The Lesson We Refuse To Learn: The Case of Orlando, Florida 2016

Commentary

Tiberiu Dianu

So, it happened again. On June 12, 2016, another Muslim militant, this time 

Omar Mateen, an American citizen of an Afghan origin, a self-declared ISIS-

inspired fighter, and a registered Democrat (a detail the press does not want 

to emphasize), opened fire in a gay club in the city of Orlando, Florida, kill-

ing 50 people and injuring other 53 (to date) in what is now being called “the 

deadliest mass shooting in the United States and the nation’s worst terror 

attack since 9/11,” according to authorities. 

In the period 2008-2016, overlapping comfortably the Obama’s two presi-

dential mandates, several mass shootings took place in the United States, 

with casualties ranging from 12 to 50 dead and 1 to 58 wounded. Let us re-

cap the most notable ones:  Binghamton, New York and Fort Hood, Texas 

(both in 2009), Aurora, Colorado and Newton, Connecticut (both in 2012), 

Washington, DC (2013), Fairfax, Virginia (2014), Charleston, South Caro-

lina and San Bernardino, California (2015), and finally, Orlando, Florida 

(2016).

Some of them were committed by people unsatisfied with their own life, 

but others were cold-blooded executions in the name of Jihad.

And again, the same sickening mass-media’s post-fact scenario repeats 

itself. The (fill in the blank with ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNN or FOX) network 

anchor asks the field reporter: “So, tell me about the reactions of the people 

over there” and the reporter goes: “Well, everybody is in a state of shock!” 

After which the network anchor concludes: “Our prayers go to the victims of

...(fill in the blank with the name of the city where the massacre took place).”

I am beginning, for one, to become sick and tired of this crêpe (pardon my
French!). The same thing has been happening over and over again during the
last eight years, with us being “in the state of shock” and sending “prayers to
the victims.” Until when, if I may ask? I am not shocked any more, I am extre-
mely angry. And, no, in my outgrowing cynicism, I do not want to send prayers
to the victims anymore, but instead I want their terrorist attackers to be punished 

according to the military law. And more importantly, I want to see the leaders 

of this country admitting for once the cause of these mass killings, with no po-

liticking spins.

We are living in a perpetual state of denial, where the president of the Republic 

(the lame-duck Barack Obama) keeps on preaching us about “workplace viol-

ence” or “acts of hate,” but refuses to call the shootings for what they are, that 

is “Islamic terrorist acts” when the case applies.

When I was little, my grandmother told me a story about a donkey (not the De-

mocrat one, although it was possible) who, once lost in a dark forest, saw at a 

certain distance behind him what appeared to be the eyes of a wolf, but he refu-

sed to think it might actually be one. When the creature got closer, the donkey

saw his open jaws and rabid fangs but he reassured himself: “No, it’s not the wo-

lf, it cannot be the wolf!” And then, when the wolf planted his teeth into the poor 

donkey’s leg, the donkey yelled: “No, I don’t think it’s the wolf, it cannot be!”

But, finally, when the wolf stuck his fangs into the donkey’s neck, the donkey 

began to roar: “It’s the wooolf! Help! It’s the wooolf!” Sadly for the donkey,

there was no one around to help him anymore.

This coming November we will have to make up our minds and decide if we 

want to play donkeys or not, and who the wolf is.

Tiberiu Dianu is a legal scholar, book author, graduate of the American University Washington 

College of Law in Washington, DC, the University of Manchester Faculty of Law in Manchester, 

UK, and an exchange scholar of the Oxford University in Oxford, UK. He currently lives in Wa-

shington, DC and works for various government and private agencies. The opinions expressed

in the preceding article are those of those of the author alone and do not necessarilly represent

 the views of The Puerto Rico Monitor, its editors or advertisers.