The Campaign to Normalize Terrorism - Shrugging off a bombing in New York.

[Ubiquitous]

A bombing in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood wounded 29 people
Saturday night. Another bomb was found nearby and defused. Earlier the
same day, a bomb had gone off in New Jersey, causing no injuries. On
Sunday more bombs were found and defused at a train station in the
Garden State. Meanwhile in Minnesota, a terrorist with a knife wounded
10 people in a mall Saturday before being stopped by the proverbial
good guy with a gun.

Because nobody was killed (save for the Minnesota terrorist) in any of
these attacks, many commentators are at pains to minimize them.
Politico’s Jack Shafer:

In a rational world, we would interpret the inept crimes of
accused pipe bomber Ahmad Khan Rahami as evidence that 15
years after the big one, the terrorist threat in America is
akin to a brush fire—the kind of thing that inevitably flares
up and causes some damage before the experts put it out.
Instead, thanks to the cable news channels and some in the Web
and print space, we’ve turned it into a mighty conflagration.

Shafer has a peculiar idea of reason. His imaginary “rational world” is
one in which men still set off bombs in cities. The only difference is
that the Rationalians are largely indifferent to such violence. New
York magazine reports that some New Yorkers have in fact taken that
attitude, or at least that posture:

Following the Chelsea bombing that occurred over the weekend,
there was lots of talk online about how many New Yorkers
weren’t fazed or scared by the incident and the potential
groups or motives behind it. To which, Twitter user
@BobbyBigWheel (known in the real world as Robert Wheel)
started a running list of the things one actually has to fear
in New York. Ranked number one: getting pushed onto the subway
tracks. No. 8: finding out your neighbor has bedbugs. No.
1,563: ISIS.

One thing residents of dense cities don’t have to fear is “a brush
fire,” Shafer’s analogy of choice. It’s a terrible analogy. For one
thing, brush fires in populated areas (e.g., hilly suburbs) can destroy
many homes. The death toll is generally limited because such fires take
some time to spread, making it possible for residents to be evacuated.

By contrast, a bomb goes off suddenly and does instant damage. The
people in Chelsea got lucky with the bomb’s placement and timing—unlike
at the Boston Marathon in 2013, which was attacked with a similar bomb.

Of course like everything else these days, this argument isn’t actually
about terrorism; it’s about Donald Trump, whose name is the next two
words in Shafer’s piece after the passage quoted above. Roll Call’s
Walter Shapiro hopes the attack will cause the right kind of people to
recoil from the Republican nominee:

In 2004, Trump’s fear-mongering almost certainly would have
worked. And in Ohio today, it probably appeals to wavering
blue-collar Democrats in places like Youngstown. But every
time Trump goes into another anti-Muslim rant, it quite likely
costs him votes among college-educated women in the Columbus
and Cincinnati suburbs.

For all the predictable talk about a terrorism-related October
surprise, maybe the true surprise of 2016 will be that we have matured
as a nation.

Are you shocked and horrified when a terrorist bombs an American city?
Stop being a baby and vote for Hillary Clinton.

But wait. Is it true, as Shapiro suggests, that college-educated
suburban women are relatively blasé about terrorist violence in
American cities? Not in our (admittedly anecdotal) experience. This
columnist lives in New York, though not in Chelsea, and after the
bombing, we heard from several friends, relatives and readers who
wanted to make sure we were all right. As far as we are aware, all of
them are college-educated suburban women.

In fact, Salon notes that liberal TV host Seth Meyers questioned
Trump’s _masculinity_ because of the GOP candidate’s purported
overreaction to the attack:

“Just before I got off the plane, a bomb went off in New York,”
Donald Trump told the crowd at his Colorado Springs rally on
Saturday. “And nobody knows exactly what’s going on.”

“You can’t say the words, ‘A bomb went off in New York,’ if
the next thing you say is, ‘Nobody knows what’s going on,’ ”
Meyers responded. “Are you a presidential candidate or the
old lady who lives across the hall from me?”

Meyers conceded, however, that, “Despite jumping out ahead
early without any facts, fair is fair. Trump did get it right
this time.”

That happens with surprising frequency, doesn’t it?

If you really want a candidate who doesn’t make appeals to fear of
terrorism, though, Mrs. Clinton is no more suitable than Trump. She
makes such appeals too, just in perverse ways. As we noted Tuesday, she
accused Trump of “giving aid and comfort to our adversaries” because,
she claimed, his “rhetoric” has been “seized on by terrorists,
particularly ISIS.” That argument would never fly in Shafer’s rational
world. Rhetoric doesn’t fuel brush fires.

And consider this passage from Shapiro:

Please, don’t misunderstand.

I am not making light of the injuries in Chelsea over the
weekend or of the earlier horrors in Orlando and San
Bernardino. All I am arguing for is a sense of proportion so
that we do not allow fear of terrorism to distort our lives
and unjustified fear of all Muslims to poison our values.

Again, that’s a great argument against Mrs. Clinton. One of our values
is freedom of speech, and she is using fear of Muslims to demand
suppression, at least through self-censorship, of ideas and rhetoric
she dislikes.

[Byker]

A bombing in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood wounded 29 people
Saturday night. Another bomb was found nearby and defused. Earlier the
same day, a bomb had gone off in New Jersey, causing no injuries. On
Sunday more bombs were found and defused at a train station in the Garden
State. Meanwhile in Minnesota, a terrorist with a knife wounded 10 people
in a mall Saturday before being stopped by the proverbial good guy with a
gun.

Welcome to the new normal...