Rage, Sex Roles, Elections and the Media

My friend JHM sent me a short, schematic note the other day. He may be on to something, He wrote:

“Liberals are female and conservatives are male.
Males do war and business/the economy.
BHO wants to talk, not fight and his economics are really a redistribution of income. Plus another feminine issue is the environmental stuff [See "Mother Earth]
This speaks to why the liberals go bullshit with Sarah Palin.“

I think JHM is right in that there is something about the traditional sex-roles and gender determined behavior that is driving the absolute frenzy on the part of Obama’s supporters and much of the Mainstream Media.

This is really a mess to think about so let’s take it a piece at a time. My first Google on the idea turned up an interesting article, Hillary is From Mars, Obama is From Venus By Michael Scherer, on salon.com. It compared Obama to Hillary and found her to be more of a man than he.

Scherer sets the tone of his analysis by quoting Clara Oleson who he describes as an Iowa Democrat and former labor lawyer:

"Obama is the female candidate. Obama is the woman," she said, after admitting that she was one of his supporters. "He is the warm candidate, self-deprecating, soft, tender, sad eyes, great smile."

The article continues:

“So what does that make Hillary Clinton? "She is the male candidate -- in your face, authoritative, know-it-all." To be clear, Oleson was not doubting the symbolic power that Clinton retains as a woman. But she was calling it as she saw it, using the language of Iowa City, a university town. "It's what the academes would call the difference between sex and gender," Oleson explained."

This is interesting, nobody but a Democratic functionary could have opened this discussion using these highly charged terms without suffering a fusillade of accusations ranging from sexism to genocide. Since the suite has been opened by one of them, though, I would like to see how it plays out.

Neither Obama nor Clinton can avoid their obvious racial and gender “identities” as either white female or black male but they can and have taken on meta-gender personae in order to embody the required Democratic constellation of compulsory ideologies. Hillary Clinton is what I will call a DemWoman. Since the bygone days of real originals like Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm the ideal Democratic woman has evolved into a serious, masculinized icon. They dress in pointedly characterless clothes (not unlike designer Mao suites) and do their best not to show any authentic emotion or spontaneity of any kind. Obama mimics what I will call a DemFemMan- Doe-eyed, talkative, lip biting, smiley, warm and not-too-assertive.

Democrats are usually very conscientious and defensive about identities; they are, after-all, the party of Identity Politics. Still, they don’t usually talk about it as honestly as Oleson did. An even rarer example of a Democrat talking directly to the assumed identities of Democrat politicians was Geraldine Ferraro back in March when she said to The Daily Breeze, a newspaper in Torrance, Calif.: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

Ferraro, is somewhat of an authority on this. Her sex, after all, was the very first entry on the “pro” side of the pro/con list when she was vetted for VP all those years ago. I find it fascinating, though, that she says, “If he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position”. I wondered if this is just victim talk- that kind of throw-in that people who make a fetish of blaming every slight and failing (imagined or real) on what they imagine to be the thing (that is not their fault) that is keeping them from the wonderful life and public adoration that they know they deserve (because they are who they are)? Or is it something more complicated?

Well, here’s a video clip that offers some clues:

This, of course, is a clip from last week, after Palin was nominated. It is interesting, not just because here Ferraro does not seem to be participating in the media and liberal elite’s desire to discredit and “un-nominate” Palin, she seems, in fact, almost to be ignoring Palin, she digresses about how Hillary was “treated badly” not just by the press but by the Democratic National Committee and the party apparatus in general. She pointedly adds that Howard Dean did not speak up “when sexism reared its ugly head”.

We should, at least commend her that she does not go after Palin but we need to try to figure out why she responds with that rant.

Victor Davis Hanson could well have included Ferraro’s name in his recent article about “Palin Derangement” where he writes:

“When we consider, in contrast (to Palin), the latticed background of careers of successful contemporary female role-model politicians, such as a Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Mary Landrieu, or Hillary Clinton — or pundits like Sally Quinn, Eleanor Clift, Andrea Mitchell, Campbell Brown, Gail Collins (the list is depressingly endless, in which marriage or lineage provides either the necessary capital, contacts, or insider influence — or sometimes all three) — then surely, whatever one’s politics, there should be some concession that what outsider Palin has accomplished, given where she began, is nothing short of remarkable.

In short, Sarah Palin is the emblem of what feminism was supposed to be all about: an unafraid, independent, audacious woman, who soared on her own merits without the aid of a patriarchal jumpstart, high-brow matrimonial tutelage and capital, and old-boy liaisons and networking.”

Note that the political women he mentions are all Democrats. So, how does Hanson’s article fit with Ferraro’s point?

I have to say that I believe that the whole thing about gender roles is a very acute observation but goes deeper than the observation that Obama acts like a woman and Hillary acts like a man. It is true that Hillary acts like a white man it’s a simple enough pose for her. But Obama has a harder task. If you read about his high school years, it would appear that he (raised by white people) taught himself how to act like a black man back then. If this is true, then today he would be what we used to call an oreo (black on the outside/white on the inside) a retro-fitted black man who acts like white woman who is trying to act like a white man.

