The left needs to get real about domestic jihadists

I am (way) far left of center, and I understand the desire of many leftists to categorize acts of terrorism as a form of mental illness, so as to avoid appearing to be intolerant anti-Muslim bigots. I get this, but I am increasingly reminded of how the old Soviet Union found it useful to lock up their political dissidents in mental asylums. They did this so they could strip any acts against the state of any political meaning, and claim that perps were all suffering from mental illness.

I see the same tendency at work today in many leftists not wanting to acknowledge any underlying political meaning of terror acts against Canada (my country) and elsewhere. If they don't have membership cards saying they are paid up members of ISIL, it is argued, then they are really just crazy people, and we just have to understand their craziness, and not try to consider their acts as having any political meaning. Move along, nothing to see here.

The most illustrative case I can think of is the Oklahoma beheading last month. Despite the perpetrators conversion to Islam, his aggressive but failed attempts at recruiting others to Islam, despite his many jihadi posts on Facebook and elsewhere, and despite the fact (if I recall correctly) that he shouted Allah Akbar as he beheaded a former coworker, this event has been treated as a garden-variety case of "workplace violence" by a crazy guy.

The same thing happened with the Ft. Hood shootings. I now see the same strains occurring in the coverage of yesterday's hatchet attack on police in NYC. In the absence of stamped membership card in ISIL, the perp is about to be declared just another loonie, doing things that loonies have always (sort of) done.

It thus appears that one way the government is keeping America free from acts of terrorism right now, at least in part, is by classifying any terrorist act that does occur as a meaningless act of violence by crazy people. Move along, nothing to see here.

Given that the left seems disposed to going along with this misdirection, I worry about where it all heads. I think most people do know the difference between a terrorist act, and an instance of workplace violence when they see it. They know that Ft. Hood and the Oklahoma are not just a form of "workplace violence" as they are said to be.

If the left clings to the fiction that all these acts are just craziness, and have nothing to do with radical Islam being exported into the west, then I fear it will be the right wing haters, not the reasonable left, who will be relevant to the debate that needs to happen on taking sensible action to protect ourselves against homegrown jihadists. This will adversely effect the kind of laws that will be enacted to deal with the real danger posed by homegrown jihadists.