I awoke to the headlines like the rest of the world.

Another terrorist attack.

Another hostage situation.

Another bevy of sociopaths masquerading under the guise of religious piety.

Poor Bangladesh.

But this time I read deeper. I looked at Facebook pages of some of the victims. I read through as many eye-witness accounts of survivors as I could find. I spent a little time, though not as much as such an atrocity deserves. At least, not if one wishes to honor the victims. As for the instigators, they are less than nothing in my estimation. They deserve only contempt.

Because they’re stupid.

Yes, it is possible to terrorize individuals, but this whole campaign started out as a quest to terrorize the entire world. The goal was to make the planet cower and quake in submission.

You fucking morons. Haven’t you realized yet that the terror of people is not the same as the terror of countries?

Are you so dumb that you haven’t yet seen the equation? Well, let me spell it out for you. Every time you run shrieking Allah and firing guns and blowing yourselves up, it’s like stinging a very large grizzly bear. The bulk of the animal will survive. Not only that, it will exhibit extreme fury. It will turn on what stung it, and rend it.

Terror  x  50  =  Rage  x  Billions

Terrorists are short-sighted sadists. This time around they took pleasure in torturing their hostages by requiring they recite from the Koran. If you couldn’t do it, you were killed. That’s a very particular kind of sick cruelty. Very inefficient. Very risky. It proves nothing other than these sociopaths wished to spend their last moments of life engaged in misguided brutality.

And they’re too dim-witted to realize that, in the bigger picture, their antics produce anger, not fear.

Because the rest of the world knows that each life, each spirit, is a gift. Each murder is the theft of potential.

This is not a Christian concept. It’s a human one.

It’s easy to grasp, unless you’re mind-numbingly stupid. You know…

…like a terrorist.