As convolute and fascinating as the sexual personae of the denizens of the Democrat political establishment is, it is a distraction from the most important thing that can be learned here. That is, that journalism in the form of our current elite band of mass media practitioners are the “hand that rocks the cradle” in the way we view our politicians. They are the ones who present the candidates and their ideas to us in ways that subtly highlight these behavioral traits and lead the public perception to points of view. Point of view, in fact, is the journalist’s stock in trade. And journalism’s point of view is essentially aligned with the feminine persona- Story telling, social consciousness, caring for the weak, preventing conflict…,

Just as Hillary covers her female identity and becomes the “male candidate”, through being, in Oleson’s words, “in your face, authoritative, know-it-all” journalists usually layer those behaviors over the female persona of their profession in order to compete with each other for authority and “professionalism” .

Knowing everything and maintaining the initiative to be in everybody’s face all the time makes you brittle, defensive and inflexible it forces you to keep the world at a distance and to be guarded and combative.
It’s the lack of warmth and humor that is the tip-off. There’s no warmth because the layers of insulating role-play isolate the human core of the personality and keep it under pressure and molten with stifled rage, even while the outside facade is iced over with a brittle shell of outward calm that the merest hint of humor would shatter. When the keen edge of humor touches that icy shell, that slick veneer of smugness fractures and the rage bursts forth like volcanic eruptions.

It is counterintuitive in a way. They want to be loved so they put up barriers. They want to be respected so they never give anyone permission to see who they really are. They want to be egalitarian so they seek power. They want to be right about everything so much that they will not engage in debate and reasonable discussion without denial, labeling and hysteria. Most of all they want everyone to agree with them; so they believe in ineffectual, “consensus” policies and useless platitudes that are easy to rationalize and then build fortifications of emotion, identity and empathy so that anyone who dares to try to breach it with reason becomes an identity abuser (racist, sexist, fascist, etc…), an emotion crusher and an inhumane monster without empathy.

Look at all the Democrat women that Hanson mentioned above. They all have some variant of that layered-on masculine stiffness and control. They are all “professional women”. Which, as near as I can tell, requires them to comport themselves as a superannuated, over intellectual college sophomore playing a lesbian in a community theater performance. I’ve know a few real lesbians in my day and they have most are a hell of a lot more interesting and natural than those creepy Madame Tussaudes versions that Pelosi and Clinton Play on television.
And yet, as Hanson pointed out, they have advanced their careers to this stage- by means that are specifically feminine (what Tennessee Williams might have called “depending on the kindness of strangers”).

With all this gender bending and manipulative affectation going on, it should be no surprise that when a vivacious, unaffected, and un-androgynous woman like Sarah Palin comes along, and with a straightforward appeal, cuts through all the posturing and playacting with which Dem Women and Dem Fem Men trick out their lives, they don’t just resent it, they fear and loath. It doesn’t just threaten their ideological house of cards; it exposes the silly, debilitating game they play with their public images.

Palin reminds me of no one so much as a female Ronald Reagan- The Happy Warrior, The Great Communicator never had to pretend to be anything that he wasn’t to attract attention. His emotional security and self-possession made him an almost irresistible charmer. Secure in her identity, Palin is natural, direct and just as charming in he was.

Sarah Palin has not been untrue to herself. That is why she comes across as a real person to us. Absent the tension of the personality layering and façade maintenance she, as Reagan did presents a strikingly open and affable face to the world. This makes her charming and persuasive in a way that Hillary, Pelosi, all the political crones and media furies that Hanson mentions and many more, could only dream of. No wonder they (and their frustrated supporters) are furious.

And if you think the Dem Women and DemFemMen have knotted themselves up, wait till you take a look at those journalists who have made an career out of the same, very intimate sacrifices in order to be accepted by their editors and peers as well as have to access to their news sources.

They write news stories with semi-subliminal emotional and empathic slant that attempt to lead the reader into their interpretation of the events and evidence being covered. Under the banner of “afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted” they blindly support insurgencies that promise change even if it is obvious to most observers that the change they advocate will bring disastrous consequences. They fail to report on pertinent events that might “embarrass” anyone they consider sensitive or an underdog. Worst of all, they allow evil to go unchallenged by resorting to the sickening moral relativism of “evenhanded” reporting in place of accurate and honest reporting.

The pain and rage with which much of the media have reacted to Sarah Palin’s nomination for Vice President is an instructive example. It forces them to admit that their professional ethics are negotiable. They claim that They are journalists to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted; Even as they feverishly search her past for reasons to declare her unworthy and ineligible- to find some flaw or misdeed that might forced John McCain to ask this talented, hard working, successful woman of the people to resign from the ticket. They must be aware at some level that in rushing to the defense of the elite, independently wealthy, powerfully connected (yes, connected to the despised white patriarchy!) DemFem Man Obama, that they are actually comforting the comfortable. He is comfortable, they are comfortable and they expect to get us comfortable with him too. That awareness that their pretense is being exposed inflames their rage even more.

