Incredulity

in·cre·du·li·ty

ˌinkrəˈd(y)o͞olədē/

noun

noun: incredulity

the state of being unwilling or unable to believe something.

Incredulity and incredulity are two words that one likely needs to be acquainted with in this political cycle.  When emotional v. rational become the adjectives for describing our public discussions, then we know that as a nation we have failed our civic IQ.

It is amazing to me that there is, respectively, a presidential candidate, and now "Newt" making (1) wholesale threats to ban immigrants or immigrants of a certain religious/ethnic background, and (2) demands to interview all Muslims, test them and monitor their internet habits.

I'm third generation of immigrants (Armenian), so I remember quite well through my Nana's stories of the the reasons her people came to this country.  Many are more generations removed than I.  Accordingly, there is no true sense of origin or even the reasons thereof.

I cannot reconcile the level of outrage accorded to terrorist attacks and the knee-jerk reactions that take away basic freedoms to a large amount of people v. the apathy accorded to run-of-the-mill, egregious crimes (rape, murder, aggravated assault).  I offer up these three "Items" that affect more people than terrorists, but are treated as 'run-of-the-mill, egregious crimes" (as if there could be such a thing).

Item 1:  The FBI has published statistics on these 'run-of-the mill', egregious crimes.  You can find detailed data here. If you click through, you will find than in 2012, there were 84.4K forcible rapes.  According to PolitiFact fact checking, in the last

According the nonprofit project the Gun Violence Archive, there were 12,562 gun deaths in 2014 and 9,959 in 2015 thus far. That’s a grand total of 301,797 firearm-related deaths in the past decade, compared to 71 deaths from domestic acts of terrorism.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/05/viral-image/fact-checking-comparison-gun-deaths-and-terrorism-/

In a decade, we have experienced 71 deaths from religious terrorists; however, our American citizens wielding a gun with intent to harm have killed 4250 for every 1 death that the terrorists can take credit for. 

Item 2:  The Wall Street Journal notes that the "U. S. Leads the World in Mass Shootings" 

Item 3:  Child Sexual Abuse:  According to the National Center for Victims of Crime, "1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse"

So the incredulity here, is this:  Where's the outrage?  We wish to engage in political hog calling for the deportation/interrogation of groups of people when in fact our own citizens who are deviant, angry, and lacking in impulse control wreak far more havoc on the innocent than 'terrorists'.

How did we ever become so stupid as a nation? Have we become so dazzled by our American dream that we fail to see what lurks in the shadows?  So much of our misery is created by our own system--our citizen terrorists.  Why do we fail to acknowledge them? Our willingness to abdicate reason in favor of incendiary speech towards others proves that we are merely too cowardly to be introspective of our own blight, and perhaps to anesthetized that by listening to such blather is the only way we can really feel something?  Is this why inflammatory rhetoric by politicians gains purchase?