Dr. Sanity
Shining a psychological spotlight on a few of the insanities of life
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
FASCISM BY ANY OTHER NAME...
Dennis Praeger writes about "The Left and the Term 'Islamo-fascism'":
Students at most universities are almost brainwashed into being leftist -- and the way they are taught to disagree with their political opponents is by using ad hominem attacks. Conservatives are described over and over as mean-spirited, war-loving, greedy, bigoted, racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, homophobic, sexist, intolerant and oblivious to human suffering.As leading news organizations in the U.S. criticize the use of the term "Islamofascism" it becomes clearer to anyone with a brain that the word precisely describes the threat of these religious fanatics.
Such ad hominem labels are the left's primary rhetorical weapons. So when leftist students are actually confronted with even one articulate conservative, many enter a world of cognitive dissonance. That is one reason why universities rarely invite conservatives to speak: they might change some students' minds.
Regarding the term "Islamo-Fascism," most students heard the arguments I presented for the legitimacy of the term for the first time in their lives. Very briefly summarized, these arguments were:
First, the term is not anti-Muslim. One may object to the term on factual grounds, i.e., one may claim that there are no fascistic behaviors among people acting in the name of Islam -- but such a claim is a denial of the obvious.
So once one acknowledges the obvious, that there is fascistic behavior among a core of Muslims -- specifically, a cult of violence and the wanton use of physical force to impose an ideology on others -- the term "Islamo-Fascism" is entirely appropriate.
Second, the question then arises as to whether that term is anti-Muslim in that it besmirches the name of Islam and attempts to describe all Muslims as fascist. This objection, too, has a clear response.
The term no more implies all Muslims or Islam is fascistic than the term "German fascism" implied all Germans were fascists or "Italian fascism" or "Japanese fascism" implied that all Italians or all Japanese were fascists....
Third, given the horrors being perpetrated by some Muslims in the name of Islam -- from the genocide currently being practiced by the Islamic Republic of Sudan, to the mass murders of innocents in Iraq, Israel, America, Britain, Bali, Thailand, the Philippines and elsewhere -- what term is more accurate than "Islamo-Fascism"? "Islamic totalitarianism"? "Jihadists"? "Bad Muslims"?
The left's organized crusade against Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week was simply the latest shame in the long and shameful history of the left's inability to confront those engaged in great evil -- like the left's ferocious opposition during the Cold War to labeling communism as "totalitarian" or "evil" and its nearly universal condemnation of President Ronald Reagan's description of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire."
The term has angered many in the Muslim world, who see it as branding their entire religion -- and everyone who practices it -- as fascists.
"I think it's despicable," Middle East expert Juan Cole said. "Linking Islam… with a pejorative term such as fascism is extremely unfair. In fact, it is a form of racism."
Racist is, of course, a non-pejoritive term used to describe anyone who happens to disagree with Professor Cole and his ilk.
I suggest my readers check the definition of 'racism'; but last time I looked, a religion was not synonymous with a race. Further, not connecting Islam with the likes of Bin Laden, Zawahiri, Ahmadinejad--and the Mullahs, and all the other jihadist thugs out there is a form of idiocy--not to mention it would probably offend their delicate sensibilities (and Cole wouldn't want to do that!). They see themselves and their millions of followers as the true believers of the religion.
Not linking the political aspirations of these Islamic fanatics to fascism is clearly a form of psychological denial.
Which brings me back to some fundamental questions that must be answered if Western Civilization is to prevail over the Islamic barbarians at the gate.
The questions are:
For all these questions, there is one unifying answer: Postmodernism.
Reality, truth, reason, consistency, integrity and almost all the values of the Enlightenment that I discussed in this post have been abandoned--cheaply surrendered--by the intellectual elites of Western Civilization. (also discussed here , here and here for the interested)
Victor Davis Hanson once made this observation aabout the Europeans:
Europe boldly produces films about assassinating an American president, and routinely disparages the Church that gave the world the Sermon of the Mount, but it simply won’t stand up for an artist, a well-meaning Pope, or a ranting filmmaker when the mob closes in. The Europe that believes in everything turns out to believe in nothing.
And his comments are descriptive of the political left, as well. They believe in nothing.
In fact, they have finally reached the natural endpoint of the postmodern intellectual journey they began early in the last century, and arrived at the core nihilism that animates their entire belief system.
Once reason has been rejected reason and reality set aside as a basis for human actions, all that is left are the intense feelings that are the twinkling stars of the postmodern emotional universe.
Is it any wonder that the same people who aggressively champion gay rights one minute, will--when it is expedient--"throw gay men under the bus to score political points"?
Why should we expect the left to behave reasonably? Reason plays no part in their ideology or thought, such as it is. Forgetting about the many Democrats who are as corrupt as any Republican they happen to be demonizing at the moment ( excellently documented by SC&A, by the way) is not simply a benign lapse on the part of the left; it is a perfectly acceptable tactic in a conflict where the only goal is power at any price. Truth be damned.
Or just consider this popular smear tactic at Think
Only people without a lick of insight, self-awareness, honesty, or even a rudimentary sense of humor could ignore the rampant Bush=Hitler meme that dominates their side of the political spectrum and put forth a criticism of Podhoretz in such a self-righteous and ridiculous post.
The breathtaking hypocrisy simply boggles the mind; but it is all part and parcel of the postmodern rhetoric of the leftist nothings.
