Jumping the Reservation

  Bang bang, he shot me down 
Bang bang, I hit the ground 
--Bang, Bang, Sonny Bono 
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[Note: Ranger wrote the following piece last night, before news of Dorner's death.]

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck calls cop-killer Christopher Dorner "a domestic terrorist," but is he?  What IS a domestic terrorist?

Was Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh one?  He did try to develop an organization and attacked a government target, apparently hoping to garner support and membership as a result of his criminal actions.

Ted Kaczynski ("The Unabomber") was another person who used terrorist tactics, but he was a lone wolf with no pretensions to organization or structure, either for the purpose of support or group affiliation.  His actions could be described as nihilistic.

Former LAPD officer Christopher Dorner believes himself wronged, and belatedly targeted those he believed responsible for his "decline".  His actions seem to spring from paranoid ideation rather than terrorist aspirations.  He is collecting a perverted payback.

Labeling Dorner a terrorist unleashes a broad array of extralegal actions which may be taken against him. We have become acclimated to these illegal responses because we justify that terrorism must be combated at all costs, as it is a scourge to be blamed for all the ills that plague our daily lives.  But it is too facile to label a protester or a nutcase a "terrorist", and we must have some rigor in our definition.

Everything is not terrorism, even if it walks and talks like a terrorist.  Terrorists create mayhem any way they can via their unpredictability. We are a reductionist and cookie cutter society, and we are also an overstimulated society, in need of ever greater drama to keep us somewhat awake. Ergo, violence = terrorism, and the Constitution may be trashed in the process.

Beyond the questionable designation of the shooter as a terrorist, can that designator be applied to our President and his Administration?  Is President Obama acting as a terrorist when he dispatches hit teams to foreign lands?  Is the SEAL with 30 assassinations under his belt who killed Osama bin Laden a terrorist?

Ranger's analysis of Dorner is that he will not kill again capriciously because he has shot his wad.  He has shown the world how pissed off he is and there is no further need for killing; he has had his catharsis.

If he shoots again, it will be because he is cornered (Report: Dorner's wallet found in burned-out cabin.) [He did shoot again, as he was cornered.]  He will fight because he knows he is dead whatever the outcome, and he will try to take a few more government agents out with him.  He, and we, know that the LAPD wants to kill him.

He will not shoot any women or children [Donner did not kill the maids who discovered him, and he also  stole a man's truck, telling him, "'I don't want to hurt you. Just get out of the truck and start walking up the road.' [The man] asked if he could get his dog out of the back. Dorner said, "Okay, but don't take time to get a leash."]

All murder is not terrorism, but terrorism is often murderous.  The goal of cutting terrorists from the herd is a reasonable one; however, it must be done within a legal framework, one which is already firmly in place, if it has not always been employed.  People are so brainwashed to believe that terrorists are other than criminals, belonging to some rarefied category outside the body of law, that they will cheer the use of drones upon one designated, "terrorist", even though this violates his due process of law, one of the central tenets of our democracy.

Ranger hopes the rogue L.A. cop is arrested (not "captured", which is a designator used in combat, which this is not).  However, the propaganda buildup in the press does not bode well for this outcome.

Pay Your Money, Take Your Chances

--Lalo Alcarez

Ranger Question of the Day:
USAToday headline --
"Deportation Tears Families Apart";
Don't endless wars tear families apart, too?
How about relentless financial insecurity?

This sector of the world about which
science could not utter a single word
was nothing less than this:
what it is like to be an individual living
in the United States in the twentieth century
--Diagnosing The Modern Malaise,
Walker Percy
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Take your pick: What is the greater threat to welfare of the average taxpaying U.S. citizen -- Terrorism, or Wall Street?

Hundreds of billions of dollars were lost or stolen by the denizens of the large corporate banks. To date there have been no criminal prosecutions of these thieves.

Contrast this white collar crime with that of a piddling player like Jose Pimenthal, recently arrested on terrorism charges in the town that brought us the sub-prime debacle. Pimenthal is a pathetic wannabe devoid of any operational terrorist skills and who -- like all the other poor zhlubs -- will be convicted of terrorist activity and will spend the rest of his sorry life in a maximum security prison.

Pimenthal's poverty of thought should have been evident in his misplaced decision to go from being Hispanic to Hispanic-Muslim, and plotting bomb attacks against the United States Postal Service, and entity imploding nicely without any two-bit help from another bomber manque with a WMD (weapon of minor destruction).

Weigh the harm caused by a Pimenthal against that perpetrated by the respected investment bankers on Wall Street. The ineffective pipe bomb that Pimenthal was allegedly trying to build would have been as effective as flatus in a windstorm; the fallout from the financial meltdown is still cycling the globe.

We need some perspective on the reality of our lives.

Like the news show host says, The Answer: Bankers are more dangerous than domestic terrorists.