I would like to share part of a very recent post from Tomgram, The Nation Institute:

“You would never know that, if you left out what might be called self-inflicted pain like death by vehicle (more than 33,000 deaths annually), suicide by gun (more than 21,000 annually) or total gun deaths (30,000 annually), and fatal drug overdoses (more than 47,000 annually), that the United States is undoubtedly one of the safest countries on the planet. Over these years, the American dead from Islamic terror outfits or the “lone wolves” they inspire have added up to the most modest of figures, even if you include that single great day of horror, September 11, 2001. Include deaths from non-Islamic right-wing acts of terror (including, for instance, Dylann Roof’s murders in a black church in Charleston), a slightly more impressive figure in recent years, and you still have next to nothing. Even if you add in relatively commonplace mass shootings, from school campuses to malls to workplaces, that are not defined as “terror,” and accept the broadest possible definition of such shootings (a minimum of four killed or injured), you would still have the sort of danger that couldn’t be more modest compared to death by vehicle, suicide, or drugs — phenomena that obsess few Americans”. (tomdispatch, nationinstitute.org@mail97.atl161.mcsv.net>.

Undoubtedly, we will get more, maybe many more, “religious” atrocities from people claiming to know the mind of god; it is inevitable. All the same the dithery panic of the right-wing media and the politicians seems to me to be verging on the childish. Thank you, Tom Englehardt, for quietly stating the actual facts.