Postmodernism is nothing more than intellectual nihilism dressed up in academic robes. If someone ever wrote a history of psychological denial, the philosophy of postmodernism, which burst on the human scene about half a century ago, would undoubtedly have a special place.
The use of postmodern rhetoric is usually a desperate attempt on the part of the person in denial when he recognizes that logic, reason, and reality actually argue against his beliefs or purposes. This strategy can often take the form of redefining or distorting language and ideas so that they conform to ones pre-existing attitudes and emotions.
EXAMPLE: "Everything is relative anyway."
EXAMPLE: "Objective truth does not exist"
EXAMPLE: "Truth is relative and my feelings are just as important as your facts."
EXAMPLE: "My reality is just as significant as yours"
EXAMPLE: "Reality is an illusion."
In the end, they all serve to facilitate today's left in their unwillingness to confront the evil that threatens civilization in the world today. They would like you to believe that the only evil confronting the world is George Bush and have no problem equating George Bush and conservatives with fascism. But connecting Islam with fascism? That's really, really offensive. And mean. And racist.
It is, however, somewhat more in touch with reality than they would like to believe (psychological displacement is a form of denial, don't forget)
As Praeger points out, "It is not those who use the term "Islamo-Fascism" who are sullying the name of Islam; it is the Islamo-Fascists."
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:45 AM |
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
ON THE COUCH
SC&A will be interviewing me on BlogTalkRadio during his "ON THE COUCH" session. Click HERE to listen, or call in live at (347) 215-7863
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 2:52 PM |
CARNIVALE !
The Carnival of Latin America & the Caribbean makes its inagural flight at Fausta's Blog. Go check it out!
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 10:41 AM |
HELPING THE WORLD OUT OF ITS MISERY
Alvaro Vargas Llosa wonders if global capitalism makes the poor even poorer, or is it in fact rescuing millions of people out of their misery?
Ever since the Industrial Revolution, poverty has been significantly reduced throughout the world. Two hundred years ago, the average income per person worldwide was the equivalent of less than $2 a day; the figure is $17 today. This fact is relevant to the current discussion on globalization because, even though the information technology revolution, biotechnology, the emergence of new world players and outsourcing may give us the impression that we are in the midst of something entirely new, we are simply witnessing a new phase in the process of innovation that is the market economy -- and this began a few hundred years ago...
The fact that 20 percent of the world's population is extremely poor should not make us forget that millions of lives have improved dramatically in the last three decades. Illiteracy has dropped from 44 percent to 18 percent, and only three countries out of a total of 102 included in the U.N.'s Human Development Index have seen their socioeconomic conditions deteriorate. China's economy used to represent one-26th of the average economy of the countries that comprise the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; today it represents one-sixth.
These are not arcane facts. They are widely available and easy to understand. Publications such as Indur Goklany's "The Improving State of the World," David Dollar and Aart Kraay's report on the global economy, and Francois Bourguignon and Christian Morrisson's "Inequality Among World Citizens" -- to mention but three among many recent studies -- provide overwhelming evidence that the world is better off thanks to the increased flow of capital, goods, services and ideas.
All of which falls on the face of those who predict that in the next few years we will see a massive concentration of wealth among a few winners who will leave millions of losers behind. While it is probably true that the gap between low-skilled workers and those who are better educated will mean that different people will be impacted in very different ways by the continuing evolution of the global economy, the reality is that even those on the bottom rungs stand to benefit from the worldwide embrace of globalization.
Read it all.
There are many groups today who claim to stand against the "evil" of globalization. "Anti-globalization" is a term most commonly used to describe the political stance of people and groups who oppose so-called "neoliberal" policies of globalization. Generally, these groups consider themselves proponents of something referred to as "social justice" and are anti-large-multi-national corporations, anti-trade agreements, anti-capitalism, and anti-war (that last is thrown in for good measure to show how they associate trade with war and injustice; when the reality is that there is an inverse association--but why should facts get in the way of their fundamentally Luddite worldview?). Without the slightest bit of evidence, except for the marxist ideology which they consciously or unconsciously embrace, they assert that globalization and capitalism damage democracy, the environment, labor , and third world societies.
As Llosa observes, nothing could be further from the truth. But, such groups are not interested in the truth.
Marxism, which was supposed to bring economic prosperity, brought misery instead, and lost the competition with capitalism very badly. This required a hasty revision of the Marxist ethical standad, which originally said that wealth was a good thing and was being taken away from the masses by the evil capitalists. "Stick with us, kiddos," the communist/socialist revolutionaries claimed (see Hugo Chavez for the most recent itiration of this scam), "and you too will become prosperous and happy beyond your wildest imaginings!"
Well, clearly they made a serious miscalculation.
You see, even Karl Marx believed that wealth was a good thing. He was only delusional in thinking that socialism would be able to deliver the goods more efficiently and "fairly" than capitalism. Reality proved him terribly and catastrophically incorrect.
It is said that the only way to make a small fortune as a Marxist is to start with a large one--and this truth has been proven repeated all over the world where Marxist ideas have been applied to national economies.
Thus, Marx's decendents have been faced with a terrible ethical dilemma. Their ideology of choice is complete crap and is unable to deliver any of the material goods it promises--so what to do? Simple! You make one tiny little ethical change, and instead of touting that wealth is good, you convince people that wealth--and everything that is necessary to create it--is bad!
An even more subtle approach is to insist that wealth and prosperity is directly correlated to unhappiness.
