So if you were a citizen of Brussels, then at this point you’ve been robbed of a whole week of your life earlier this year and now, all of New Years.  Why?  Terror threats.

Well, what is that?  Apparently it’s whatever somebody says it is.  Just ask your Los Angeles school district neighbor.  I’ve already ranted about this without purpose, it is what it is.  You just need to read the remarks of Belgium’s leader to understand what happened here, he cancelled all of New Years because of:

“…information we have received.”

How long do leaders figure their people are going to just put up with this?  How long are the average working folks of Brussels going to put up with having their lives altered because of information their leaders have apparently received?

With this kind of weak leadership, it is any wonder folks are turning to new fringe political parties and leaders?

I have no idea.  Neither does Donald Trump or Francois Hollande.  I just would think, at a certain point, that your normal average human would eventually get aggravated to the point that they’d expect something to be done about it.  Instead of doing what Europe does best: muddle through.

For now, the European answer, and I suspect the American answer is you just put the army on the streets.  Europe’s armies now guard the streets.  And the American police are mostly armed and equipped the same way as European armies, so it’s all the same to me.

And armies now guard museums, government buildings, mosques, synagogues, and the freaking zoo.

If you live in Brussels, and the Islamic State is responsible for ruining your life, when do you draw the line and demand your leaders deal with the problem at the source?

I fear, the answer is, you don’t.  You muddle through.  Particularly because as it stands, Belgium virtually has no deployable army.  Which is sad when you look at what they did in 1940.

So you’ll say, well, I’m a lunatic.  True.  But where do you draw the line?  If you honestly prefer a life where every public occasion you attend with your family requires a cop / soldier armed with an automatic rifle?   Just say so.  Tell me you want to live like that.

But I’m wondering if the lesser evil to the West’s freedom is a brief army of say 100K troops, mostly American and French, who carve a swath against the Islamic State for about 3 months and destroy it.  Then everybody wags their fingers and says, “Don’t do that again.”

And then you leave the Middle East to figure out the wreckage on their own terms.  And if they screw it up, and the Islamic State emerges again, you do another 3 month invasion all over.

Do you think this is a shit idea?  Maybe.  My idea might suck.  But at least it’s an idea.

The only idea on offer from idiots like Trump is to expel an entire religious group. The only idea on offer from all the leaders of Europe is to cancel New Years.  I’ll stand by the lunacy of my idea.  It’s better than anybody else’s.

What’s really creepy about this shot, is that the Belgian police are all wearing masks while inside their own capital city.  And, look closely, the BBC has blurred the faces of those cops who aren’t wearing masks.