They are all so busy building, elaborating and justifying their careers and their personality composites that they seem to have forgotten why they are there. They are so occupied with keeping the whole creaking, smoking, wobbling Rube Goldberg system working (and paying them) that they often forget to care whether anyone in the real world even wants to read, hear or watch The News as they are constrained to present it. This is one reason why the Internet has sucked away so much of the Mass media’s audience.

This shapes up as a battle between “Professionalism” (shackled by ideological group-think and prejudice) and Authenticity (freedom of thought and expression) and I do believe that the people instinctively know which one they favor. I also believe they are right.

Indian Guilt and the American View of Islam Part II

There is not a square acre of habitable land on the face of the earth that has not been inhabited by an earlier human population than the one that lives on it today. When the white man came to “The New World” he was not, as some (Lawrence’s “highbrows”) would have it, invading a pair of continents that had been under the stewardship of a single people, living peacefully and in harmony with nature for thousands of years. He was stepping onto a perpetual battlefield where the inhabitants had arrived in successive waves of occupation, conquered and re-conquered each other, committed repeated savagery upon each other and permanently changed the character of the environment. Human sacrifice, slavery and constant low-intensity warfare were universal across both North and South America before the Europeans arrived. The Europeans who trickled in for the first three hundred years and then poured in in immense numbers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries came to escape religious persecution, political domination and limited economic prospects in their home countries. They came here and founded the greatest experiment in liberty, prosperity and self-government ever seen on earth. Without their descendants and The United States of America, the national socialist and communist monsters of the twentieth century could not have been defeated and would have dominated the earth. You can, as I do, feel compassion and even nostalgia for the American Indians but you can only lament their replacement as the dominant culture in the Americas if you believe that life on earth would be better had they not been conquered.

Did I say “conquer”? Yes, I know that the word “conquer” is out of fashion these days. It makes most people very uncomfortable because it is redolent of violence, greed, slavery and colonialism. In this post colonial age The West has a very guilty conscience about all of that and its not that we don’t deserve it. Conquest is a messy and spontaneous process and it gets exceedingly ugly at times. Conquest by force is bloody, and even conquest by cultural conversion can look very harsh. The fact remains, to paraphrase D.H. Lawrence, when cultures that are as different as Western Civilization and the American Indians meet, one must prove fatal to the other.

We in The West try very hard to keep from thinking about conquering anything. Some of us are even ashamed that our culture is so successful and powerful that most of the conquest we do these days is of the non-violent, social and cultural kind. There are any number of leftists who speak of western “cultural hegemony” as if it were a bad thing. They bemoan the loss of native cultures and the metastasization of Hollywood product around the globe while ignoring that fact that the reason why it is happening is that our culture is dominant for good reasons- it offers better protection for the less powerful and it provides better economic opportunity than any other. It is fine for leftists and progressives to bemoan the spread of democracy and capitalism but precious few of them would want to live under any of the alternatives. It is, still, a conquer or be conquered world but we are so used to having our own way and becoming dominant wherever in the world we happen to be that we have forgotten how hard the fight for survival can be and how quickly it can turn desperate. We really need to keep reminding ourselves that just because we no longer have the urge to conquer that no one else does.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali arrived in Europe along with the current wave of Immigrants from Islamic countries but she arrived not as an economic refugee trying to find a way to survive but as a refugee of conscience and belief. Most of the refugees from the failed economies of the Islamic world have not come with her open-minded intent to learn western ways.

Ironically, the guilt and loss of confidence in The West has allowed the Islamic immigrants in Europe to begin the process of degrading European culture. By shear weight of numbers and inert recalcitrance they have been insisting that their traditional and legal practices be accepted by their new home countries even when they are counter to existing law. In an attempt to pacify and integrate their new citizens Germany, Belgium, France, Britain and others have been allowing more and more exceptions in their legal and social fabric, exceptions that will make those countries more like the poverty stricken and depressed countries from which the immigrants fled and less like the productive, welcoming democracies they thought they were moving to. Europe, typified by the French, has been arrogant and complacent enough to believe that what they imagine to be the grandeur of their culture would turn all of their Muslim immigrants into Western European citizens. Now their streets and Metros are plagued by chaos and violence.

In Holland, Hirsi Ali found the Dutch (who have been as conscientiously open-minded and egalitarian as any other country in Europe) to be under siege as well. They have suffered two traumatic assassinations. One was the murder of the prominent politician, Pim Fortyun. The other was of the well-known film-maker Theo van Gogh who was the director and producer of “Submission” the film, written by Hirsi Ali. Submission, only ten minutes long, touched on one of the great vulnerabilities of Islam in the modern world- the repression of and discrimination against women.