All these global luddites, along with their medievalist and jihadi brothers have one thing in common. They despise capitalism and are all deeply resentful of the modern era because despite all the material things available to make life easier and more enjoyable, they aren't happy!
But, guess what? Happiness is not related to the number of things one possesses. It has more to do with the power and energy that actually creates the wealth and technology--the free expression of that creative impulse that lies within every human. It has to do with taking responsibility for your own individual life and striving for the best that is within yourself.
This is the real opportunity that capitalism on a global scale brings--not the general wealth and better living conditions--those are just the by-product of unleashing the inner creative spirit and pursuing one's individual happiness; and by doing so, raising the general happiness.
Many of these anti-globalism elites mistakenly believe power over others is what will make them happy, and so they attempt to control and shackle that creative power--the best that is within others.
Their idea of "social justice" is intimately tied to making themselves feel good and establishing their own caliphate of the do-gooders, where happiness is mandated for all in equal measure. But they approach happiness from the wrong direction.
The "happiness gurus", and all those in the "self esteem" promotion business fail to understand what it is that eliminates misery--either on an individual or societal level.
Robert Samuelson writes:
In 1974, economist Richard Easterlin pointed out that beyond a certain point -- presumably when people's basic needs for food, shelter, public order and work are met -- greater wealth does not generate more national happiness. The America of 2007 is far richer than the America of 1977. Life expectancy is 78 years, up from 74 years. Our homes are bigger and crammed with more paraphernalia (microwave ovens, personal computers, flat-panel TVs). But happiness is stuck....
The psychology of prosperity -- striving, taking risks -- feeds on ambition and insecurity. Our system often seems an insane rat race. But over time, it has created huge gains in material well-being. Air conditioning may not have made people in the South and elsewhere happier.
But it surely has made them more comfortable....
The popularity of happiness research suggests that economists and other social scientists think they can devise public policies to elevate the nation's feel-good quotient. This is an illusion. Happiness depends heavily on individual character and national culture. Some people will complain no matter how great their fortune; others will smile through the worst of times. In international comparisons, the United States ranks lower in happiness than some smaller nations (Denmark, Ireland, Sweden) but much higher than many large countries with paternalistic welfare states (France, Germany, Italy). Governments can provide health care. But they cannot outlaw despair or mandate euphoria.
Read it all. As Samuelson notes, the old adage, "Money can't buy happiness" is appropriate here. What is forgotten, however, is that money, free trade or the "increased flow of capital, goods, services and ideas" that Llosa talks about, makes everyone better off.
Over and over again we seem to be required to watch the spectacle of the wealthiest, most privileged, and yet seemingly most miserable people in the world, go on in tiresome detail how evil everything is that made their wealth and privilege possible. Many of these elites from across the globe have no problem using the same technology they hate to spread their ideological messages of anti-capitalism, anti-technology, anti-progress, and, of course, anti-Americanism (the symbol of all the previous).What is most distressing is the desire on the part of the anti-globalists to oppose the very thing that will ease human misery; while their underlying socialist ideology encourages them to legislate or mandate happiness. This is more than just an illusion; it is a frank utopian delusion.
And, it is at the heart of why about half the population of this country isn't happy.
Happiness is not related to power over others; rather it is intimately connected to learning to have power over one's self in order to harness the capabilities within and become the best person you can be, or as Samuelson notes, "Happiness depends heavily on individual character and national culture."
And that last says it all. A culture that promotes victimhood and the entitlement mentality; and which fosters class consciousness and envy is going to be stuck in a hopeless "happiness quagmire." There are actually people who believe that they can not only "redistribute wealth", but that in doing so they will be "redistributing happiness".
But these do-gooder dictator wannabees can't have it both ways (and, of course, they do want it both ways; no matter how perverse the contradiction). They can't simultaneously morally condemn the materialism of capitalism and then at the same time redistribute the wealth it produces. So, instead they claim that they are trying to minimize human misery and promote social justice by opposing the very policies that are most likely to put the world out of its physical misery and give each person a fighting chance to tap into the potential within.
Global capitalism can't guarantee happiness; or an end to evil in the world. All it does is provide the conditions that enable the pursuit of happiness. It is the freedom to pursue that which one thinks will make one happy that, slowly but surely, decreases the level of misery in the world.
Without human freedom there can be no wealth created; because wealth is the product of the unfettered human mind. If the do-gooders really wanted to help poor of the world out of their misery, they would stand aside and let the market do what it does best.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 9:28 AM |
Monday, October 29, 2007
JOIN THE ENTIRE SANITY SQUAD TONITE
UPDATE: Tonight's podcast has been archived and you can listen by clicking on the button below. There were some technical glitches that made our live listeners not able to hear the podcast after about 12 minutes; but the entire podcast (plus some out-takes in the last 2 minutes) is available at the link.
Siggy, Neo, ShrinkWrapped and I will be on live tonite at 8 PM Eastern on BlogTalkRadio. Topics will include Political Narcissism (there's a lot of that going around) and perhaps some psychological commentary on Mark Steyn's column from yesterday, War Like Life Is Not A Movie.
Click on the button below to listen live beginning at 8 PM tonite, and feel free to call in to talk to any or all of us at (646)716-9116:
Listen every Monday evening at 8 PM. Our archived shows can be found here. Do you have some ideas you want us to discuss? Then leave a comment!
