More is coming in on what happened at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. The headlines are, “Planned Parenthood alleged gunman is from North Carolina”; “Gunman’s Past Scoured for Clues to Siege at Planned Parenthood”; and “Suspect in Colorado clinic shooting had past brushes with the law.” The headlines and articles use the words “gunman,” “shooter,” “recluse,” and “suspect.”

All of these reports very carefully and studiously avoid the one most highly accurate and relevant term: “terrorist.” No one dares use that word.

Here’s my favorite headline: “Colorado shooter politically motivated.”

Hmmm… what is the definition of “terrorism” again? Oh, yeah, right here in my dictionary: “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.” In short, the Colorado shooting was nothing less than terrorism, and the “gunman,” Robert Lewis Dear, was a terrorist. If it was a shooting at, well, actually, anywhere, but the person shooting was a Muslim from a middle eastern country, no one at all would hesitate to use the word “terrorist”; every single last article would be filled with terror, terrorism, terrorist. But not now, not in this case.

Already people are talking about the man being “mentally unstable,” despite there being no evidence either way on the matter. This is the normal fallback position when a Christian or conservative commits a crime like this, a setup for the “no true Scotsman” fallacy: he wasn’t really a conservative/Christian, he was just crazy. Neither his politics nor his faith are really relevant, is the standard explanation. He was a “recluse,” a “loner,” divorced from the community, we’ll be told.

Nope. From all indications, the man is a terrorist. He mentioned “no more baby parts,” a reference to the recent bogus Planned Parenthood videos which have been all the rage in conservative circles as of late. His target, a Planned Parenthood clinic, was not some coincidence. Officials have stated that his attack was “definitely politically motivated.”

It was the same thing last week when five people were shot at a Black Lives Matter protest. Again, a politically motivated violent attack—and again, the media refused to use the word “terrorism.” Again, it was “shooters,” “gunmen,” “suspects”—but no terrorists.

It’s about time we stopped shying away from calling domestic terrorism for what it is. The problem, of course, is that Fox News and the entire conservative media and much of the core community will explode in anger at the suggestion that politics has anything to do with it.

Fox and other conservative outlets are quickly laying down the crazy-lone-recluse story; Newsmax highlights that he had “few religious or political leanings” and that his mental health is under scrutiny, a story nearly identical to Fox News. Breitbart is almost hilarious in its coverage, going straight for the man’s voter registration and—I kid you not—blaming Colorado gun control laws for the incident, whilst highlighting the claim that Dear was “unknown to pro-lifers in the area.” In short, they are trying to lay down damage control, to give their readers and viewers everything possible to deny that the shooter had any relation to conservatives or the conservative cause.

Nor is that a simple political whitewash; the right-wing noise machine has a serious vested interest in disassociating itself from this case, just like they had when Byron Williams drove his car to San Francisco to kill as many people as he could at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU, after watching Glenn Beck on Fox News rage about these organizations taking over the country. Or when Richard Poplawski killed three police officers in Pittsburgh after watching Fox News and reading InfoWars. Or when Dylann Roof killed nine black people in a church after being radicalized by lies spread on conservative web sites.

It is pretty obvious that not just one source, but the entire culture of dramatically, I would even say breathtaking lies and distortion now blanketing the conservative bubble—this is what is driving the more and more violent right wing in the United States, making monsters out of peaceful protesters, painting a women’s health organization as a machine of genocide, and creating a bizarre alternate fantasy world regarding the president in which he’s a fascist, communist Kenyan with a fake birth certificate bent on slaughtering Christians and conservatives in concentration camps.

It has come to the point where fact no longer matters, not even a little bit. Where top presidential candidates just make all kinds of crap up and the press can’t even refute them for fear of being smeared as “liberal media.” Where outrageous lies and distortions are the norm, not the deviation.

It is my fear—and I believe a well-founded one—that we’re just seeing the beginning of a new wave of violence, beyond the simple slaughter being carried out with firearms on a daily basis. The new violence is, simply, terrorism: politically motivated violence driven by a relentless drumbeat of despicable lies and hatred blared to an increasingly desperate and gullible core of conservatives lost in the desolate bubble of modern conservatism.

