Terrorball

Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money explains the rules of Terrorball, which if applied broadly could make a lot of things easier.

I’m quite sure I could beat LeBron James in a game of one on one basketball. The game merely needs to feature two special rules: It lasts until I score, and as soon as I score I win. Such a game might last several hours, or even a week or two, and James would probably score hundreds and possibly thousands of points before my ultimate victory, but eventually I’m going to find a way to put the ball in the basket.

Our national government and almost all of the establishment media have decided to play a similar game, which could be called Terrorball. The first two rules of Terrorball are:

(1) The game lasts until there are no longer any terrorists, and;
(2) If terrorists manage to ever kill or injure or seriously frighten any Americans, they win.

How else can one explain the extreme and ongoing over-reaction to last week’s botched attempt to blow up Northwest flight 253? Commentators from Glenn Greenwald to David Brooks have pointed out that demands that the government keep us completely safe from the risk of terror attacks are both absurdly infantile, and very helpful to terrorists, since such demands place the bar for what counts as successful terrorism practically on the ground.

SNIP

Terrorball, then, is an elaborate political game that seems irrational on its face – after all, it’s certain that more than 2.4 million Americans will die this year, and fairly likely that not even one of those deaths will be caused by terrorism -- but which features its own peculiar logic. That logic reflects the anxieties of those who have created its rules, and serves the interests of both terrorists and those who profit from exploiting the fear of terrorism.

Read the whole thing.

Terrorball is thus a variation of the traditional Villager games of IOKIYAR/INOKIYAD (It's OK If You're A Republican/It's Not OK If You're A Democrat), Everything Is Good News For Republicans, and If Republicans Don't Vote For It It's Illegitimate.

It's kind of like Global Thermonuclear War: the only way to win is not to play.