then they get sick, or they “check out” mentally and emotionally and we lose their productivity. And those are the “lucky” ones who don’t get the pitiless boot.  And often, they die too early as well.  

DoI

As I reread all the Declaration of Independence reprinted in the newspaper yesterday, I had a thought:  How many people, in how many countries, that we have been in in the last 60 years, would read those words and think, “how bitterly ironic.”

Seth Rogen Addendum

How timely my recent tirade against Mr. Rogen’s “work.”  He has incensed North Korea to the point that it is making strong threats against America.

How is Rogen so clueless that he thinks the North Koreans would have a sense of humor?  And how could anything about someone presently alive (and a head of state at that!) being the target of assassination be acceptable, let alone amusing?

More grist for the mill about how he comes across as truly clueless, classless, talent-less.

Emotional, Knee-Jerk Reactions that Feed Preconceptions

There is a large element of “the Left” or “Progressives” or “American Liberals” that is just as ready to be irrationally offended on their emotional issues as the “Right” and “Tea Partiers” and “Conservatives” have been on theirs.  In this case, the issue is “assault.”

Let’s be clear in this mindless chattery we live in:  Assault, including sexual assault, is unfortunately prevalent in too many places in our stressed and barely connected society.  But assault by strangers?  Still rare.  Yet do all the incensed chatterers on the airwaves and in print and online make a distinction and avoid misconceptions?  Uhm…rarely.

My Rant About Seth Rogen

This week I step away from the usual and delve into a bit of spectacle. :)

First, an important statement:  From all appearances, Seth Rogen and his wife are nice and good people.  It’s his body of “work” that I have issue with.

Were it just the low-brow, inane, and repetitively predictable, I would have brushed it aside and moved on.  But since he torched a prized entertainment icon of mine, I am moved to respond:

Even though he’s from Canada, he’s done nothing to dilute the belief that Jewish people benefit from that connection and receive preferential treatment in Hollywood.  He has some talent (largely wasted, IMO), but this can’t be the true talent in the up and coming Hollywood generation.

His writing and acting take the same predictable it-was-barely-funny-the-first-time antics, and is lamentably one-dimensional.  That it also legitimizes a stoner modus operandus is further regrettable.  If that stoner “lifestyle” is taken as a role-model, that’s even more horrid.

My biggest beef, however, is how he eviscerated and made a comedic mockery of what could have been and should have been an equivalent to the Batman franchise.  I’m talking about The Green Hornet.  I won’t go into all the details of that mockery and evisceration, that travesty of a movie, but Rogen’s utter screwing up of that is a huge cultural-entertainment offense.  He has ruined, perhaps for good, what could have been something of tremendous entertainment value.

Or maybe I’m wrong, and the thing was so camp it never had legs (or, rather, wings) for the long haul.  We’ll probably never know now!

Frankly Speaking

Barney Frank, recently retired congressman, says that conservatives have belied their “conservatism” because they decry big government but want government to regulate what we read, what we smoke or ingest, who we have sex with, who we can marry.  

You know, big, intrusive government issues.

So much of the human condition is about this mad desire of humans to control the world, and by implication, the words and actions, of those around them.

Often by the very souls who spout (or shout) the words “freedom” and "independence."

Must mean the freedom and independence for everyone to do what those souls dictate. :)

Relation Ships Passing

All the words are said as they gather at the grave site: “Let’s make sure to get together some time where death is not involved.  Someone should not have to die to call us to the same spot.”  Everyone assures that they will, that they will make the time to get together sometime outside where a family member or friend has died.

And it is the way of this frenetic life that they won’t.  For many hundreds of years now, this Western culture, and in particular, this American one, has not valued relationships enough.  It even nearly stamped out the culture here that did.

And there is little that could make us poorer as a result.

High School Lows

The de-emphasizing (the mildest or most generous term I could think of) of the middle class in favor of the wealthy is in evidence at my high school’s alumni basketball tourney.  Once a crowded, boisterous, broadly supported fundraiser, it is now a ghost of its former self.  A wealthy alum, who gives to the school, has his wife (who didn’t even attend the school), run the tournament.  She banned all alcohol, including the beer garden, “for liability purposes,” and because “it shows a poor example to children.” She designs the brackets herself, but only releases them less than a week before the tourney, making impossible the return of those who must schedule flights.

The result?  It is minimally attended, gets few spectators or non-players, doesn’t even raise a tenth of the money it used to, the sense of community and camaraderie are hollowed out, and even general contributions to the school are down (forcing the school to rely more and more on a small number of wealthy donors).