No more volatile subject exists for Muslims. The subjugation of Muslim women and their possible liberation by continued contact with The West is the one subject, other than the dignity of The Prophet himself that is absolutely guaranteed to roil Caliphate Muslims to unreasoning savagery.

Hirsi Ali, under threat of death herself has since taken refuge in the United States and recently published a wonderful autobiography, Infidel. Reading Infidel, I am vividly reminded of the lesson I learned in that lecture hall almost forty years ago. In the first two chapters of her book it becomes clear that this extraordinary woman grew up in a family that, in the span of two generations was dislocated from its nomadic tribal roots and thrust into the turbulence that occurs when ancient cultures come into contact with the modern world. The clarity with which she describes the drama of the conflicts that arise when t simple culture that is specifically adapted to meet the demands of a narrow band of ecological and social conditions is confronted by radical changes in both the natural and social environment is striking.

Her father’s father was, she tells us, a feared nomadic raider and petty feudal lord. His name was Magan and was known by the title: The Protector of all He Conquered. As ironic as that name may sound to us, it speaks volumes about the world in which her parents grew up. That title is a holographic representation of Caliphate society. It can be used as an entry point into a more complete understanding of the nature of the proto-feudal strain of Islam that has interbred with modern fascist movements and evolved into a monster. His “might” made Magan “right”, for the people he conquered, it was a matter of good luck that he protected them. The title does not even imply that he was just or fair- only that he kept them under his protection kept them from the additional trauma of being conquered by others. Conquering and being conquered is the story of the human race and whether the conquest is violent or cultural, we ignore this at our own risk.

This brings us back to Lawrence’s idea that. “The Indian way of consciousness is different from and fatal to our way of consciousness. Our way of consciousness is different from and fatal to the Indian. The two ways, the two streams are never to be united. They are not even to be reconciled.” If the two ways of consciousness are fatal to the other, then it must be obvious that there is a contest for survival going on whether the contestants wish this to be the case or not.

So, now we are ready to answer the question, posed above, “Has the western conquest of the Americas has made the world a better place? Is it lamentable?”

The left finds a way to lament. They claim to see no difference between the moral authority of the American experiment (even as they are sheltered under its protective mantle) as compared with Caliphatist Islam. Moral imbeciles like Ward Churchill, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and a host of others promote relativistic absurdities that equate the actions of America and Israel to those of al Qeada and Ahmadinejad and find ways to excuse the violence of those thugs and bullies.. Their arguments are based on that same fulsome emotion, dressed up to look like real discourse.

They do this by establishing certain constructs of “received knowledge” that they try to convince us cannot be challenged. This un challengability is an emotional barrier to free speech and intellectually honest debate. When you ignore the emotional prohibition they are challenged with ease and found to be nothing more than emotional absurdities.

Multiculturalism is chief among these absurdities. Originally conceived as an expression of the bland but laudable liberal impulse to “honor differences” and acknowledge the diversity of cultural influences, multiculturalism has become an overbearing burden to never offend or even “judge” the views and behaviors of other cultures. If rejecting the moral relativism of Multiculturalism seems “insensitive” to us today it is because we have been badgered into buying the premise that all cultures are equally deserving and good. This is absurd.
People like Hirsi Ali, for instance, who have lived in some of these other cultures, know how absurd it is. Hrisi Ali knows first hand the horror of being a woman in Somalia and Saudia Arabia. I have used this quote before but it bears repeating here.

“This is gender inequality: an inequality most obscene, expressed through acts such as mutilation, beatings, rape and murder--and almost all this aggression is justified in the name of culture and creed. Atrocities committed against girls and women in the most intimate setting of all: in the home; by dad or mom; by a brother or a sister; by a husband or his mother. The sort of persecution I talk about is one in which the religious leaders, the politicians, aunts and uncles, fathers and mothers, all share the staunch belief that girls--that women--are born of a lesser god.”

So why can’t we stand up as a civilization for women everywhere? Why do the feminists in The West prefer to quibble about salary differentials in the upper echelons of corporate leadership to campaigning to end the rape, torture and murder of Islamic women? Can they really be that morally blind? Is multiculturalism such an important idea that we have to sacrifice our moral souls and another generation of women and children? Why?

Part of it is that we are genuinely touched by the pathos of cultures like those of the American Indian which we have defeated and incorporated into our own. This melancholy reluctance to effect any change in the culture of others is illogical and misguided. It is driven by the guilt that we can’t stand to talk about, acknowledge or even think about. The guilt of knowing that our great standard of living humiliates other people who don’t live as well is the silly, racist core of the multiculturalist urge. We dearly want to be able to tell them that they are not really humiliated so they won’t be angry with us anymore but we know that this is a lie. In doing so we perform the worst act of humiliation of all, we let them off the hook. In not helping to them to see their position truly, we commit a much worse act of racism- we admit that we don’t think they are up to meeting the truth head on.