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 3:38 PM |
BUT SERIOUSLY, FOLKS
The "Chief UN nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei" :
...accused Israel of taking "the law into their own hands" with a raid on Syria, and demanded more information about what was hit.
Neither Israel nor the United States has furnished "any evidence at all" to prove that the Syrian site bombed last month was a secret nuclear facility, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency told CNN.
"That, to me, is very distressful because we have a system; if countries have information that the country is working on a nuclear-related program, they should come to us. We have the authority to go out and investigate," he said.
"But to bomb first and then ask questions later, I think it undermines the system and it doesn't lead to any solution to any suspicion, because we are the eyes and ears of the international community."
Oh, please.
Is there any sane person today who could possibly take any statements by this person seriously anymore? Oh wait , the blog Think Delusionally does! Why am I not surprised? Elbaradei is a god to the left.
ElBaradei's job is supposedly to prevent countries like Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, not to facilitate or cover for them in their quest with bogus statements like the above. By any reasonable standard, he's done a pretty piss-poor job of the former, and exceled at the latter.
Apparently "watchdogs" at the UN do exactly that: watch; while countries like Iran and Syria etc. (you know, all those nice countries in the Middle East who want nuclear energy for "peaceful" purposes) throw him and his fellow UN "watchdogs" in the international community a few raw steaks to keep them occupied.
But he did win a Nobel Peace Prize...which, these days, is at least as good as staying at a Holiday Inn Express!
But, seriously, folks....
Israel Matzov has more:
Israel bombed first and asked questions later because of the Iran experience where despite years of evidence as to what is going on, the IAEA and the international community have done nothing to stop the mullahs.ElBaradei said he had been told by Syria that the site was a military facility and "has nothing to do with nuclear...."
And of course ElBaradei believes everything he's told (by an Arab or Muslim country anyway) - every single solitary word.
Meanwhile, DEBKA is telling a very different story:The following sequence of events unfolds from the garnered documents:
Damascus and Pyongyang settled between them that the nuclear transaction would be masked as a joint venture to build a cement factory in northern Syria; meanwhile, North Korea would sell Syria cement for its development projects.
According to DEBKAfile’s sources, North Korean freighters, which began putting in at Syria’s Latakia and Tartus ports in January 2007, unloaded cargoes of cement in which nuclear reactor components and materials were concealed.
The North Korean traffic at these ports and the Durham wheat transaction attracted the attention of US and Israeli secret services.
During the next eight months – up until the Israeli attack on Syria’s North Korean installation - wheat prices shot up on international markets. Indeed the price of Durham wheat doubled. Had this been a normal commercial transaction, Syria would have claimed additional North Korean goods in compensation. In fact, when import-export officials in Damascus, who knew nothing of the nuclear reactor tradeoff, pointed Assad’s office to the price fluctuations on the wheat market, they were told that the contracts signed by the president in person must go through without changes.
When later, the Syrian wheat crop fell short of expectations, Syrian officials were again told to fill the North Korean orders in full.
On Sept. 3, the North Korean “cement ship” Al Hamed docked at Tartus. The freight it unloaded was trucked directly to the “cement factory” at Al Tibnah in the Syrian Desert, east of the Euphrates River. The Israeli attack took place three days later.
Last Tuesday, Oct. 23, the Syrian ambassador to Washington Imad Mustapha was invited to address the prestigious Institute on Religion and Public Policy. In answer to a question, he acknowledged, “Syria gives North Korea wheat, oil and other products.”
He declined to disclose what Syria got in return. When pressed on this point, Mustapha said in exasperation: “Stuff. We get stuff.”
"Stuff"?? Feel free to begin laughing hysterically at any moment---at least, if you think nuclear weapons in the hands of the fanatics of the Middle East is a hilarious proposition.
I humbly suggest that ElBaradei and all the enablers and appeasers of the progressive left stop thinking delusionally, and get a minimal grip on reality.
And just to make sure you realize that I am in touch with reality... that last statement above is only my attempt to find some humor in the situation.
UPDATE: Others have a slightly different perspective than ElBaradei and the left: "Surgical air strike against Syria might have averted nuclear war" (or here and here):
But the second picture of the same site, which was taken some six weeks after the Israeli attack, provides some powerful indications that this could indeed have been the target of the operation.
The building has simply disappeared. It has been razed to the ground and all traces of the facility, except for the pumping station, have been removed. The site is criss-crossed with caterpillar tracks from heavy earth-movers.
There is every indication that the Syrian authorities have moved swiftly and dramatically to remove all evidence of what was there.
Still there is nothing conclusive, but the evidence is slowly adding up. We still do not know for certain what the Israelis hit. We do not know how successful their attack was. And if this was some kind of nuclear installation we do not know how advanced it was or where the technology and know-how came from.
But all the evidence does point to one fact. The Syrian authorities, whatever their denials, certainly have some explaining to do.(emphasis mine)
Seriously.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:22 AM |
Sunday, October 28, 2007
CARNIVAL OF THE INSANITIES
Time for the weekly insanity update, where the insane, the bizarre, the ridiculous, and the completely absurd are highlighted for all to see! This has been a week of rare idiocy (as always!). So, if you want to remain sane, the best thing is to poke some fun at the more egregious absurdities.Send all entries for next week's carnival to Dr. Sanity by 8 pm ET on Saturday for Sunday's Carnival. Only one post entry weekly per blogger, please. And you might read this before submitting an entry.
