Big Tech faces another so-called Dilemma 'case'.

 Dear Editor,

The Washington Times front-page story today “’Terrorist’ definition snags Big Tech case” (April 12, 2023) exposes a root cause of our government’s persistent and accelerating dysfunction.  In politics, we repeatedly use words without steadfast definitions and expect a predictable result.   Science, engineering, and math yield consistently reliable results because they use words that are precise globally.    Our mind’s creativity, however, enables us to make up multiple definitions of words and then use them however our political system allows.  And then we apply different definitions according to our own personal, religious, or political truths.   But not the reality of self-evident objective truths that require hard evidence.  Evidence that this has been consistently tested and applicable in every application.  

On Oct. 12, 1999, the Washington Times printed confirmation of this fundamental truth in an op-ed.  In summary, we all face a trilemma, not a freedom-security dilemma.  A dilemma that every Big Tech, COVID, debt, immigration, or war news story represents.  All we really have is freedom.  What we all desperately want and need is security.  Yet, we codify Independence into our laws and then worship it.  In reality, we can only have two of these things we want sustainably. 

Regarding the word “Terrorism’.  The root word of terrorism is ‘terror’. Terror is a feeling.  An effective war cannot be waged against a feel!  Americans were certainly terrorized by the events of 9-11 but those who planned and orchestrated that mass murder attack was just that.  Mass murderers who should have been held accountable for their atrocious crimes.   But they were acting on the terror their religious loved ones have repeatedly experienced at the deadly end of US weaponry and our middle east foreign policy largely dictated by our addiction to their oil and US religious affiliation with Israel.   Israelis rightfully experience terror when Isreal is threatened with “extermination” by Iran’s leaders.  Fear of genocide is REAL for them.  But the justifiable anger of enraged Palestinians whose government has religiously justified driving them from their homes, occupying what they believe is their legal land, and then killing their loved ones at a far greater rate than Israelis are dying should be understandable by any unbiased human.

We are all free to do and say whatever we like.  Freedom is real!  But it's folly to expect there will not be consequences to whatever we do or say.  Methodically and rationally read the words of our founding fathers.  In their own writings, the word ‘virtue’ appeared more than the word ‘freedom’.  They knew but didn’t always act on the fundamental principle that we are all free to say and do as we please.  But our freedom will always have consequences.   

And in this context the word “Independence” has created more wars, terrorism, and genocide in the world, and thus more terror, than any other word in the English language.   Independence is a political word that has established a flawed concept.  Things are separate but they are NEVER independent.   And Independence is best defined as an illusion or a delusional concept.   This reality was confirmed in the words of the Director of our nation’s newest federal agency CISA.  A vital national security body that President Trump created in the middle of his administration.  Jen Easterly who heads our Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency said in Oct. 2021 “Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort....”. 

Sixty years ago Fidel Castro called the US the greatest terrorist in the world because we held the world hostage to nuclear annihilation.  Today, Russia is doing that with its unlawful war against Ukraine.  Ukrainians are rightfully terrorized!  But that’s not terrorism!  It’s a war crime and genocide (illegal mass murder).  And until humanity establishes a global court system and a capacity to administer justice to mass murders wherever they live globally.... the rest of humanity will have to live in terror of another war, world war, genocide, and repeated attacks by ‘freedom fighters’ who have been, or even think they have been treated unjustly.   As a Pope once said...”No justice, no peace!”