We have bought into multiculturalism because we no longer have the fortitude, the honesty or the intelligence to look someone in the eye and tell them, “Look, you are humiliated because you do not have the culture or political leaders or the education to be otherwise. You really need to stop making such a big deal about feeling humiliated. Why not try some of these simple steps toward civilization instead:
1. Specifically outlaw honor killing
2. Stop beating your wife and/or kids.
3. Send your kids to a decent school where they won’t waste their time memorizing an entire “holy book” to the exclusion of learning critical thinking skills and studying arithmetic, science and geography.
4. Forget using Israel, Jews and America as the excuse for being a looser.
5. Understand that your leader (fill in one: Ahmadinejad, Assad, Kadafy, Mubarak, Abdullah etc…) is a tyrant of the worst sort and is actually working hard to keep you ignorant and filled with rage, that’s how your feudal system works.
6. For God’s sake stop thinking of anyone who believes (or doesn’t believe in him) in him (God that is) in a different way than you do as less than human. That only makes you feel worse when you see that those “unbelievers” live better than you do.
If you take care of all that, there would be no need for you to feel humiliated anymore.”

David Yeagley, a Comanche Indian is one who poignantly understands the culture clash from the inside. His work is proof that the valiant Indian traditions of his culture can, if victimhood is refused and intellectual honesty is applied, be part of a modern western world view. Yeagley has written at length about the comparison between the Indian and the Palestinian Arab world. His writing offers the Arabs hope for dignity if they will only drop their humiliation speeches and stop pretending that they are better than the rest of the world. They would be much better off if they learned to follow his lead into the twenty-first century. Yeagley writes,

“Arabs weren’t even in Palestine until the mid-7th century AD, over a thousand years later, after Palestine’s 1,300-year Jewish history. Arabs later living in Palestine never developed themselves or the land, but remained nomadic and quasi-primitive during their 1,200-year stay.
Then a stronger people modern Jews who’d been expelled from their homes in Europe and in Arab countries came in and conquered (without annihilating) the Palestinian Arabs.
As a Comanche Indian, I’m sensitive to this history. I believe the conqueror has a right to what he has conquered. No one owns the land. Only he who is strong enough to possess it will control it and the people living on it. That’s the law of war…,”

He also quotes Theodore Roosevelt:

“Teddy Roosevelt once said, "Let sentimentalists say what they will, the man who puts the soil to use must of right dispossess the man who does not, or the world will come to a standstill." (W. T. Hagan, Theodore Roosevelt and Six Friends of the Indians, 1997). In the end his final telling comment echoes out theme of culture succession, “The land developers, the agrarians, have become stronger than the hunters.”

When D.H. Lawrence wrote “The common, healthy, vulgar white usually feels a certain native dislike of those drumming aboriginals.” He was expressing, albeit in a dated and innocent way, the view that when you live in a world that has more than one culture, there are often “others” who are “unsuited” for life in that culture. At the border lines between cultures the differences as so much more apparent We can’t admit to that feeling anymore- we are too sophisticated and sensitive, too multicultural. But we have to understand that Western Civilization is (at least for the time being) the dominant culture and we have to turn that coarse dislike and revulsion into a realization that the reasons that we find those people either dislikable or adorable come out of the same basic elitism. If we are to treat them as true equals we need to level with them and tell them that the reason for their humiliation is in their culture and their leadership. We also have to take the prudent steps to protect ourselves.

We do need to protect ourselves. We may be blinded to the danger because we are so sure of our safety and our ability to manage social change. We are so confident that we have created a culture that is immune to relapse into tyranny and intolerance that we have felt free to indulge multiculturalism. This is not the case for the other side however. They are not multicultural. The Caliphate Muslims can see the fatal nature of the confrontation so much more clearly because they are the ones who are threatened most immediately by it. Since the end of World War II the influx of oil money, the amazing revolution in globe-shrinking communication technology and the creation and phenomenal success of Israel right on their door step have combined to expose the Arab world to Western culture in a way threatens every dark secret abuse and humiliation. When communication was primitive and Israel was not turning fetid swamps and arid desert into fertile farmland using Arab labor right next door the Arab "leaders" could deny to themselves and hide from their people how lame and infantile they are. Without the artificially maintained veneer of rage and "humiliation speak" that they have paid so dearly to foster, the Arab leadership would be exposed, alone in the spotlight, as the incompetent, despotic ignorant rabble that they are. The Arab Street we hear so much about is the tool of the Arab leadership. They know only too well that the rage, anti-Semitism, anti-American and humiliation idiocy that the drill into their followers is their only screen against being so exposed.

Meanwhile, under the influence of multiculturalism the Left looks at the Palestinians and, as Lawrence might have said, “…performs the mental trick, and fools themselves and others into believing that the “head scarfed”, Kalashnikov toting darling is nearer to the true ideal gods than we are.” That, of course, is mind numbing nonsense- “fatal to our way of consciousness” as Lawrence had it. But to the left it is irresistible; it is full of guilt, pity and bathos – “fulsome emotion”. If The West will commit suicide – the unwillingness to give up both the ugly side and the maudlin of that racism will surely will be the weapon.

