Really, Bernie Sanders?

[Jane2]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 10:54am

I'm trying to believe in Bernie Sanders. However, on Face the Nation just now, I couldn't believe what I heard him saying. Maybe it makes sense to someone here:

 

Sanders believes that climate change is partly to blame for terrorism. Why? He said because if we have droughts, it causes people to be out of work and causes unrest. The terrorists take advantage of the  unrest. Then Sanders was asked how this has anything to do with the attacks on Paris. After fumfering (sp) around, he had some crazy answer about people moving into the city. Then they quickly changed the subject. 

 

This thinking of Sanders' worries me.

[Call_me_jorge]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 11:10am

He's not entirely wrong about the unrest. And maybe for the incidents in Paris you can say that western countries are being blamed for the increased climate change. I don't know.

[haterobics]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 11:18am

"Climate change is directly related to the rise of global terrorism," Sanders said, adding that it would cause nations to start "struggling over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to grow their crops, and you're going to see all kinds of international conflict," ABC News reported.

 

Sanders backed up his statement by mentioning what "the CIA says," a likely reference to a July 2015 report from the U.S. Department of Defense that found "global climate change will aggravate problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions that threaten stability in a number of countries," according to a news release.

 

https://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/bernie-sanders-connects-climate-change-to-terrorism/

[Jane2]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 11:20am

to jorge - Well yeah, of course there would be drought related unrest but I don't see how that causes terrorism here and elsewhere.

Updated On: 11/15/15 at 11:20 AM

[Jane2]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 11:24am

yes, hate, I heard all that. Those hypothetical issues are sure to cause internal problems. How to deal with terrorism was not addressed, in my mind.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 11:31am

 

The key word is "responsible." There's nothing incorrect about saying that climate change and endless warfare in the Middle East "contribute" to the fervor of radical Islamist terrorism, but is ridiculous to say they are "responsible" or that they "cause" it--simply out of a desire to exonerate a religion you feel is being put to disproportionate blame.

 

The only thing responsible for that terrorism is the bastardization of Sunni Islamic teachings that go so far as a desire to drive the world to war. And it will have to be the Sunni nations of the world that eradicate that bastardization of their beliefs. Not the West, and not the Shiites.

 

I don't think Bernie Sanders has the depth of knowledge or the patience to learn how to be effective in the 21st-century world. His beliefs are squarely set in the mid-20th-century.

[haterobics]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 11:39am

I'm not sure those are merely hypothetical issues, since he is basing them on a Pentagon report warning about these concerns in relation to national security.

 

Once people aren't able to feed their families, that level of poverty will push more people to more radical religious views, and on and on. I didn't see the interview you did, but when he said somewhat the same thing in Saturday's debate, it sounded logical.

 

Only the press would try to try to take such a macro view on climate change and terrorism and try and apply it directly to a two-day old terrorism event, which seems a bit lazy although sadly not surprising. ISIS doesn't need climate change to destabilize that region, they already had our recent wars and nation building to do that for them.

[Jane2]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 11:41am

Thanks, PJ. I believe that twisted religious beliefs are the basic causes of terrorism. The internal problems a country can suffer from certainly cause an amount of unrest but they don't affect the religious tenets of radical zealots in the mideast. 

[Wildcard]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 12:41pm

The more I see and hear of Bernie, the less likely I am to vote for him. 

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 1:07pm

History being made:  The dumbest thing ever said in a Democratic debate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uQutU7FzcQ

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 2:11pm

Climate change can cause food scarcity.  Starving people are easily manipulated by religious fanatic or other cult leaders.  Some poor, uneducated white people in this country can't find jobs, can't make ends meet, but if they hear a philosophy that identifies some "other" as the reason they don't have enough, they can be convinced to do harm to this "enemy."  And that's where white supremacist skinheads come from in the US.

[javero]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 2:23pm

I tend to agree with Bernie's climate change angle as well as Bill Maher on a slightly different tangent.  Bill and I both believe that the terrorist boys need to get laid which is in line with Jane2's thesis in the context of twisted religious beliefs.  Hell yeah, both Bill and I grossly exaggerate things a bit.  But, the radicalized types are recruited during their sexual prime, raised in an environment wherein premarital sex is the mother of all taboos, have little access to jobs which are already scarce, and can only score with a bunch of virgins promised in the after-life unless they can buy a bride.  I'm no sociologist, but it's not a stretch to make a correlation between radicalized terrorists and incarcerated booty bandits with gang ties.  

