Unbelievable new theme: San Bernardino terrorists were ‘triggered’ by Christmas party

Unbelievable new theme:  San Bernardino terrorists were ‘triggered’ by Christmas party

Just when you think you’ve heard it all, the next shoe drops and you find out different.

You’ll remember the San Bernardino terror attack, which occurred one year ago tomorrow (Friday, 2 December).  The terrorists, husband and wife team Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, slaughtered 14 people and injured 22 at a holiday party for county workers in San Bernardino, California.  Pursued by police after fleeing the scene, the two were eventually killed in an exchange of gunfire, leaving behind a baby daughter.

You may even remember that Howard Portnoy thought the other shoe had dropped on the following day, when he reported that, according to law enforcement, Syed Farook “was apparently radicalized and in touch with people being investigated by the FBI for international terrorism.”  Good times, good times.

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

Maybe there are just a lot of shoes to drop on this one.  Whatever the story on the shoes, the story on the terrorists has now been taken to the next, sublimely ridiculous level.

In a special segment on the San Bernardino terror attack, ABC News has managed to frame comments from the police chief of San Bernardino as warning us that Farook and Malik were “triggered” by the holiday party, which Farook, as a county worker, was “forced” to attend in conjunction with county employee training.

Hand to God:

Authorities believe the terrorist attack on Dec. 2, 2015, in San Bernardino may have been triggered by a mandatory employee training session and lunch replete with holiday decorations, including a Christmas tree, that shooter Syed Farook was forced to attend.

Emails discovered by the FBI and police reveal Farook’s wife, Pakistani native Tashfeen Malik, objected to the Christmas setting and was upset her husband had to go.

“She had essentially made the statement in an online account that she didn’t think that a Muslim should have to participate in a non-Muslim holiday or event,” said San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan in an exclusive interview with ABC News that aired on ABC News’ “Nightline.”

“That really is one of the very, very few pieces of potential evidence that we have that we can truly point to and say, ‘That probably is a motive in this case,’” he said.

Replete with holiday decorations.  Replete, I say!  If only the training session and lunch hadn’t been replete.

Besides the obvious – “Doesn’t anybody know how to write anymore?” – the thing that has to stand out is deployment of the trigger word “triggered,” in the very first paragraph.

When we’re told, in newspeak, that someone has been “triggered,” we’re being told that the person basically couldn’t help himself.  To have been triggered is not only to be absolved of blame.  It’s to shift blame from the triggeree to the triggerer.  It’s to invoke sanctions on the triggerer.  That’s the whole point of defining triggering: to hold a great human host of potential triggerers at risk, dangling over an abyss until they meet their fate in the form of a triggeree.

ABC News has organized this segment to as good as say that acknowledging the Christmas holidays, for the vast majority of Americans who celebrate them, triggers terrorism.  It’s our fault the San Bernardino terrorists opened fire.

The proleptic dhimmitude is complete.

Interestingly, this “analysis” manages to leave out evidence found by FBI and local law enforcement in the first week after the attack.  Farook and Malik had been training with weapons and assembling bomb materials and bombs for months prior to 2 December 2015.  Besides spraying Farook’s co-workers with gunfire, they set bombs at the scene:

Bowdich also said authorities discovered ippe bombs planted at the shooting site, which were meant to explode, killing first responders. Luckily none of the bombs detonated, an eventuality experts attribute to either water from sprinklers or a malfunction with remote control devices.

“This was meant to kill more, but also scare other future responders to attacks,” a source with inside knowledge of the investigation is quoted as saying by Fox News. “This was meant to get into the minds of medics and officers who are arriving first on scene.”

Such planning requires prior intent and preparation.  Indeed, a neighbor near their townhome residence had observed strange behavior from them for some time – but didn’t report it for fear of being considered racist.

So apparently, what matters here is not whether you’re preparing to commit terrorist acts, but whether Christians “trigger” you to go through with them at a particular time and place.

At least we have that clarified now.  Welcome to the abyss.  We’re going to be dangling here for a while, if ABC News has anything to say about it.

J.E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer is a retired Naval Intelligence officer who lives in Southern California, blogging as The Optimistic Conservative for domestic tranquility and world peace. Her articles have appeared at Hot Air, Commentary’s Contentions, Patheos, The Daily Caller, The Jewish Press, and The Weekly Standard.

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