**NOTE: I am now getting many more submissions than I can possibly include in the weekly Carnival. Please don't be offended if your submission is not used (oh, okay, be as offended as you like) as it only means that for a variety of reasons I wasn't able to fit it into the "flow" as I put together each Carnival.
REMEMBER, THERE ARE SO MANY INSANITIES AND SO LITTLE TIME!!!
Oh yeah..a surefire way to end the war on terror...can you support it? Here are the rules: they get to kill with impunity and you get to keep on giving them electricity! Obviously, Israel must have lost the coin-flip.
An abject apology :) Gee, does this mean we're winning? The useful idiots don't care...BRING THEM HOME NOW! First it's the gravediggers, now it's the poor taxi drivers--both brand new victimhood constituencies for the Dems, I guess.
Perfect delusional paranoia...perfect schadenfreude. Perfect psychosis. Come on now, we all know whose fault everything is!
Incomprehensible foreign policy? How could that be? EXCLUSIVE! An advance copy of TNR's next cover!
Marxist Lennonist? It's a moral relativism sort of thing--a double-reverse chicken dove thing, in fact.
Getting to the bottom of the Roswell incident while Cheney spies on Kucinich from UFO! How dare they? There are limits to how much insanity even this guy will take. Boo!
He meant Osama....Or did he mean Obama? Ok, maybe he wouldn't....
The video John Edwards doesn't want you to see! Peter Paul and Hillary--sort of a catchy name for a song and dance group, isn't it?
No noose is good noose.
What the...? Introducing the "Playzombie Centerfold"! And a new kind of TV Star!\. Whatever you do, don't bring this girl home to meet your mother!
Bullschip! Axis of Evil Cookbook? I made an Axis of Evil Fruitcake once. Suck up to a tyrant for fun and profit! But who has the best butts? Buttvertising?
Hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil....? Oh, perhaps it was a gift ?
In baseball, there's always hope! The other red socks.
Great taste, more filling? Why the government should control our lives. Someone should list the most common 15 white lies told by politicians....but maybe those wouldn't be so innocent or harmless?
Do bosses really nead their own national holiday? Don't let the ummm...monkeys...grind you down.
Dark matter in space, astronaut poop, and the wonderfulness of science!
Well, I'm certainly glad I won't live to see this! I mean we have trouble predicting the weather, but predicting something like this is a piece of cake.
***************************************
Carnival of the Insanities can also be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival and at the BlogCarnival.
If you would like to Join the insanity, and add the Carnival of the Insanities button to your sidebar (clicking on it will always take you to the latest update of the Carnival), click on "Word of Blog" below the button to obtain the html code:
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:22 AM |
Saturday, October 27, 2007
THE MARRIAGE OF PARANOID MINDS
International Committee of 'Truth-Seekers'? Yeah, right.
They seek the truth with the same diligence and dedication that OJ seeks his wife's real murderer; or Jimmy Carter, who never met a dictator he didn't like, supports real democracy and freedom in the world.
Wretchard has an amazing account of yet another courageous 'truth-seeker'; and while I was reading his post, it struck me how incredibly in sync the Islamofascists and the useful idiots of the left are.... To paraphrase the Bard, far be it from to admit impediments to the marriage of paranoid minds.
The specific delusion might be different, but both are in the throes of a psychotic process.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:29 AM |
ET TU, LAURA ?
Sorry, I don't see this as respect for another culture. I see it basically the same way Michael Goldfarb does:When, earlier this week, I saw the pictures of the first lady sitting on a pink couch bracketed by, well, you couldn’t quite tell what they were, because they're wearing head-to-toe burqas, I thought she was making a powerful statement. Americans don't force their women to wear those ridiculous outfits, and by all rights they shouldn’t be forced to do so just because they are visiting a Muslim country. We live in a free country--if Muslims (or anyone else trying to go incognito) want to wear those things over here, that’s their prerogative. By the same token, any American woman wishing to brazenly flash a little ankle is also free to do so.
Most Americans traveling the Middle East have little recourse but to don the black sheets, but the first lady certainly does. She can dress as she likes....
And what will happen if Hillary wins the White House in 2008? Will she be expected to don the burqa on her trips to Saudi? One would hope not. Sitting presidents don't take fashion commands from foreign dignitaries, and neither should first ladies. Where are the feminists when we actually need them? (emphasis mine)
The feminists? LOL That's a joke, surely? They've been AWOL for a long, long time now. And they are far too culturally sensitive to want to offend the poor victimized misogynists of the Middle East.
I'm really disappointed in Laura Bush.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:17 AM |
Friday, October 26, 2007
PSYCHOLOGICAL DISPLACEMENT IN ACTION !
In today's SANITY SQUAD PODCAST on defense mechanisms (go here to listen) one of the points of discussion was the use of psychological displacement by today's political left. Here is a perfect example of displacement in action (and, the cartoon itself demonstrates a mature defense, humor) :
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 11:15 AM |
LISTEN LIVE TO THE SANITY SQUAD TODAY !
UPDATE: You can now listen to the archived show on Politics and Psychological Defense Mechanisms by clicking on the button below:
Siggy and I talk about some creative ways of coping with reality that are used by individuals and groups. These creative manipulations of reality are known as "psychological defenses", and they can be adaptive or maladaptive; mature or immature--for both the individuals and groups using them. And, everybody uses them.
Does this have political implications? You bet it does!
The show starts at 10:30 AM EST. Click on the button below to listen live, and feel free to call in to ask questions or join the chat. We're still testing out the BlogTalkRadio medium and welcome live callers with questions for either of us!
