Cobrat, actually I do realize that is quite different. Are you about to open the floodgates to the Spanish Inquisition or the McCarthyism era?
Fwiw, you might start assuming that you are not the only one who understand our political history. Some prefer not to use it as a weapon to bludgeon the rest of us!
“So I ask you cobrat, without giving a two page history lesson that doesn’t answer the question, what do you suggest people do who are threatened by this violent ideology?”
"Take a page from how we dealt with Germany and to a limited extent, Japan* after WWII. Find ways to separate out and isolate the actual extremist ideologues from the majority of people who just want to live and get on with their personal lives like the vast majority of humanity.
Build bridges and befriend the latter group. Make sure one has measures in place to focus harsh treatment only on the former who are actually responsible for their horrific actions without painting a broad brush."
So does this answer the question of what people do who are threatened by this violent ideology, most of whom are in the Middle East? Many of whom are already Muslim, but apparently the wrong sort of Muslim. What do the Christians, the Shiites, the Kurds do? What do the girls do who are being abducted and sold as slaves or have bombs attached to their bodies by Boko Haram? Build bridges? Die?
Another question for you cobrat. And it’s a question about today. Not the days of the Crusaders, the time of the Nazis or the Imperial Japanese, but today. Right now.
You are in the wine section of the grocery store with your wife and children. An Islamic extremist is walking down the aisles, shooting everyone he comes across, for whatever the transgression of the day is. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Your family is trembling with fear behind you. What do you do?
Do you try to put him into a catatonic stupor with a history lesson? Do you direct him towards the Jewish family hiding in the aisle next to you? Or do you grab the only weapon available, a wine bottle (hopefully not a tasty red wine, that would be a waste) and get ready to smash it against his head? Or? What do you do?
To be fair, the Germans felt they were avenging Napoleon’s invasion, occupation, and humiliation of their societies during the early 1800s. The tossing out of Napoleon by using reservist conscription to get around French imposition of serious numerical limits on their military was a vital part of Prussia and Imperial Germany’s founding myth for their nationalism and militaristic traditions.
The hatred, contempt, and rivalry each had for the other extends back hundreds of years and had involved political, religious, and other factors.
This centuries old enmity between them was one of the key axes both the defeated Germans and moreso, the victorious French had to eventually bury at the end of WWII to avoid repeating the mistakes of 1918.
I can see some interesting parallels between that longstanding rivalry and ones between Muslim extremists warped intolerant perception of Western societies and Western secular and Christian extremists’ warped intolerant perception of Muslim societies and communities. Admittedly, this rivalry is much more complex, multifaceted, and requires much more nuanced thinking than the longstanding Franco-German rivalry.
I’m not sure that was the main motivation, especially on the part of the French and British who were eager for revenge after 4 years of horrifically destructive warfare and in France’s case, the defeat at the Franco-Prussian War and long historical hatred of the German foe.
I doubt they were eager to occupy Germany…especially considering Germany by then was on the brink of social collapse considering national and regional governments were being overthrown and there was chaotic fighting between armed left and right wing groups, American pressure to end the war ASAP because they didn’t want to be involved in a “foreign war” longer than necessary and possibly Wilson’s entreaties to not treat Germany too harshly which largely fell on deaf ears, and the war taking a huge toll on the Allied nations’ male population and finances*.
The Allied Nations didn’t want the trouble of having to send troops to not only occupy, but also be full-fledged occupational governments while fending off right and left-wing armed groups contesting various parts of Germany in November 1918. Especially considering Britain and France had worldwide colonial empires to garrison, there were serious fears about the new Communist menace in what would become the Soviet Union and a brief communist regime in Hungary in 1919, and the US wanted to have no part in further “foreign entanglements” as shown by its retreat into isolationism after the war.
While you’re being prepped for that history test you’re not going to take, here’s a list of who’s standing up and who’s still hunched over behind the lunch counter:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/austinhunt/heres-who-is-and-isnt-publishing-the-new-charlie-hebdo-cover#.kf4Xn3j2Q
You know, what occurs to me after I read these posts from cobrat, is that he does not live in the real world. That he does not feel the emotions of empathy, fear, worry, grief, that the rest of us do. That he is looking at what is going on right now in a very dispassionate way, as if he is purely a historian and has no personal investment in any of this. To watch what is going on in the world, and not feel intense sadness over the extermination of people, the senseless killing, the subjugation of women, the devastation of communities…I can’t understand it. How does one separate themselves from this, and feel nothing?
I deal with concerns about this all of the time. Having to personally concern myself with the possibility of hijacking, bombs, terror threats. To have to stay aware and alert, to search for threats that could bring an airplane down. To remember all the body bags I brought over to the Middle East empty, and the coffins I brought home. To remember the massive pollution and destruction that was caused by the oil fires started by Saddam Hussein and his minions. I can’t watch the news without feeling horrified and distraught by so many people, mostly in the Middle East, who are caught up in this. I don’t know how you disconnect yourself from these emotions.
