In Jan., after 'Charlie Hebdo,' David Wong said this would happen again. And he told us what to do.

Tonight, we’re all reeling from the terrorist attacks in Paris. And, thanks to the Internet age, the constantly updated news reports are interspersed with outpourings of grief and outrage on social media sites. It’s communal … in both an uplifting and discouraging way. My Facebook page is: news report; Banksy’s “Peace for Paris”; news report; Parisians singing the national anthem; news report; the GOP calling for immediate violent retaliation. 

And I feel sick, for obvious reasons (i.e., all those suffering in Paris), but also because — for me — this is the culmination of a day spent building my instructional support site with articles about both our fight with terrorists and about the myth of redemptive violence. It’s a day that began and ended with terrorist attacks (and I’m the lucky one because I was reading about them, not living them).

I’m teaching a class on Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series, and the latter theme [redemptive violence and the fact that it’s a myth and all] is at the centerpiece of the novel — b/c we all know how the series ends.

If you don’t … SPOILER ALERT … Katniss’s sister, Prim — you know: the one who is “the only person in the world [Katniss is] sure she loves,” the one for whom she’s willing to self-sacrifice (see: *the first few chapters of book 1*) — isn’t killed by the dreaded Capitol but by Katniss’s rebel side. Collateral damage.

Among the articles I posted was “Taliban: We Slaughtered 100+ Kids Because Their Parents Helped America.”

^remember that? from Dec. 2014? The Taliban attacked an army-run school in Pakistan, killing over one hundred children, as retribution for US-led bombings that have killed their children.  

Whenever I read that article, Katniss’s words in Mockingjay  (Book 3) rattle around in my head:

I no longer feel any allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despite being one myself … Because there is something significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children’s lives to settle its differences. You can spin in any way you like. Snow thought the Hunger Games were an efficient means of control. Coin thought the parachutes would expedite the war. But in the end, who does it benefit? No one. The truth is, it benefits no one to live in a world where these things happen.

and

this one: David Wong’s “6 Ways to Keep Terrorists From Ruining the World.”

Eerily, Wong begins his irreverent but oh-so-important piece — penned January 2015 — with: 

Obviously what's all on our minds right now is the horrific attack in Paris, in which Islamic militants massacred an office full of comedians for drawing pictures that mocked their religion (if you're reading this in the future, just insert whatever mass killing is most recent to you — it will still apply).

And here we are. 

Wong’s argument is worth reading in full, but — for your convenience — I’ve excerpted my favorite points. You’re welcome. 

(1) Well, in the wake of a terror attack, Step One is to forget about "the score" completely ...

Whenever some notorious rapist is caught, exactly 100 percent of the conversations or Internet comment sections about the subject will say, 'I hope he gets raped in prison!' See, because that would “even the score.” But even five seconds' consideration demonstrates how monstrous that idea is: “rape is awesome, as long as it's targeted toward people who deserve it!” No, the cruel reality is that if that guy gets raped, the score isn't: Rapist 1, Society 1. It's: Rape 2, Society 0 ...  So the next time you turn on the news and see that terrorists have blown up 10 children with a car bomb, that's the first step: Realize that the scoreboard lies. It will tell you that winning the game means dropping bombs that you know full well will splatter ten times as many children as collateral damage. The score — the real score — would then be:

Violence Against Children 110, Humanity 0

(2) When a bunch of terrorists blow up a school or shoot up an office full of cartoonists, do you think it's because they don't know we have guns and bombs and drones? You think they do what they do because they believe we're “too weak to strike back” and that we thus need to “show them how strong we are?” ... They know exactly what we're going to do: We're going to overreact. We do it every time. That's why they do it. So stop, step back, and understand something that most of America doesn't: They do what they do, because they know we're too weak to resist striking back. Our knee-jerk, bomb-dropping reflex is our weakness. They are trying to exploit it, because retaliation bombings are how they recruit more terrorists to their side. And please note that when I talk about their “side,” I'm not talking about Islam, or even Islamic terrorism. Their “side” is what I'm going to henceforth call Team Violence ... The bully doesn't fight because he wants to win; he fights because he wants a world in which everything is resolved by fighting (note: The bully himself doesn't realize this). It doesn't matter if he loses — the moment you chose to fight, his side already won, and the world becomes more like the world he wants to live in ... In other words, “We can't beat them, unless we become more like them.” It's like a doctor telling you he's going to get rid of your tumor by growing a bigger, meaner tumor next to it. Even if it works, Team Cancer wins, and you just fell for a scam that has been tripping up humanity for 200,000 years or so.

(3) Soon after the attack, commentators will appear on every screen in your home explaining in snide, sarcastic tones how the courageous choice is to hate Muslims — like they're the lone, brave voice in a world afraid to hold such a controversial opinion. The reality ... is that your most automatic, unthinking reflex is always to hit back, and that growing up means resisting it ...  It's the thinking part — the human part — that says to stop, resist the initial urge, and actually think about what action will make the world better.

Although I love Wong’s article, some of my students from last semester pointed out the fact that he tells us what not to do, but he stops short at giving us anything else we can do. And we want to *do* something to make our world safer. For this, we turned to Gene Sharp, the master of nonviolent resistance, and tried to brainstorm ways to thwart Team Violence.

One student found this & tackled defunding terrorist organizations through eliminating the illegal ivory trade (bonus: maybe elephants and rhinos won’t go extinct as predicted!). More elephants (and rhinos) and less terrorists = something we should all be able to get behind.

Another found this & wrote about defunding terrorist organizations through offering better protection to our allies, to prevent extortion that is also a source of terrorist funding:

These are just two ideas, voiced in a freshman composition class, by 18-year-olds. I’m sure that if we all put our heads together that we could come up with *lots* more. Yes — it’s hard work to come up with a more creative retaliation plan than we’ve used in the past (think: America after 9/11). It would be easier to hit back. But, as Wong (and Collins in her series) reminds us, that’s not the kind of people we want to be.

We refuse to let Team Violence turn us into “some kind of monster that [we’re] not.”