CALL IN NUMBER IS: (646) 716-9116
Starting next Monday, the entire Sanity Squad fab four, including Neo and Shrink will debut regularly on Monday nights at 8 pm.
Also, if you haven't checked out the new program "ON THE COUCH with Siggy" at BlogTalkRadio, you can go here to listen to the debut podcast that has Siggy interviewing Fausta of Fausta's Blog .
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:43 AM |
Thursday, October 25, 2007
KILL THE MESSENGER
I notice that LA Times writer Rosa Brooks has a teaser in the op-ed pages where she makes the following statement (hat tip: The Corner):
Straitjacket Bush
Rosa Brooks: The president's warmongering remarks on the Iranian threat suggest he is psychotic. Really.
I don't link to the actual op-ed piece simply because when you click on the link it isn't actually there. I wonder if perhaps Brooks was hallucinating that she wrote it?
It's entirely possible. People in denial are psychologically and physiologically primed for significant cognitive dysfunction.
Let's take a look at the remarks about Iran that Bush uttered which has Ms Brooks all upset. They were in an October 17 Press Conference in answer to questions by Brett Baer of FoxNews:
Q Mr. President, I'd like to follow on Mr. -- on President Putin's visit to Tehran. It's not about the image of President Putin and President Ahmadinejad, but about the words that Vladimir Putin said there. He issued a stern warning against potential U.S. military action -- U.S. military action against Tehran --
THE PRESIDENT: Did he say U.S.?
Q Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, he did?
Q He said -- well, at least the quote said that -- and he also said, "He sees no evidence to suggest Iran wants to build a nuclear bomb." Were you disappointed with that message? And does that indicate possibly that international pressure is not as great as you once thought against Iran abandoning its nuclear program?
THE PRESIDENT: I -- as I said, I look forward to -- if those are, in fact, his comments, I look forward to having him clarify those, because when I visited with him, he understands that it's in the world's interest to make sure that Iran does not have the capacity to make a nuclear weapon. And that's why, on -- in the first round at the U.N., he joined us, and second round, we joined together to send a message. I mean, if he wasn't concerned about it, Bret, then why did we have such good progress at the United Nations in round one and round two?
And so I will visit with him about it. I have not yet been briefed yet by Condi or Bob Gates about, you know, their visit with Vladimir Putin.
Q But you definitively believe Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon?
THE PRESIDENT: I think so long -- until they suspend and/or make it clear that they -- that their statements aren't real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon. And I know it's in the world's interest to prevent them from doing so. I believe that the Iranian -- if Iran had a nuclear weapon, it would be a dangerous threat to world peace.
But this -- we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously. And we'll continue to work with all nations about the seriousness of this threat. Plus we'll continue working the financial measures that we're in the process of doing. In other words, I think -- the whole strategy is, is that at some point in time, leaders or responsible folks inside of Iran may get tired of isolation and say, this isn't worth it. And to me, it's worth the effort to keep the pressure on this government.
And secondly, it's important for the Iranian people to know we harbor no resentment to them. We're disappointed in the Iranian government's actions, as should they be. Inflation is way too high; isolation is causing economic pain. This is a country that has got a much better future, people have got a much better -- should have better hope inside Iran than this current government is providing them.
So it's -- look, it's a complex issue, no question about it. But my intent is to continue to rally the world to send a focused signal to the Iranian government that we will continue to work to isolate you, in the hopes that at some point in time, somebody else shows up and says it's not worth the isolation.
Now, I make my living assessing the mental state of the people I see. Nothing in the above statement by the President is the least bit out of touch with reality. In fact, Brooks might consider the possibility that the President of the U.S. could possibly know more about what's going on in Iran (and with Putin) than Rosa Brooks does.
The President lays out his points in the usual forthright and direct manner that characterizes his personality, and which is so incredibly annoying to the dissemblers and manipulators of Washington.
Let me put it bluntly. President Bush, when he says that, if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, the world is in danger of having World War III, is so much in touch with a really really uncomfortable reality that it is actually rather frightening to any sane person. If you haven't come to the same conclusion, then I would suggest you reconsider your own relationship to reality.
Frightened people can cope with their fear in a number of ways. They can simply deny that the reality exists (Iran only wants nuclear energy for 'peaceful purposes'); they can minimize or distort the reality (So what if Iran gets a nuclear weapon? We can learn to live with it) etc. etc. The creative ways that people use to alter the truth in order to make themselves feel less anxiety or discomfort is often rather astonishing; and believe me, I have probably seen them all over the last 25 years of clinical practice.
But one particular psychological technique has become a mainstay these days, particularly on the political left, and it is a variation on the "kill the messenger" theme.
I see this theme all the time in practice when I confront (sometimes delicately, sometimes not) some issue that a patient doesn't want to deal with. Their response is swift and frequently highly emotional. Usually they become angry or enraged at me and proceed to "fire" me from their care entirely. In the back of their minds is the hope that maybe the next doctor will allow them to continue to abuse drugs; or let them get away with behavior that is personally or societally destructive, without any comment.
Whatever. That is ok by me. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink --to use a proverb commonly brought out in the psychiatric evaluation.
In the case of President Bush, it is his very straightforwardness and lack of guile, that make him an easy target for those who want the message deleted, ignored, distorted, or unspoken.
'Kill the messenger' is a form of psychological displacement.