[Jane2]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 3:31pm

I am taking some of these points further - so would I be correct to infer that what's being said here is that due to the desperation of some of the population, for the reasons mentioned, these people would start believing in the twisted logic of terrorists and then turn to mass murdering our citizens?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 3:34pm

Obviously not everyone who lives in horrible conditions.  Just those who are vulnerable for a whole host of external reasons.   When climates become inhospitable to the creation of food, people starve, and starving people get desperate.  

[Jane2]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 3:39pm

I don't know.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 5:27pm

 

Sex and climate change seem woefully insufficient as an explanation for a hatred of all those who do not believe one's own highly selective interpretation of one branch of a religion. Sex and climate change don't explain a lust for mass-murder, mass-rape and the destruction of antiquities.

 

 

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 5:41pm

"An" not "the."  Imagining a single "the" leads to simple solutions like militarism, because theoretically it doesn't take long to obliterate a "the."  

[dented146]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 7:28pm

It is about propaganda whether we are talking about a religious leader, a political leader or just media. Namo, I don't deny that you explain part of the discontent but where you have written "white people" just substitute "black people" and you find the same thing happening. You may feel that the degree of injustice makes it different. To me it's the same problem.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 7:32pm

I was using one very specific example not for any reason other than I think our tendency to speak in terms of broad generalities degrades the level of discussion on this board.

 

And the specific incident that inspired the thought was the white skinheads who were apprehended in Boston a number of years ago.  They wanted to bomb Boston's Holocaust Memorial because, you know, they were poor working class people who couldn't get anywhere in life that had to have somebody to blame.  They fell in with an anti-Semitic skinhead group and voila.

 

Just trying to explain my though process as to how I came to post what I did.

[dented146]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 7:55pm

Fair enough and well explained. Thanks.

[javero]

Posted: 11/15/15 at 10:37pm

"...would I be correct to infer that what's being said here is that due to the desperation of some of the population, for the reasons mentioned, these people would start believing in the twisted logic of terrorists and then turn to mass murdering our citizens?"

 

That plus the twisted logic of male privilege which is only reinforced behind bars.  I know my share of men who are either incarcerated or have done at least one bid.  They've been brutally honest with him about two rules of survival in the joint.  The first one is... fight or f*ck, and the other is...you're either the alpha dog of the clique or a beta bitch.

 

Terrorism is horrible right along with prison rape.  I don't claim to understand all the conditions that could lead mainly young men to perpetrate either act.  But, when you have a toxic brew of massive unemployment among the perps, a strong sense of alpha-male entitlement, identity politics, and a history of victim-hood, in the context of the penal system or a 7th century belief system that basically ignores a woman's person-hood, bad shaite's likely to happen.  For some reason, pent up frustration, gang-induced bravado, and religious zealotry cause some boys and young men to become feral. 

 

We only need to ask ourselves why the US armed forces almost exclusively place young men in combat roles, sparing women and elderly men.  Ground forces tend to be made of young virile men, be it under a flag or fatwa.  My dad, who is a veteran, believes that there is sweet-spot in which young men can be rather easily cajoled to take the lives of others.  Somewhat related, Baltimore City has registered 300 homicides thus far this year, the highest level since 1999, with more than a month to go.  

[Liza's Headband]

Posted: 11/16/15 at 7:33am

We only need to ask ourselves why the US armed forces almost exclusively place young men in combat roles, sparing women and elderly men.

 

Are you f*cking kidding me with this? Try health concerns and physical limitations.... 

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 11/16/15 at 12:21pm

 My dad, who is a veteran, believes that there is sweet-spot in which young men can be rather easily cajoled to take the lives of others. 

I would like to see some data on this. 

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/16/15 at 12:27pm

I'd love to see some too, because a few military men in my life have suggested as much over the years.

[javero]

Posted: 11/16/15 at 12:29pm

"Are you f*cking kidding me with this? Try health concerns and physical limitations...."

 

Women and elderly men are perfectly capable of killing other human beings.  Interestingly enough, during the US civil war, the Confederacy had no minimum age of enlistment and neither side enforced the maximum age limit of 45.