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The West and America in particular has come to believe that it’s history forms the narrative of the whole world. It does not. And so there is a lot of talk these days amongst the westerners and the westernized about how the Muslim World needs to undergo its “Reformation”. It will be bloody, goes the reasoning, but the forces of Progress (with our help, guidance and persistence), will win in the end. This is utterly, tragically and fantastically wrong. It makes no attempt at getting inside of the enemies mind. Osama bin Laden thinks that he is a figure like Abraham or Moses. Arrogant? Presumptuous? Perhaps, but a lot of Muslims believe him, and millions more are reserving judgement. Bin Ladenists believe that, like in the times of Noah, the world has become permeated with evil that can only be overcome with selfless sacrifice and a simple faith in the One True God. What about us? We are Pagan Egypt and our president is the decadent, obstinent Pharoah. It doesn’t matter if that Pharoah is named Bush, Clinton, Obama or Thompson. Pharoah is Pharoah. We are peripheral to history, nothing more than a Great Test designed to separate the faithful from the wicked. Pharoah will be tricked and outmaneuvered and stricken until he relinquishes his grip on The People. (although in Iraq, as a subplot, there is the matter of dealing a blow to the "Persian Shia heresy"). What to do? Any solution with the slightest western fingerprints might as well be stamped “From Pharoah”. Our Super-jets and laser guided munitions, far from instilling “shock and awe”, are nothing but the feeble magic tricks of President. 9-11, from the Bin Ladenist perspective, was a “Biblical” (or Koranic) type event, for Muslim consumption. We are nothing but cardboard “bad guys”. Killing us is indeed nothing personal, because we are not even people. But our “servants”, the westernized Muslims are another matter. To the Bin Ladenist they are a disgusting abomination and the notion of Muslim secular nationalism is as silly and profane as putting full page fashion ads in the Bible. As an atheist I don’t know, but I suspect (or at least strenuously hope) that most Muslims are aware of the preceding. However, one thing should be crystal clear: this is ultimately a matter between Muslims, and what America thinks about it doesn’t matter a whit. “Islamo-Fascism”? Bin Ladenism has as much in common with preening, racist, uber-scientific Nazi-ism as Moses has with Jim Jones. It is America that needs a second “Reformation”. We must present secular democracy as something better than the shallow, Machiavellian, robber-baron imperialist mess it has become over the last 25 years. After all, we have our own theocracy proponents to deal with, and for some of the same reasons.
Sometime in early 2006, we the groggy and addled American public awakened to find ourselves occupied by the potentates of an alien and monolithic faith. During our twenty-plus years of semi-consciousness we had allowed the Mullahs of Mega-Capitalism, the Neo-cons, to seize the Empire. Having been threatened and bamboozled and bribed into collaboration, we now want to pretend that it never happened. We imagine that hardened
Fascists are merely cheap swindlers who when confronted with their crimes will fold up shop and move on. That faced with moral indignation, they will renounce their Faith. That backed into a corner, these vicious thugs will simply roll over like puppies. That having staked the entire Empire on an Oil War, they will somehow leave without the oil!
Because last fall Karl Rove miscalculated by a couple of percentage points in a couple of states, we now think that if we play-act at being grown-ups for a few months we can have our country back.
We imagine that a government able to round up any klatch of obscure knuckle-heads with a half-baked plot isn’t a police state. That having allowed every facet of our inner and outer lives to be digitized and monitored, we are free. That our “popular culture”, which emulates sociopathic prisoners, is the envy of the world rather than the reflection of people who are themselves prisoners.
And then there are the fundamentalist Muslim jihadists. We are like the Nick Nolte character in “Cape Fear”. Enraged by injustices real and imagined we haven’t bothered to notice, they are indeed coming for us. Having hired others to knee-cap them so as to keep our own hands clean, still they come, while we “re-deploy” behind a dumpster and pray that they’ll just go away.
“Counselor? OH COUNSELOR?”
What is the answer? I suppose the more “activist” amongst us could brow-beat the local congressman for “not having a spine”. After all, this is America and everything always works itself out in the end. Doesn’t it?
Fascists are merely cheap swindlers who when confronted with their crimes will fold up shop and move on. That faced with moral indignation, they will renounce their Faith. That backed into a corner, these vicious thugs will simply roll over like puppies. That having staked the entire Empire on an Oil War, they will somehow leave without the oil!
Because last fall Karl Rove miscalculated by a couple of percentage points in a couple of states, we now think that if we play-act at being grown-ups for a few months we can have our country back.
We imagine that a government able to round up any klatch of obscure knuckle-heads with a half-baked plot isn’t a police state. That having allowed every facet of our inner and outer lives to be digitized and monitored, we are free. That our “popular culture”, which emulates sociopathic prisoners, is the envy of the world rather than the reflection of people who are themselves prisoners.
And then there are the fundamentalist Muslim jihadists. We are like the Nick Nolte character in “Cape Fear”. Enraged by injustices real and imagined we haven’t bothered to notice, they are indeed coming for us. Having hired others to knee-cap them so as to keep our own hands clean, still they come, while we “re-deploy” behind a dumpster and pray that they’ll just go away.
“Counselor? OH COUNSELOR?”
What is the answer? I suppose the more “activist” amongst us could brow-beat the local congressman for “not having a spine”. After all, this is America and everything always works itself out in the end. Doesn’t it?