As a psychiatrist, I can't help but notice that there's an unbelievable amount of psychological displacement being used right now (see here and here for more discussion) to cope with the painful realities of our day.
Displacement is one of the primary psychological maneuvers that covers-up or disguises blatant self-deception and self-delusion. It is, for example, behind most of the more vicious attacks on President Bush for anything he does; and for anything he doesn't do. He is behind every evil like some modern-day Moriarity, a criminal and godlike genius who is simultaneously a moron and incompetent. We are not talking about a mere dislike of the President; nor is this simply "politics as usual". Rather, it is an unreasoning and implacable, visceral hatred of George W. Bush for the sin of existing. This hatred is so intense that it is stunning to any rational observer; and its manifestations have been made into a 'diagnosis' of "Bush Derangement Syndrome".
Clinically, the symptoms of this syndrome are as disabling and as dysfunctional as any other post-traumatic stress disorder.
Displacement is the separation of an emotion from its real object and its redirection toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in order to avoid having to deal directly with what is frightening or threatening. It is a very useful type of psychological denial which distorts and obscures reality.
You suspect that this type of denial is at work when an individual expresses an emotion toward someone or something (e.g., anger or fear) that is way out of proportion to the reality of the situation. Ordinary dislike is transformed into a visceral, implacable hatred; anxiety morphs into hysteria; and ordinary frustration at being thwarted in one's desires becomes rabid, impassioned rage.
A simple, straightforward statement of facts is interpreted as 'psychotic' and 'fearmongering'. Never mind that one should be afraid. Very afraid.
The purpose of displacement is to avoid having to cope with an unpalatable reality in order to maintain a belief, a world view, or even one's sense of self. By using displacement, an individual is able to still experience his or her anger or fear; but since it is now directed at a less threatening target than the real one, the individual is able to feel much less anxious and safer.
Thus, the individual can delude themselves into thinking they are doing something about what threatens them, when in reality, they are blind to it ("fiddling while Rome burns" so to speak). Conveniently, the individual using displacement (or any other form of denial) does not have to take responsibility for the consequences of his/her emotion, and can also externalize any blame or consequence on the object of their emotional displacement.
They simultaneously feel safe AND virtuous, even though neither emotion is justified--at least, not for long. Every problem is easily explained away and the solution becomes oh so simple. In this case, GET RID OF BUSH ("straitjacket" him) and IRAN ISN'T A PROBLEM ANYMORE
Wonderful! Amazing! Delusional!
Let's review:
For those who may have forgotten or never known, let me remind you that Iranian clerics have already issued a fatwa approving the use of nuclear weapons against the enemies of Islam.
Of course, we are told by the left that, "Iran is only seeking peace!" and that the U.S. is by far the greater threat (see the Cox and Forkum cartoon at the end of this post). "Hand's Off Iran", they chant at their peace marches.
If they really cared about peace, it might be more useful for them to march in Tehran rather than exhorting Americans to straitjacket Bush. Somehow, I can't see them doing anything of the sort , when they live in the same utopian fantasyland as the jihadists they tacitly enable.
Here are the words of one of Iran's "moderates" on the subject of nuclear weapons:
“If one day the world of Islam comes to possess the weapons currently in Israel’s possession [meaning nuclear weapons]—on that day this method of global arrogance would come to a dead end. This…is because the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.”
Think about that, then call to mind the recent British-Iran hostage crisis and the Brit's pathetic response to Iran's provocative, outrageous, and uncivilized behavior. Victor Davis Hanson commented in an aptly named piece written at that time, "A Taste of Things To Come":
What is disturbing about the Iranian piracy is that it establishes a warning of what we can come to expect when Iran is nuclear, and how organizations like the UN, the EU, and NATO will react. If a few Iranian terrorists in boats can paralyze an entire nation and the above agencies, think what a half-dozen Iranian nukes will do.
Think about that for a moment.
If the leaders of the free world cannot respond appropriately and decisively to any direct act of war against the West on the part of Iran--no matter how egregious-- then the behavior of Iran's leaders is not likely to change.
On the contrary, their constantly provocative behavior will very likely escalate and become even more malignant, inching closer and closer to their real objective. They can count on the self-absorbed pacifists of the left obscuring the moral landscape sufficiently to clear a path for Iran to initiate the next holocaust.
The mullahs have been watching the West's tepid responses to their escalating and arrogant behavior with great interest. They observe the useful idiots of the left in America and Europe allying themselves with the Islamofascist agenda. Both of these observations have led them certainly to conclude that they can get away with practically any behavior now.
The fatwa and all the repeated unambiguous and deliberate warnings made by both extremists like Ahmadinejad and so-called moderates like Rafsanjani, demonstrate that Iran has now placed all their religious ducks in a row in order to be able to use nuclear weapons against "the enemies of Islam" (guess who?) without the necessity of experiencing any shame.
In fact, in their bizarro religious and cultural world, the shameful weakness displayed by all the major nations of the West, has brought Iran great honor in that world (see how a shame culture works here).
When you observe the arrogant, smirking demeanor of the psychopath-in-chief Ahmadinejad (who , all evidence does indicate should be in a straitjacket), as he calculatedly baits the West with same postmodern rhetoric emanating from the "peace, brotherhood, and social justice" leftists and Democrats--even as he hosts holocaust denial conferences and has contests to see who can come up with the best anti-semitic cartoons--you can reasonably conclude that this sort of cynical manipulation of the useful idiots of the left is simply the preliminary act to set the secular stage for removing Israel and the Jews.
