How do You Defeat Hydra?

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Me: YS, do you know what a Hydra is?
BA (10): It’s a monster. Every time you chop off one of its heads, two grow in its place.
Me: How do you know this?
BA: Minecraft. In the Twilight Forest there’s a Hydra.
Me: Do you know why I’m asking about the Hydra?
YS (15): Terrorism? It’s like we’re fighting Hydra. The more we fight, the more heads it makes.
Me: So how do you defeat an enemy like that?
YS: First you need to stop cutting off the heads.
Me: But that doesn’t make it go away. How do you destroy a thing you can’t destroy with an attack?
YS: Stop fueling it.
Me: What is this Hydra’s fuel?
YS: We’ve been giving this Hydra literal weapons, literal training, literal financing.
Me: Why did we do this?
YS: We thought we could control it so we grew it. Then it spun out of control. Now it’s attacking us.
Me: Who are the teeth of the Hydra?
YS: Terrorists who carry out the attacks.
Me: And what can you tell me about them?
YS: They’re mad. They’ve had something done to them.
Me: They are called Injustice Collectors and they are easily radicalized. You’re describing something called radicalization. Sometimes what happens is citizens of a country will become radicalized and carry out acts of terror in their own country. People are afraid of immigrants and refugees when actually it’s just as likely to be radicalized citizens who carry out terrorism in their own countries. If someone is running away from terrorism in their own country are they going to become radicalized in their new home?
YS: No. They want nothing to do with it. Refugees from ISIS are the anti-ISIS. They have experienced it.
Me: What kind of effect will an influx of refugees fleeing ISIS violence have on a population?
YS: Those people are not likely to be recruited. They’re going to tell people who could potentially be radicalized that they shouldn’t. They’ve lived it.
Me: What else feeds the Hydra?
YS: Hatred.
Me: When you are hateful to a person they are more willing to be the teeth. How do we make them unwilling to be the teeth?
YS: Those people around us that ISIS is targeting for recruitment, we need to show them kindness.
Me: That’s what starves Hydra.
YS: The state has murdered their people in our name, just like ISIS has murdered people in the name of all Muslims. We have to be kind and think logically. We have to not want to be afraid of these terrorists. Emotional responses don’t get people anywhere.
Me: We kind of enjoy being afraid, don’t we?
YS: Right. Like gun control. Emotional, irrational responses. There’s a mass shooting and people get scared and the start yelling for gun control. It’s like that. It doesn’t work. Gun control doesn’t stop violent people. It just makes it easier for violent people to be violent. It’s an emotional response. We need to think but emotional responses are a lot of fun for the majority of people.