Pornography and Terrorism: The Greatest Stupid Thing You’ll Read All Day

This is the greatest stupid deck I’ve read in a while:

The frequency with which terrorists are found with pornography raises important questions about the possible effects of pornography on our national security.

No, it really doesn’t! But that didn’t prevent Jennifer Bryson from toying with the question nonetheless.* And said examination produced this absolute gem of a sentence:

There are pornography users, even addicts, who do not become terrorists.

Good to know! I had noticed that my own desire to maim and kill innocents had increased with my acquisition of Ass-Blasters 4, but we know that correlation doesn’t equal causation.

But it’s a worthy caveat — one of many Dr. Bryson included in her essay …

Before examining this, I want to be clear. Considering whether pornography use may have been one factor shaping Abdo’s disturbing behavior is not to pin the lone cause of Abdo’s pursuit of terrorist violence on pornography.

Pornography is not a necessary cause of terrorism. The abolition of pornography would not lead to the cessation of terrorism in the world. Terrorism existed well before graphic pornography and its mass spread via the internet.

Likewise, pornography is not a sufficient cause for terrorism. There are pornography users, even addicts, who do not become terrorists. Given how widespread the viewing of pornography is today, if the direct result of each individual’s pornography use were terrorist violence, one could conceivably argue that pornography proliferation would pose a more widespread threat to human existence than nuclear proliferation.

And here’s a tip for aspiring writers: if you feel the need to include 3 paragraphs — 132 words! — of disclaimer to avoid being mocked (how’d that work out for you, doc?), you should really just stop writing.

Bryson, on the other hand, bravely soldiers on…

Yet pornography now appears frequently in the possession of violent terrorists and their supporters, including Osama bin Laden. Regarding “smut” found on captured media, in 2010, a Department of Defense al-Qaeda analyst was quoted inThe Atlantic: “We have terabytes of this stuff.” Terabytes. That’s a lot of “smut.”

I wonder whether the pornography of today—now ubiquitous and increasingly grotesque—is one of the influences warping the mentality of those who aspire to or who actually go on to engage in ever more grotesque public violence.

I’ve often wondered that about conservatie Republicans, but haven’t penned a column advancing such speculation.

Anyway, we’ve learned — forgive the indelicacy — that terrorists jerk off. They also, one presumes, eat, drink and poop – everyone poops!

*In fairness to Dr. Bryson, I didn’t bother reading the entire essay.