In the last 24 hours the news has been dominated by president Obama’s outrage at an newsman for asking him about four US hostages left in Iranian custody despite his deal. Someone was raining on his parade, ruining his moment of historic achievement and legacy.
But in other news, ISIS sank an Egyptian naval vessel, attacked France which thwarted a second attack on a military base, the Philippines has reopened the old US Naval base at Subic, the Japanese armed forces are now authorized for combat for the first time since World War 2. Meanwhile, a person identified as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez attacked a military recruitment depot in Chattanooga, killing four and wounding a police officer, before being killed himself. A website reports that an ISIS related site is tweeted “Chattanooga” at the same time as the attack.
An ISIS-related account tweeted “O American dogs soon YOU will see the wonders,” and used #Chattanooga, at 10:34 a.m., just about the same time police say the shooting began, according to JihadWatch.org.
The suspect in Chattanooga, like the man arrested in a plot to recreate the Boston Marathon bombing, is apparently the son of a police officer. The Times Free Press has details.
Police in Hixson kicked a reporter out of the neighborhood that contained a house apparently owned by Abdulazeez. The reporter saw a SWAT team and FBI agents staging at a nearby strip mall. The house, which Hamilton County records is owned by Youssuf S. Abdulazeez, is appraised at $206,100 by the Hamilton County Assessor of Property.
Abdulazeez allegedly killed four Marines and shot one police officer in the attack at Amnicola Highway. A soldier and a police officer were wounded in the attack, according to the Associated Press. Dennis Pedigo, a Chattanooga police officer, is in stable condition.
Abdulazeez’s father, Youssuf Abdullazeez, was appointed as a “special policeman” for Chattanooga’s Department of Public Works in March 2005.
A woman who attended Red Bank High School with Abdulazeez said he was a quiet kid, but well-liked.
“He was friendly, funny, kind,” said Kagan Wagner. “I never would have thought it would would be him.”
She added that their whole family seemed normal.
“They were your average Chattanooga family,” she said.
The flurry of incidents is probably only coincidental, but the confluence of occurrences suggest that the world has suddenly turned some dreadful corner to come face to face with all the nightmares our politician’s fantasies, denials and lies have assured the public do not exist. Before long the media will probably return the focus to really important news, like whether it is a crime to disagree with the Left on Twitter or the latest exploits of the former Bruce Jenner.
Of course the ISIS trademark strategy has been to attack the law enforcement apparatus, to burrow within for “insider attacks”; to infiltrate whatever it can. Their plan is to sow doubt, while they themselves are, despite their material weakness, full of confidence, the better to expose the painful timidity and impotence of the country’s leadership. Yet surely works in places like Syria or Iraq. It can’t work in a place where DHS, OPM, the State Department and the White House are on the alert. Can it?
But though it may be a trick of psychology, the forced return to the “talking points” increasingly lacks conviction. It is as if the members of the media elite have finally begun to suspect that their world is falling apart; that this time the danger to them, individually and personally, is real. And they know why.
“Your average Chattanooga family”. Maybe they were at that. The new normal. For as long as anyone can remember — back to the end of World War 2 at least — the world has been divided into two spaces: the universe of tragedy and the safe spaces where the comfortable could analyze, laugh and talk about the other place in godlike omniscience.
There was the Middle East, Third World and Flyover Country and then there the nice places. The former was material for the Narrative.. The latter was where you got paid for writing that narrative. That happy dichotomy is at an end. The elite know what’s out there because they’ve shoved the dead, the deceit and the fraud into that outer darkness and retreated into the safety of the pentagram. The ghosts are peeling off the page; they won’t obey the Narrative any more. They are oozing past the edges of the pentagram. What to do?
Ignore. Stomp on Major Garrett. Call him names. Believe, believe in Obama. Even so, they now seem haunted by the little things. Corners that they won’t glance into any more. Issues they won’t address. They refuse to speak about creaky noises that won’t go away. Are there empty letters from Mr and Mrs Karma in the mailbox? Ignore. We don’t know them.
They’re here. The TV people. Daddy, can’t you see them? Like the movie said, we’re in some dim place lost because you’re afraid of the light. We won’t get back home until we forthrightly come out of the darkness. If we can’t admit there’s something disturbing about selling aborted babies for parts or understand you can’t lose an entire classified database to the Chinese without consequences; until people remember that a lie is a lie no matter who utters it, then we are doomed. It will finally come down to this: lose the Narrative or lose the light.
And now, back to really important matters.
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