Oh, the school now has a new gym and a new football field, compliments of this wealthy donor.  Yet has far less “glue” and community than when it had an old gym and no football field.  And far less enrollment.

I wonder how much people think about the second and third order effects of emphasizing one class and dismissing another.

I guess with the hollowing out of the middle class, and their resultant fewer and fewer “spare” resources, maybe there wasn’t much of a choice.

Tarred and Choked

The next time you hear the self-serving, letting-oneself-off-the-hook, powerless-fomenting, justifying assertion about highly polluting tar sands oil that “the oil will go someplace; it will get drilled regardless,” there is another statement you need to put with it:   “Pay, oil-slaves.  Choke on your planet.” 

Lazy Is Rarer Than You Think

Traveling across the country, what I find far more than not is how much people not only want to have a meaningful job at meaningful/livable pay, but WANT to work.

As Chris Rock says, something for ignorant haters to need to realize is that black people with 2 jobs hate lazy black people too.  It’s just that there are far fewer lazy ones than there are hard working people who want good work at good pay and can’t find any, especially where they live.

Something for all of us to think about the next time some simplistic demagogue tries to blame a group unfairly and manipulate us in the process.

The Richness of Our Knowledge and The Impoverishment Of Our Actions

It is hard to see how we could be more utter failures about poverty than we are.  We KNOW what to do about it, we HAVE the resources, we UNDERSTAND the second and third order effects of poverty, we COMPREHEND WELL that reducing poverty actually REDUCES overpopulation.

And yet we throw up our hands every year.

Or attach some ridiculous precondition on any real effort.

We could not be much farther away from Jesus’s words and actions.

The privileged should have to trade places for a week with the markedly unprivileged.  Much would change. MUCH.

Taxing Principles 001

The cultural self-implosion of anti-tax, anti-govt “libertarian” “patriot” (I can hardly use those words about him, even in quotes) Cliven Bundy will hopefully cause his and his ilk’s supporters (some of whom are quite famous) to reassess the means and character of that support—and maybe look inside themselves.

But let’s knock down one thoroughly unexamined premise (which many hold to be “absolutely true!”) of the anarchic, selfish, hyper-libertarians who are often barely witting tools of the upper class: that the Constitution forbids income taxation.

Horse----.

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 of the US Constitution is direct refutation to the ignorance of those who say income tax is unconstitutional.  Congress—the people’s at least ostensible representatives—can assess whatever’s needed to make the US government function.

The 16^th Amendment only adds clarifying specificity.  The above clause really does it all.

A certain amount of taxation is a necessary price so we can have civilization.  Let’s discuss about the character and extent of that certainly, but the principle is settled, emplaced logic if you are a citizen.

And citizen, well, that’s a whole ‘nother subject! 

Some Last Gasps In A Cultural Battle

A logic trap, not original to me, on the refusal to do business with homosexuals:

Gay man: “I will come into your establishment.” 

Refuser: “Don’t. I’m not going to serve you. I don’t even want you coming in the door.”

Gay man: “It’s okay.  I won’t be gay for an hour or so.”

Refuser: “No, you can’t choose not to be gay.”

Gay man: “Did you hear what you just said?”

“Tonight I’m Gonna Party Like It’s 1929…”

The USA Today headline on March 13, 2014 was that buyers are stretching out loans because they can’t afford the cars.  SO like the 1920s. Yes, part of it is the unmerited increase in car prices.  But another is that people’s wages aren’t keeping up.

The same paper had an article on how record margin debt was threatening the stock market.  Sounds 1929 familiar too.

And no one is paying attention.  Even if someone credible would simply argue that it wasn't applicable, that would be SOMETHING.

But maybe people know deep inside there's something very amiss.  After all, there’s been a dramatic surge in sleeping pills use…

Will They Vote?

Those who benefit from the Affordable Care Act:

Will they vote? 

Can they stay focused? 

Or will it be taken for granted quickly?

People power or money power?  Which will it be?

Hedges Still Not Wrong

Uh hum.  America.  I keep probing for you to prove Hedges wrong, but you aren’t. 

Rabid, selfish, shortsighted anti-tax mania gets us decaying infrastructure instead of improving and expanding infrastructure, and all sorts of bad 2^nd and 3^rd order effects, including a structurally anemic economy.  The more we close in on ourselves, beset by the uncaring myopic selfishness of the plutocrats, the more we feed a system that is dooming itself to fail disastrously.   

Aching Voids

Even now, over a year later, it can wash over me without warning.

My mother’s not here anymore.

