> Considering how many crazy, extremely radicalized people are out there, I'm surprised attacks like this aren't much more common.

Maybe because your base assumption is wrong: there are not many of them.

There are plenty of radicalized people, but valuing your life so little that you'll risk it for the cause and having a cause that wants you to kill random civilians is not very common.

Incels, school shooters, bechildrened fathers, it happens a few times per year in most countries. Given they are ready to die, it’s surprising to me when they kill 1 instead of 100 people.

You're right and the two people who have already replied to you are a great example of how people on the internet love to chime in to "correct" someone about some detail of what they said that misconstrues the point. Obviously when the previous user said "extremely radicalized people" they were talking about the kinds of people radicalized to the point that they're willing to start killing people. You rightly (imo) point out that there aren't that many of them. Then two people chime in to "correct" you.

Perhaps writing this reply makes me one of those people as well.

Go to a local school board meeting on masks and be disabused of this notion fairly quickly.

edit: Votes on this one have been a wild ride.

It's a long way from bickering to violence, and then even longer journey from fights to wilful and purposeful killing.

Why lump parents that don't want masks with plane bombers and shooters

Fair. Terrorists have likely killed far fewer Americans with their actions.

We are not good at evaluating the less flashy risks to life. Wearing a seat belt saves a lot more lives than checking shoes at the airport, but we'll fight the seat belt a lot more.

100yr ago eugenics proponents were saying the same thing while bemoaning societies unwillingness to fully embrace their solutions. 200yr ago people who wanted to build heavy industry were making the same complaints bemoaning insufficient investment. And so on and so on.

~7 billion people aren't stupid. They just don't share your prioritization of whatever the societal issues you perceive to be most important today are. This trope is just a back handed way to call everyone who doesn't agree with you stupid, or some variation thereof.

"This minor temporary inconvenience I don't like is as bad as eugenics" is its own trope.

If you can suggest some other ~100yo example of something a lot of people believed would solve a lot of societal problems I'd be happy to edit my comment.

In any case, you're either missing the overarching point (the charitable assumption) or you don't want to fight my point head on so you're nitpicking that my examples aren't good enough (the less charitable assumption).

> If you can suggest some other ~100yo example of something a lot of people believed would solve a lot of societal problems I'd be happy to edit my comment.

Of the same sort of nature as masking during a pandemic:

Vaccinations, requiring docs to wear gloves during surgery, etc.

Are you suggesting that people who disagree on masking children are radicals comparable to jihadi terrorists?

I am suggesting you can find plenty of "crazy, extremely radicalized people" in your local community in fairly short order.

I initially thought he was claiming the inverse, that mask proponents were extremists. From the perspective of 2019, that wouldn't be an unreasonable assumption, but here we are. Today people are advocating using the force of the state, in other words violence against those who do not share their views on mask mandates.

Can we kindly stop using hyperbole like “using the force of the state, in other words violence” as an argument against literally any governmental policy ever?

In this same fantasy universe jack-booted government thugs are beating up people who don’t wear seat belts or who mislabel the nutritional contents on a package of cheese, except that’s just not what ever actually happens in the real world. These kinds of laws can be appropriate when they make society better for us all.

To that point, anti-maskers have almost certainly killed more Americans at this point than terrorists could ever have hoped to. You might consider that when attempting to understand why people are seemingly so hard-pressed to get laws requiring their countrymen (and women) to do the literal bare minimum to protect the lives of their neighbors.

I think we have to be careful because those laws can be wielded by dickheads. See: every abuse of power.

That's a fallacy in itself, however I think there's definitely some merit to both sides here.

As much as I wish it was, that last sentence is sadly not hyperbole.

Exhibit A: Australia Exhibit B: Canada Exhibit C: New Zealand

Well sure. Plenty of people are willing to invoke the force of the state over pants mandates and shirt mandates too. Masks aren’t really any different.

Perhaps people are less truly radicalized, and substantially more negotiable, than we've been lead to believe. It certainly benefits both the media and politicians to sell us a story that there are an extreme number of radicalized people out there.

I've certainly never met any neo-Nazis. Not to say they don't exist, but if they are truly as common as I've been told, I think I'd have encountered some.

Throwing your average Joe on screen garners much fewer eyeballs and therefore isn't profitable.

As some who had been lucky enough to live many years in both rural Florida and urban California, I can tell you beyond a doubt people are mostly (99%) reasonable, and mostly the same, they are just acting on different priorities, beliefs, and data :)

> I can tell you beyond a doubt people are mostly (99%) reasonable

And yet, actual fascist governments have come to power even in nominally democratic countries.

People might only be "reasonable" when left to their own devices but there could always come a day when propaganda, sectarianism and social turmoil gets so out of hand that people don't see so reasonable anymore.

I happen have a fascist (not neo-fascist, not nazi nor neo-nazi) friend. We do have some common points of view. We both don't believe in meritocrazy. And part of success is cultural and predeterminated (i think 90% is cultural, he think 40% of it is, although this percentage rises after each of our discussions. My communism seems to wear him down /s).

I also happen to know a lot people who have the same ideology that he have, on some discord servers, probably less sharpened and less cultivated (i mean, you've got to read a bit of Nietzsche if you want to argue in good faith with this ideology). I'd say they are proto-fascist, or proto-nazi. And actually, a lot of people i see on the internet called neo-nazi are in fact proto-nazi. It's interesting, because i've seen old TV interviews of 60s and 70s philosophical debate, i've read old books, and they were much, much more philosophically advanced than the current debates are.

By the way, i use nazism to make a small distinction with "usual" fascism. To me, nazis empathize more on personnal success than "regular" fascists, who are more deterministic (genes, culture makes more difference than effort and good will). I worked that out with my self-proclaimed fascist friend, if you disagree i'd like a criticism of the idea.

How many people do you encounter? In which parts of the country? How much do you know about their political views? How do you know whether someone is a Nazi if they don't announce it?

You could have met plenty and not known it. Or your sample size of acquaintances doesn't include people who frequent 4chan.

The DC sniper were two people, with a specially built murder car.

So neither lone wolf or low effort.

My guess is that crazy, extremely radicalized people are not competent at carrying out high impact attacks. Also, very few of them actually want to do such things.

Yes and I'm only a danger to unvaccinated people. If they choose to harm themselves that's their choice but I'm not going to sacrifice for them.