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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   26573 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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It might be mostly the second, thinking about it for a few seconds. Just what kind of personality type does it take to seriously want to use a nuke in terrorism (is it some sort of extreme misanthrope, someone whose political convictions are second at best to the nihilistic urge of "kill 'em all"?), and how many of that kind of person does it take to pull off a terror-nuke plot?

I could see an extreme eco terrorist thinking detonating a nuclear bomb in, say, Houston to be a net positive.

Spoken like a true Houstonian.

I mean it would wipe out some backtaxes and make Sheila Jackson Lee either be quiet or generate an amusing soundbite about nuclear weapons, what's not to like?

Just what kind of personality type does it take to seriously want to use a nuke in terrorism (is it some sort of extreme misanthrope, someone whose political convictions are second at best to the nihilistic urge of "kill 'em all"?)

I don't think either extreme misanthropy or nihilism are required or even particularly likely characteristics of a terrorist who would want to use nukes. Merely the conviction that life on Earth is just a very short term pit stop, where your behavior during it determines your placement in the eternity of afterlife would be enough to convince a perfectly regular, pro-social, well-adjusted member of society to believe that murdering 5-6 figure number of people is not only justified but obligated.

I think that's a bit too charitable. There have to be thousands (10s of 1000s?) of muslims who would love to nuke the US, and I've heard quite a few bubbas talk about glassing the desert.

You can probably get a large coordinated group of people EITHER smart enough to steal a nuke OR hateful enough to want to use it, not both.

The Bubbas want the US to glass the desert, assuming they aren't just mouthing off. They're not generally interested in setting up a terrorist organization to steal a nuke to re-enact Trinity in the Middle East.

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