The black community needed to make a statement regarding the continued and repeated killing of innocent, unarmed black people at the hands of the police or others using violence as a result of prejudice, so they began the Black Lives Matter movement. It wasn’t about just Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, or any other one case. It was about the hundreds of unarmed black people killed by police, and more still killed by others, every year, year after year.

Conservatives shot back with “All Lives Matter” and “Cops’ Lives Matter” memes, thinking that they were being righteous and clever: belittle and denigrate the Black Lives Matter movement, while at the same time making it look like the Black Lives Matter movement itself was the one belittling and degrading others. After all, who could argue that the lives of the police, or indeed, all lives don’t matter? How callous and wrong of those black people!

That response by conservatives is, at best, completely missing the point—and, at worst, is at once disingenuous, asinine, and deeply racist in a very fundamental sense.

Why? Simple. Because when people say that Black Lives Matter, they are not talking about the relative worth of the lives of members of any one group compared to any other. They are, instead, making a statement about how people are treated.

When a police officer is killed, under any circumstances, it instantly becomes a significant case. Police begin massive operations to hunt down and capture or kill whomever committed the crime. When the perpetrators are captured, they are punished far more harshly than one would be for killing just about any other person. Meanwhile, the community grieves and shows utmost respect, and very commonly, funerals with auspicious honors are held and attended by hundreds, treating the victim as a hero.

In short, when a police officer dies, the reaction shows that that person’s life mattered to the community, and mattered a great deal. The entire community, and indeed the law itself, reacts in a way as to say, “This person was a fine, honorable person who will be remembered with pride, who sacrificed everything; they will be honored in a special way.” There is no question about whether their lives matter.

However, when an innocent, unarmed black person is killed by police, the response is the exact opposite. Until forced to pay attention only recently, the media ignored such cases. The powers that be refuse to even keep track of the numbers of innocent, unarmed black people killed. The police force closes ranks to protect their own, and investigations almost universally find that the killing was “justified.” The victim, far from being honored, is painted as a villain who deserved death. Every mark on their record is dragged out and exaggerated to play up the idea that the person was obviously a criminal who must have been at fault. The police leak prejudicial information to influence the public’s reaction. The community shuns the victim and their survivors, gives them no respect and no honor.

If the black person was even once arrested for an altercation or a charge of drug possession, that is made to be their identity. And such blemishes are not hard to find in a society whose law enforcement targets black people simply because they are black, and when a prosecution is carried out, it is rigged all too often to force a plea to that effect. In contrast, if the police officer’s report says that the black person “advanced in a hostile and threatening manner,” or that the black person “appeared to have a weapon,” that statement, even without a shred of evidence to back it up, is given every benefit of the doubt—even if it is inconsistent with every other indication in the case.

In short, when an innocent, unarmed black person is killed, the community’s reaction shows that that person’s life did not matter at all, at least not to the community. The system and the law itself gives their killers a nod and a pass, and shows utter disrespect for the victim and their rights. The message is clear: black lives don’t matter.

That is what the Black Lives Matter movement is responding to. Not, as their callous detractors insinuate, that only Black Lives Matter, but that society is committing an injustice when it acts as if their lives do not in any way matter. When no respect is given, no grief is displayed, only the disrespect of blaming the victim for their own death and allowing the killer to walk free.

All lives matter. Everyone knows this.

The point made by the movement does not at all dispute this. It simply points out that our society acts as if the lives of black people matter far less than do others—and the Black Lives Matter movement feels it to be an imperative to point this out as wrong.

The conservative reply, in the true context therefore, is essentially saying, “No, they don’t matter, not as much as other’s lives matter.” But they engineered it look like the victim is the villain, and the villain is the victim.

Aren’t they so clever?

