 I'm Jay Fidel with this ThinkTech commentary. NPR reported that ISIS has been posting hit lists of people that should be attacked. The people on these lists are ordinary people, rank and file, the softest targets you can imagine, and they are in this country. They're not big politicians or people who have spoken out against ISIS or against Islamic terrorism, they're just ordinary folks. The hit list in New York, for example, has 3,600 names. The people on these lists are scared. Given all that ISIS has done, that's understandable. These people worry about themselves and their families. They worry that some activated activists will come after them when he sees their name on the list. It's a brilliant idea, actually, for ISIS to do this. It achieves the primary purpose of terrorism, terror, among great numbers of people. At the same time, we wonder why they would do this. Does it actually do anything positive for anyone? But it also acts as a kind of instruction book for domestic jihadists. They see the list, they see targets identified, it's all laid out for them, even without hearing anything directly from ISIS. So far, there hasn't been any attack on any of these people on any of these lists. But that may not last forever. It's entirely possible that one of these days, the wrong jihadist will get it in his mind to go after some poor guy who got onto the list. Perhaps some competitive media organization will publish the names on the list, and then there will be a price to pay when an activist goes after them. How would you feel if you were on the list? How would your family feel about it? Would you talk to them about it? It's pretty frightening to find that somebody, anybody, actually wants you dead for no reason at all. It's all the more frightening when you realize that the people who posted the list have a proven set of disaffected sleeper cells in this country who are willing and able to unleash themselves on murderous missions. This is just another chapter in the devolution of terror. And as we all know, with terror real or imagined, there comes repression. Terror and our response to terror is ultimately a lose-lose proposition, because democratic governments can lose their humanity and shed hundreds of years of social progress when they have to deal with this sort of thing. And that's not good for anyone. It's a toxic and destructive cycle, but it may be emerging as the new global reality. For me, I'm saddened by a world where strangers kill and threaten to kill completely innocent strangers, people they don't know and with whom they have no beef just to strike fear in the rest of us. What has the 21st century come to? More to the point, can our democracy withstand such dreadful threats, threats without borders for which protection seems so elusive? Can we retain our humanity or are we on a path to a new world defined by repression and retribution? Although these threats are generated half a world away, their effect is happening right here at home, in our heartland and in our hearts. But if anything, can we do, should we do about it? What can we say to alleviate the fear that people will have when they find themselves or their families on the lists? And what does this new ISIS strategy mean in the hyperbole of our current presidential campaign? Does it favor Hillary Clinton? I doubt it. More likely, it favors Donald Trump and offers him a fresh reason to justify repression and possibly conflagration. Is that what ISIS wants? Is that what they're after? For us, their new strategy not only evokes terror, it evokes a feeling of powerlessness which itself is corrosive. So how exactly will our new president, whoever that may be, deal with this? Please tell me there's a good answer. We need to hear a good answer, and soon. I'm Jay Fidel with this Think Tech commentary.