President Barack Obama effectively summed up the theme of the Democratic National Convention before it even began: “[T]his vision of violence and chaos everywhere, doesn’t really jive with the experience of most people.” The DNC indeed reflected the theme Obama put forth with not one of Monday night’s 61 speakers mentioning ISIS and only five mentions of ISIS on Tuesday after the DNC incurred intense public scrutiny.
This peaceful portrayal of the world we live in certainly seems curious, particularly in light of a new InterCenter analysis, which shows that ISIS attacks, outside of Syria and Iraq, occur once every 84 hours. Indeed, reality seems to reflect this number. Just yesterday morning, America woke to the sad news that an 86-year-old priest in Normandy, France was forced to his knees by ISIS attackers, who proceeded to slit his throat while he was saying mass. On Sunday, a Syrian asylum seeker blew himself up at a German music festival, injuring 15 people, making this attack the fourth terror attack in Germany in just one week.
And these German and French attacks, as most Americans know, did not come in isolation. Last Sunday America suffered a different type of terrorism when three police officers in Baton Rouge were baited to a location and slain. This attack came fresh on the heels of an attack on the Dallas police department, where five officers were brutally slaughtered.
From San Bernardino and Orlando to Dallas and Baton Rouge to Nice, Brussels, Paris, Munich, Normandy, Turkey, Baghdad, Medina, Dhaka, and more, our world is truly terrorized. How eerily ironic it is that both presidential nominees’ announcements of their running mates were set back due to “violence and chaos” in Nice and Munich. Indeed, violence seems like the new global reality.
But you would not know it watching the Democratic National Convention, where the themes of LGBT rights, amnesty, and climate change reign the evening. Not only was the DNC severely out of touch, so too are the policy prescriptions of the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, who is proposing a 500 percent increase in our refugee program. This proposed increase comes despite warnings from FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper that ISIS could be trying to infiltrate our refugee program and there may be database “gaps” that impede our ability to truly vet incoming refugees.
Indeed, Germany’s experience with refugees should be enough to caution those on the left. In just one week, Germany suffered attacks from three asylum seekers. Moreover, German Federal Criminal Police confirmed that they are actively pursuing 410 terrorism leads among asylum seekers. The Washington Post reports, “In the wake of the attacks, [German] officials are growing alarmed at the prospect that some traumatized asylum seekers are easily recruited or self-radicalized.” Nevertheless, Clinton seeks to increase the size of the American refugee program despite Germany’s failed experience.
Rather than face the reality we live in, Democrats are denying it, and in doing so, their message seems inauthentic to an American public that turns on their televisions and opens their newspapers only to find yet another act of “violence and chaos.”