You’re completely off the mark there. I do feel quite deeply. However, I’m of the view private expressions of emotions should be approached carefully…especially in events which naturally result in highly emotional reactions of fear, grief, anger, etc.
There’s a marked difference from feeling no emotions and learning to control one’s emotions so it isn’t the central or worse, the only part of how one perceives and assesses the world and issues around him/her.
Especially when discussing events where there’s a demonstrated risk that the great amounts of justifiable anger, fear, etc could lead to short-circuiting critical thinking and questioning of the underlying issues involved along with stereotyping an entire race, ethnicity, or religion for the actions of a few individuals or extremists among them and overreactions which is not only counterproductive, but could lead us down a very dark road.
Keep in mind that appealing to emotions is favored among demagogues throughout history who use it and the discounting of rational logical discourse as tools to influence others for dubious at best purposes.
It’s also interesting as several older neighbors from my old childhood neighborhood who are war veterans…some with long distinguished careers all regarded expressing and emphasizing deep emotions of the kind you describe as a flaw to be avoided. Especially the ones who served in WWII and remembered those years and the ones leading up to the war.
Oh please. War veterans not showing deep emotions? Give me a break. There are some that will not talk about the war not because they believe it to be a character flaw, but because they think if they talk about it, they will start crying and never stop. They have just lost too much.
I believe that people who don’t have emotional responses are not merely superior in containing their emotions. A lack of empathy can be representative of a narcissist or a psychopath.
Impressive busdriver11. I don’t have the attention span required to make it to the end of his posts.
The hash tags weren’t enough for you? #bringbackourgirls
/sarcasm
I spent a week fishing in Minnesota with a survivor of the USS Indianapolis.
Got to know him well enough to believe he’d disagree vehemently with your position on this, cobrat. He’d likely want to speak to your old neighbors, too - feel 'em out as to exactly what it is you have them agreeing to.
What, you mean the twitter campaign didn’t work? Apparently, sadly, it has brought back some of our girls. Little girls with bombs strapped to their bodies. 
blankmind, how do you know I’m not just reading the first and last sentences, because…squirrel!
And some of those veterans, boy, you don’t even want to ask them the first question about the war because they’ll talk your ear off. Even after all these years, it’s the most real experience to them. They remember names, events, everything, in great detail, more than what they did the week prior. They go to reunions, join clubs, and keep living the war, many decades later.
It’s not the ones among my neighbors in my old NYC neighborhood don’t feel any emotions. It’s that they’re wary of expressing them deeply in public or tolerating it in others. Moreover, the ones with this tendency scolded neighborhood kids like me and others(mainly boys) if we showed “too much emotion” or they felt we were “losing control of our emotions”. .
They did talk about their wartime experiences. However, a sizable part of it was on the emphasis to be wary about being taken in by emotional appeals or to lose control of one’s emotions based on their wartime experiences in the ETO and from watching newsreels showing Mussolini and Hitler speeches, frenzied emotional reactions from their respective audiences, and the horrific aftermath.
I’ve met some veterans like what you described above. However, I’ve noticed they tend to be more likely to open to those who are older teens or up and if there are kids around, family members or other veterans would gently ask them to be mindful of that fact.
Then again, I’ve also seen other veterans openly displaying heated disagreements about issues related to their wartime experiences without regard that young kids were around them. However, their war was Vietnam and those disagreements are how I found that in that neighborhood, the Vietnam vets were about evenly split between pro and anti-war camps.
Getting back on topic, here’s the latest on a Muslim employee who is being hailed as a hero for saving several hostages during during the attack and siege of the Kosher grocery store by the terrorists:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/10/europe/kosher-grocery-employee/index.html
cobrat is a bit like an auto mechanic who, instead of fixing your car, tells you about the history of the company that built it. Good info in general, just not what you needed. I think perhaps cobrat is simply having a little fun with us. In the meantime, we could just look for another mechanic 
Now, this is how you respond to a bully!
http://news.yahoo.com/mohammed-holds-je-suis-charlie-sign-charlie-hebdo-215647190.html
I apologize if this has been posted already. I did not read all the posts just now.
In the meantime, there is another victim. A police chief who failed to arrest the two Muslim assassins committed suicide a few days ago.
This is also a great focused response to terrorist attacks. Since it’s not being carried out by governments and the terrorists themselves are avowed against free speech principles…too bad:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/11/technology/security/anonymous-charlie-hebdo/index.html
Moving video
The French national assembly spontaneously sings La Marseillaise after a moment of silence to honor victims of last week’s attack. First time since 1918.