The very cogent point is made that no one believes that people like the KKK, who claim Christianity is a core value, is representative of Christianity and Christians, but somehow we do believe that ISIS, or Islamic extremists in general, are representative of Islam and Muslims.

Two points are made, however: first, that fundamentalist Islam is ascendant if not dominant in the Muslim world, and second, that these fundamentalists are more extreme, oppressive, and violent than their counterparts in the Christian world. As far as I understand the situation, these are true; this should not be denied, excused, or minimized.

Those facts should be contextualized and understood, however. Why is there more radicalism, more oppression, more violence in that world? Is it something about Islam?

A point we miss is our own hand in the matter—indeed, we even harshly criticize those who even suggest that somehow we have any responsibility for the current state of affairs. However, for the past century, the Middle East has been overrun by Western forces and interests, much to the detriment of the people there. Regions conquered, made into colonies, borders redrawn (sometimes randomly), resources plundered, governments overthrown, with constant invasions and slaughter over time.

Now imagine if the tables were turned. What if the Arab and Islamic, and not the Christian European and American cultures, were ascendant and powerful coming into the 20th century? What if Europe and North America were invaded by Islamic countries, our borders redrawn, our people killed and pitted against each other, our resources plundered and puppet governments installed? What if our attempts at self-government were overthrown, our fragmented nations put into the hands of sadistic dictators? What if, say, Italy were handed over to the Armenian or Romani people as a homeland, and the natives evicted from their domain of many centuries, marginalized and subjugated, their holy city in the hands of people from a different culture?

If all of this were done to the Christian world at the hands of the Islamic world… what would we be like by now?

Something tells me we would rather uncomfortably resemble the radical Islam that we see today. I think that we are much less different than we believe.

As a result, when dealing with the issues we have before us, we must take these facts into account and consider what will or will not work as a long-term solution for the region—especially before heading off into yet another war of conquest that will again slaughter tens if not hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Three and a half years ago, I posted about Apple doing insanely stupid things regarding security, namely:

1. giving user redundant prompts to enter their account password outside of any identifiable app; and
2. giving users email links in unsolicited emails where they should enter their account id and password.

Both of these are incredibly and dangerously idiotic, as they are exactly the manner in which malware, hackers, and scammers steal information from you; training people to respond positively to such things is essentially training them to fall prey to the first attack that comes along.

Recently, I have suffered from dealing with more and more similar and harebrained idiocy from Apple. First of all, in Keychain, when I want to see a password, I am asked for my system password; I enter it. But then I get another prompt for my password and my ID, after having just entered my correct password. Why? No explanation given, just enter the ID and password. If I cancel the second request, the password I was trying to uncover is still hidden. If I do enter the information, the computer tells me it was not correct, and the password is still hidden. This is precisely what I expect to see if I am presented with some sort of malware.

The same happens with iCloud. I am asked to enter the password repeatedly, for no apparent reason. I could not remember it, so I checked Keychain—and could not access it. So I reset it. Everything went okay: I clicked “I forgot,” went to Apple’s site, asked for email authentication, did that, reset the password online. So far, so good. Then I went to the System Preferences and signed in to the account. It worked. Okay.

But then I got another prompt to enter the password, apparently not attached to any app. Not thinking, I typed in the password. Then I got another identical prompt, asking for the same password. This is when I lost it—there was no reason for Apple to ask me for my password, not the second time and certainly not the third. It looked exactly like a malware password heist. The thing is, I checked, and apparently it is not malware or a hacker. However, it makes me feel exactly as if I was hacked.

I reset the password again, and this time I ignored the superfluous generic password requests, just canceled them—and there was no apparent ill effect. So why in hell is Apple adding these?? Not to mention, Apple should never have a free-floating request for a password that is not clearly attached to an official app. Such requests must always be the “windowshade” style requests firmly pegged to the window of an app you can trust—otherwise, it’s identical to what a hacker would use, and thus trains users to fall prey to the first attack that comes along.

I swear, Apple’s security gets so easily crapped up that it is completely unworth it. I am going to trash Apple’s security as much as I can and go with a third-party solution.