One of the two cultures, Islam or The West, must conquer the other and if the end of the conquest is to be humane, there must be a clear winner. Someone has to admit they have been conquered. At the end of the Indian wars there were many moments of despair, bitterness and regret which still haunt America. Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe gave voice to the Indian defeat in a speech that is both dignified and noble:
"Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Too-hul-hul-sote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

It took several generations and much bloodshed to force that speech out of an Indian. It took another one hundred and forty years for an intelligent and realistic spokesman like Yeagley to put into words the brutal truth that will allow him and his people to go forward as full citizens of the new world of which they are now a full part.If we cannot get the Arab world to make that same transition peacefully, we will have to reduce them by force the way we did with Chief Joseph.

We have to ask ourselves how dedicated we are to this struggle, how hard are we willing to fight to insure that our children do not have to live through a (not yet inevitable) slide into a new dark age- for an ascendant world-wide Caliphate would bring on a very dark age indeed. Anyone who doubts that need only see how the Shia and Sunni are savaging each other for dominance in Iraq. How willing are we to fight for freedom and do we have the courage to see what is required of us - and to do it.

If we cannot find a way to free ourslelves from the dogma of the left and drop multiculturalism so that we can fight with our whole minds, media, hearts and intellects we will have to continue to fight with tanks and bombs. Ultimately, we have to find both the intelligence and mental agility for the cultural approach and the will and strength for the forceful one. If we do not start soon then we might as well avoid the apocalyptic rush and start shopping for turbans and bhurkas now.

Update, Friend Eric Odessit posted this article which has a very promising resemblance to what a an Arab equivalent to Cheif Joseph's speech. It is dignified, realistic and forward-looking.

Indian Guilt and the American View of Islam Part I

Thirty years ago, in a lecture hall at Boston University, I first began to gain an insight into the impenetrable wall of ambiguity that we face when we try to understand other cultures. I was an undergraduate majoring in Anthropology. Our professor had just completed a lecture for the American Indian (I seem to recall they were still called Indians back then) survey course. In that day’s lecture he had made a comment to the effect that it was not possible for an Indian woman of a certain tribe (I can’t remember which one) to leave her husband. A feminist student took exception and approached him after the lecture and I happened to be a bystander as the professor patiently tried a number of ways of explaining to her that there was simply nowhere for a woman to go- no matter what her reason for leaving. In the lives of nomadic peoples there are no homeless shelters and the only survivable economic unit is a traditional family in which every individual played a very specific and confined role. This was clearly not acceptable to my classmate. She put up a vigorous protest, “surely she could go to a friend’s tepee- or set out for another village- even, in a dire circumstance, go back to her parents.” The more the professor smiled and tried to explain that there were simply no resources in such a society to allow for such life choices and that it was a survival issue not a gender-bias one, the more incensed she became. It wasn’t clear to me whether she was arguing in order to get him to admit that he was wrong about his observation or because she somehow felt that putting up a fight about it now could effect some sort of retroactive change for her Indian sisters that lived over a century ago. Then I realized that she was so incensed because like so many students in class she had a finely detailed and impossibly utopian imaginary picture in her mind of what Indian life was like and she simply didn’t want to give up that rosy, personally relevant preconception. This made a very strong impression on me. She was speechless with rage that the professor was accusing her innocent, noble Indians, the people she was convinced were so much closer to truly enlightened and pure beings of being chauvinist, Neanderthal dorks. I was filled with a new appreciation of how prejudiced, ignorant and agenda-driven my fellow intellectuals-in-training were.

Some time later, perhaps as a response, that same professor used the following quote from D.H. Lawrence’s book, Mornings in Mexico. I think it conveys very well the problem of understanding a culture so different from one’s own and it offers an insight into the clash of cultures that is difficult for a westerner to grasp.

“It is impossible for white people to approach the Indian without either sentimentality or dislike. The common, healthy, vulgar white usually feels a certain native dislike of those drumming aboriginals. The highbrow invariably lapses into sentimentalism like the smell of bad eggs. Why? – Both reactions are due to the same feeling in the white man. The Indian is not in line with us. He’s not coming our way. His whole being is going a different way from ours. And the minute you set eyes on him you know it. And then, there are only two things you can do. You can detest the insidious devil for having an utterly different way from our own great way. Or, you can perform the mental trick, and fool yourself and others into believing that the befeathered and bedaubed darling is nearer to the true ideal gods than we are. The Indian way of consciousness is different from and fatal to our way of consciousness. Our way of consciousness is different from and fatal to the Indian. The two ways, the two streams are never to be united. They are not even to be reconciled. There is no bridge, no canal of connection. The sooner we realize this, and accept this, the better, and leave off trying with fulsome sentimentalism, to render the Indian in our own terms.”

