The Ideologic Extremism of Terrorists, the NRA, and West Fertilizer Co.

In the same week two young ethnic Chechens succeeded in exploding bombs at the Boston Marathon killing 3 and wounding over a hundred people, the NRA/Gun Industry with a minority of Senators killed gun control background checks and every other proposed gun regulation in the US Senate --which will result in far more deaths and wounded than those two terrorists caused. The irony of the timing should not escape us. Pyrrhic victories both, victories which will ultimately lead to their defeat. The two suspects in the Boston bombing, one dead and one hospitalized and about to enter the nightmare of the rest of his life, literally exploded onto the national scene and their pathetic lives will be dissected looking for the clues about radicalization and motives which seem so distant and hard for us to understand. The NRA/Gun Industry's motives appear to be nothing more than $$$ tapping into a uniquely American gun fetishism. Weaponizing our culture to a degree never seen before is their profit motive, so much so that prominent NRA member Adolphus Busch IV resigned this week. Craven, crass, and caught in a downward moral spiral of munitions profits, the NRA not only lost the majority of the US Senate vote this week, but perhaps lost the little remaining credibility they have. In their Pyrrhic victory will be the seeds of their ultimate loss. The ideologic extremism of both supersedes reason. Viewing the world through ideologic lenses leaves one with tunnel vision oblivious to the results of their limited visions. And the contradictions of the ideologic extremes can be seen in the calls for the surviving Boston terrorist's 5th Amendment rights to be forfeited by the same people who vow to expand the 2nd Amendment to heretofore never seen boundaries. Both the terrorists and the NRA succeeded this week in their short term agendas; perhaps in the long run, though, the victories of both this week will sow the seeds of their defeat. And West Fertilizer Co. failed to disclose it was storing 270 tons of explosive ammonium nitrate (think Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma Federal Building a few years ago) near an elementary school, nursing homes, and residential neighborhoods. This appears to be deliberate criminal conduct in pursuit of $$$ which has resulted in catastrophe for so many. They planted a bomb 10,000 larger than the one in Boston.