You tell yourself to get over it, be an adult, it’s all a part of the life cycle.

It doesn’t help.

Instead, a tsunami of sorrow floods over me.

That nothing and no one can console.

She used to tell me how much she missed her own mother after she was gone, about how she felt, well, OLDER than she should afterwards.

I couldn’t relate then.

I seem to relate just fine now.

Just Like Your Body Needs Your Good Regulation Of It

Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Corporate America in general are all self-referential echo chambers of “no regulation!”

You need regulation, you need government.  Or what happened to BitCoin is inevitable: sophisticated criminals pillage you without recourse.  And that is only the beginning of troubles.

Ideologies often don’t hold up to analysis.

Irony and Laughter Amidst The Apprehension

The Federal Government was recently suing Sprint for overcharging it for wiretapping. 

Exercise Care

We strengthen government in the areas most to be feared.  We weaken it in the areas we most need its protection in.  We gut its funding stream. We heap derision on it.

One day we could find the results of all that to be that its repressive instruments are strong, but serve only the plutocrats, who use it to keep themselves ever wealthier and us ever poorer and dependent on them for most things.  And the levers that we will reach to pull to try to rein in our oppressors will have broken, rusted out, or been entirely dismantled or made irrelevant.

Ed, Win

This week is all a guest quote from a passionate, terrific political scientist who deserves more attention than he gets:

“Citizens need to care! We need to be involved! Participation matters!”—Edwin Taylor 

The Formerly Pure--And Pure Nonsense

Remember when rainwater was considered “pure?”  We’d stick our tongues out and taste the purity.

Largely no longer. The amount of impurities in typical rainwater today has made a little mockery of that. 

Those are the things—the things that matter—we need to be upset about, talking about, contacting our “representatives” about.  Not being upset and talking about the words or actions of some “celebrity,” or emotive anguish and repeatedly expressed and discussed crushing disappointment over some sports team or sports figure.

Because our emphasis on those fleeting spectacle things just show how easily we  are led (and lead ourselves) into deflective, delusional, self-destructive irrationality.

You, Boob

Let me preface: I enjoy a good/interesting/funny/etc. YouTube video now and then.

But IF the up and coming generations are going to address the problems we have, let me suggest that it won’t be by endless fixation with one inane YouTube video after another. Every bit of time, energy, and thought spent by all the Neros fiddling on those while Rome burns sees the problems get worse—and the plutocrats become more secure by our willing diversion.

Echo Echo

Too many people want their echo chamber; they don’t want to learn anything.  They are desperate for scandal—about those they are pre-despised toward.

Knocking

The plutocracy have drawn nearly all the effective resources to themselves.  All media not directly or indirectly controlled by them are usually paupers, forced to ignobly ask for donations from a public which itself has few resources.

Have to keep talking about these things.  The public may have its headphones on and can’t hear, but truth’s insistent and persistent knock will eventually be heard over all the banal noise.

A Lost Generation?

Those who follow the Professor & The Housewife blog know that I had the flu.  I am back.

Today came a report from top world economists that income inequality and lack of real opportunity for the mass of people in much of the “developed” world is a millstone around the world economy recovering sufficiently. There is real concern that we are creating a “lost generation” of the young who should be attaining work skills and experiences to make the economies strong for the future.  A bad trend.

The social breakdown of too many young—especially young men—with too much time, too little real opportunity, and too little guidance, or worse, the wrong guidance, is insidious.  That general pattern has the potential to have the same explosive effects here as elsewhere.

The Selfish Man Who Pokes His Own Eye Condemns Others For Living In the Dark

Fools think that if the world is clamoring for “stuff”—Iphones, cars, CDs, soft drinks, fast food, retail, etc.—that that is a sign of prosperity.  We might have the largest aerospace company (Boeing), the largest biotech (Amgen), largest retail (Walmart), largest petrol (Exxon), largest software (Microsoft), comm equipment (Sisco), and heavy equipment (Caterpillar), but what does that mean, and is it always an advantage for the country?

We do have universally appealing attributes of pluralism, economic opportunity, and cultural openness, but much of that has become brittle or façade-like anymore.  The asymmetric threats we presently face might not be existential ones, but if they sniff our weaknesses, we are more vulnerable than thought.

Because while the medieval, unmodern, unconnected chauvinist power mongers of the terrorist world may be off base, so are we.  They can be wrong, but not all the way wrong.  And we can be overall “right,” but with enough wrong that we give power and motivation to our enemies, and self-weaken what should be our strengths. 

Fix ourselves, and we will go far in dissolving the drive, power, and allure of those terrorist organizations.