I want to be clear, I am in no way saying (and Lawrence wasn’t either) that there is anything wrong, defective or inferior about the Native American. I am saying two things:
1. Once exposed to Western Civilization the Indian way of life was doomed.
2. The life and culture of Indians was so vastly different from ours that it is simply impossible for us to understand the magnitude of the difference.

That being understood, Lawrence had it exactly right and his perception is equally valid when applied to the modern confrontation with Arabian Caliphate Islam. The “highbrows” he was referring to correspond precisely to today’s modern liberals and the rest of the progressive left wing. That fulsome sentimentality he identified in the highbrows is more than matched by the guilty/romantic response of today’s left to the idiotic, provocative accusations of humiliation, cultural degradation and imperialism leveled at all of the west by the Caliphatists.

ShrinkWrapped has a true story on his blog of a client of his who had a particularly bad case of this contradiction. ShrinkWrapped generalizes from this patient’s pathology- “New York liberalism consists largely of sympathy for the deprived, guilt over one's affluence and advantages, and anxiety over aggression and competition. It is a political philosophy that rests on a deep well of emotion and a small dollop of rationality.” ShrinkWrapped is exactly right- what he says goes right to the core of the matter.

Guilt is indeed a powerful force and, in America. Liberal illogic and guilt are inextricably tangeled up together in the history of our relationship with the American Indian. The American Indian is the essential starting point (every bit as much as the colonial past and the holocaust are for Europe) for an American discussion of how to understand Islam in the modern world. There are two main strands in that tangle:

1. For many Americans our historic and emotional relationship with the “native” population is our emotional template for our reaction to the Israeli/Arabic drama If we respond only emotionally to it we miss the very real differences between the two situations.
2. The cultural confrontation with the American Indian and the change it effected between two unequal and very different cultures is a very powerful paradigm that can help us to understand the clash with Islam- if we read it carefully.

The mistake of, to paraphrase Lawrence, “rendering the Islamic Arab in their own terms” has caused many a true, reasonable liberal to become a dupe of the Caliphate and an unwitting dhimmi. Because the liberal mind-set predisposes a left-them to view all other cultures through that self-centered prism of guilt and primitivist love, they are almost powerless to see the danger. How else to explain the left’s blindness to the endless, gory catalogue of atrocities that have been committed in the name of Jihad? It makes understandable (if still unforgivable) how fervent feminists and devoted gay rights activists remain blind to the horrors gays and women face in Islamic countries across North Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

As we face an opponent, who captures unarmed civilians workers and journalists, humiliates them in front of a camera and then hacks their heads off with a butcher knife for a public relations stunt; the cowed and guilt-ridden left can do no better than to find fault with our professional armed forces (that are bound by and enforce an internationally sanctioned code of conduct). The beheaders become cultural heroes while the American prison guards at Abu Ghraib are viewed as getting off with a slap on the wrist even after being tried and punished for their behavior. Notwithstanding Abu Ghraib (where is the comparison?) is there any logic or moral responsibility in that preference?

No- it is entirely based on emotion. That emotional combination of sympathy, guilt, unsupported opinion and dreamy primitivism that lead my classmate so long ago to idealize the less complex culture of the American Indians is very common and disturbing. Among liberals there is a nearly fanatical desire to see other cultures as “nicer, freer and more desirable than ours”. This primitivism is a key feature of the personality of the modern left. It is amplified in practice by the tendency of many on the left to rely too much on emotion and opinion and too little on understanding and fact. The combination of good intentions, sympathy and intellectual laziness is the most dangerous geopolitical force the world has ever seen.

Karl Marx spun his fantastic intellectual web of class warfare and communism from it, basing his proposed paradise of the worker on a kind of pass/fail society where no one is allowed to suffer any more or less than anyone else. It has taken a century and untold millions of lost and shattered lives for the real world to prove that this egalitarian dream was a sham destined to evolve into an unworkable nightmare.

Nevertheless, it keeps popping up and causing the left to take the wrong side in just about any conflict you can name. It causes many feminists and activist gays to speak out in blind support of the Palestinians and Islamic countries where women are little more than abused chattel; and homosexuals, if they are allowed to live at all, are brutalized outcasts. It is threatening Israel’s existence today and it has weakened many western democracies to the point that their survival as true democracies, ruled by law and vote, is in doubt.

The west only has one option; we have to start talking honestly and openly about subjects like the American Indian and learning how to handle the guilt and other raw emotions in a rational way. My next post will expand on the painful subject of the Indians and their fate and how it reflects on our response to Caliphate Islam.

A New Name for the Beast

Well, I’m still working on another big post but this idea actually came out of that one the other night. When I say "came out", I mean, it tore it’s way out like one of the baby aliens in the movie of the same name. The problem is that I have become very frustrated at the lack of what I feel to be a truly accurate and descriptive name for the enemy. Here is my attempt to solve that problem. I’d like to know what you think. If anyone would like to add new warning signs to the list at the end, I’d like to see them…

Despite my defense of the term Islamofascism (which I stand by as a definition of the repressive and terrorized totalitarian condition of much of the Islamic world) I have been unable to settle on a terminology that adequately describes and isolates the strain in Islam that poses a grave danger to freedom and liberty in today's world. I like “Islamofascism” still but I’m afraid that the word fascism has lost a lot of its impact, not because it is not accurate but because its meaning has become blurred by the constant misuse it receives. I have also used “Islamism” but it strikes me that it is not informative enough- even something of a tautology. Political Islam has some value too. It is especially good in that it reminds us that the politicization of any religion leads to the same place. Thus it also suggests a commonality with the Presbyterian and Episcopalian Churches, in their movement to divest from Israel. In fact, all the mainstream liberal churches seem to be having an attendance problem because of their political nature LINK . However, in the sense that it does not specify the violence that goes along with the current variety, of political Islam, Political Islam too does not satisfy. Radical Islam has been somewhat useful too but the word, radical, is also over-used and as become fuzzy with constant misapplication.

I have come to believe that we still lack a title that focuses on the critical difference between the kind of Islam that gives rise to terror and intolerance and the rest of Islam that to some degree is amenable to living in the modern world with co-operation and tolerance.

The name I keep coming back to is “Caliphate Islam” (or Caliphatism). Here is my reasoning. As far as I am concerned, anyone is entitled to believe that their religion (whatever it may be) is the “one true faith”. What they are not entitled to is, in any way, to believe that non-members of that blessed faith should have any fewer rights or less human dignity than “the faithful”. It is the underlying assumption of those who believe in The Caliphate that the entire world should live under Muslim rule and Shari’a law and you can only be a good Muslim if you believe in bringing it about.

The Caliphate, by the way, is not the jolly, rollicking world of Walt Disney’s Aladdin. Nor is it even the hell on earth that was Afghanistan under the Taliban or the Insane purgatory of today’s Iran. The world-wide Caliphate is the entire earth gone mad. Women being beaten, hung and stoned to death for no other crime than having been raped by a gang of perverted Caliphists who have been raised to think of women not as human beings but as “meat” or weapons of the devil. The Caliphate will be a place where the ancient dhimmi status will be revived. Dhimmi-hood in the ancient Caliphate meant that Christians, Jews and anyone else who is not a Muslim will have protection under the law only in so far as the mercy of the local mullah allows.

It is Caliphate Islam that won’t accept a Jewish state in the Middle East because it is considered an affront to the will of Allah that Jews should not only not be subject to Islamic rule but might have Islamic citizens living in a Jewish country. It is Caliphate Islam that so stultifies the lives of its people that they have to emigrate to western countries only to reject the values that make those countries better places to live. Belief in the Caliphate justifies the mass murder of innocent office workers in Manhatten, school children in Beslan and tribal rivals in sub-Saharan Africa. The belief in and desire for the Caliphate is the difference between conservative Islam and the pernicious terrorists that endanger all of mankind for the sake of a utopian nightmare.

Is it fair to call it a Utopian nightmare? A cursory reading of Islamic history proves that the Caliphate idea deserves to be thrown into the same garbage dump of bad ideas and hideous failures that now holds Communism and Nazism. Would it be peaceful as they claim? Well, we know that the track record is not good. The Prophet Mohammad established a vast and secure Caliphate across a great expanse of territory, yet as soon as Mohammed died people began murdering each other to determine his successor. Right down to the present day, the issue of who the true leader should be (and should have been) is the primary divider in the Islamic world. Shias and Sunnis kill many more of each other than Americans do of either over it; and the Sunni,/Shia divide is entirely derived from the original disagreement about who should have been the first Caliph after Mohammed. Still, some Muslims continue to believe that as soon as they get Israel out of the way and they take over the western governments by demographic means there will be a world-wide peaceful caliphate. That way lies ruin and madness.

A word of caution, Caliphists are sometimes aware that this belief may be a red flag. Often their belief is so strong and insensitive to reality that they acknowledge and talk about it openly. The ones who are most dangerous know enough not to mention this belief in public. In these cases it is important to know how to recognize them by other behavior. At the risk of being accused of behavioral profiling, lets look at a few of the indicators that come to mind:

1. Dehumanizing language- calling non-Muslims names like kuffar (nonbeliever) or referring to them as pigs, monkeys dogs etc…

2. Inability to engage in reasonable discourse without flying into a rage- see my post Don’t Just Stand There, Dhimmi, Humiliate Me about Imam Al Husainy. (below)

3. Refusal to accept the existence of Israel.

4. Extreme Misogyny and gender inequality

5. Blaming all of the incompetence, inefficiency, misfortune, and rage in the Islamic world on: a. The Jews, b. America, c. The West, d. Women, e. Anybody else, f. All of the above

I know there are a lot more but you get the idea… Send me your suggestions!