Is there anyone naive enough to think that these homicidal fanatics would hesitate for one second to use a nuclear weapon against Israel--even if it meant millions Iranians would be also destroyed in a counterattack? From their warped perspective, the involuntary martyrdom of a few million muslims in Iran is a small price to pay to finish the job that the much-admired Hitler began in the last century.
From their perspective, Hitler. whose "struggle" against the Jews was unfortunately cut off before achieving final solution, was limited by not having the efficient technology available today. Iran does not intend to make that mistake.
What a grand gesture for the muslims of the world to witness and emulate! Iran strapping on the nuclear suicide bomb around its entire population to gloriously rid Islam of the Jewish menace.
Note that the rhetoric has escalated and the defiance against the international community has moved from words to actual behavior that includes killing Americans and taking British soldiers hostage. Further escalation is unavoidable now that the Iranians are completely sure that any action on their part will only be met by appeasement and endless negotiation.
In other words, the West has accepted Iran's sociopathic and uncivilized behavior and will do nothing to stop them.
From a psychological perspective, the increasingly amused and smug Iranian response to efforts of appeasement and negotiation has always been completely predictable. Bullies will always push the envelope of bad behavior when they think they can get away with it; and if they think that you are weak.
And they are getting away with it, aren't they?
It is easy to understand Ahmadinejad's smug, arrogant attitude; as well as his supreme confidence in Islam's superiority. He is convinced that he is the instrument of Allah's will, and this is only reinforced when he witnesses the pathetic appeasement and fear emanating from the infidels he means to destroy.
It's no use saying that such behavior on his part doesn't make sense and is irrational and suicidal. As I have suggested before, just think of Ahmadinejad and his puppet-masters as the ultimate, high-tech suicide bomber who has wrapped that nuclear bomb belt securely around his entire country.
Ron Rosenbaum bleakly concludes in the post linked earlier:
There is no deterrent to suicidal martyrdom, involuntary mass martrydom. No deterrent that depends on belief in the value of life by genocidal murderers on a “martyrdom mission”. Then asks, Is there a solution to this problem aside from pre-emptive strikes which will likely be catastrophic for both sides and probably only postpone a second Holocaust? Are there any deterrrents that will stop Ahmadinejad and his ilk from carrying out their genocidal designs?
So, I ask you. Is President Bush "psychotic" because he has chosen to face this reality head on? Or, is this just another example of the same psychological displacement that motivates BDS and allows so many people in this country to avoid dealing with an unpleasant and rather frightening reality
If WWIII (or IV, depending on your perspective) can be prevented, then the first reality that must be faced is that IRAN is the threat to world peace...not the U.S. or it President.
UPDATE: The link to Brooks' article now appears to be fixed. Go read it and judge for yourself the level of dysfunction exhibited. Go here to evaluate the level of complete denial we are dealing with in Ms. Brooks.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 2:33 PM |
THEY JUST CLOSE THEIR EYES
The folks at Stop Hillary Now wonder if the voters care about her fundraising scandals. (See here, for more information).
Its a very good question.
Let me put forth a very deep psychological explanation to the tune of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes":
YOU JUST CLOSE YOUR EYES
We asked them how they knew
Hillary was true?
And they of course replied,
Feelings cannot be denied...
We said someday you'll find,
The Democrats are blind;
Oh, when your brain's on pause
Because you have a cause,
You just close your eyes!
But they booed; and were so awfully rude
To think we'd doubt their sense;
The MSM won't speak, denial is what they seek
Hillary can do no wrong...
We will never understand;
When she's caught with cash in hand,
They'll still smile and say,
"What a lovely day!
Please just go away...."
Denial is never asking why--
When you want to cry,
It's reality you deny,
So they just close their eyes.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:30 AM |
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
THE LEFT'S Savage Secret
Never ones to miss an opportunity to dress up as drama queens, leading leftists are once again racheting up their rhetoric and swooning over the evils of George W. Bush--blaming him (and "his" war) for the horrific fires in Southern California.
Think I am kidding? Check out here, here, and here if you have trouble believing it.
None of their rhetoric has, or will have, anything remotely to do with reality; but hey! The left feels strongly and passionately about something, therefore, it becomes real for them.
We are living in a police state! Bush is Hitler! Christians are trying to impose a theocracy on America. We are being persecuted! Blah blah victims blah oppression blah fascist blah blah blah! And so on and so forth.
I have written multiple times about the narcissistic histrionics and exaggerated emotionalism of today's left (see here and here, for example). We saw a lot of this sort of hysterical emoting during Hurricane Katrina, where the left was determined to transform a natural disaster into an indictment of their hated political opponents on charges of racism, insensitivity, and even "genocide".
Remember the 1984 movie Romancing the Stone, a romantic comedy from 1984? In the opening sequence, a dramatization of Joan Wilder's book The Savage Secret, an evil cowboy named Grogan (Ted White) storms in on a sexy damsel in distress named Angelina (Kymberly Herrin). Angelina, about to be raped by Grogan, tells the audience that he killed her father, raped and murdered her sister, burned down her ranch, shot her dog and stole her Bible. She then kills him and, pursued by Grogan's brothers is rescued by her one true love. They ride off into the sunset, stage left.This is a typical romance novel plot--exaggerated for dramatic effect, shallow but enthralling at the same time--and it introduces the comedic tone of the entire movie.
I was reminded of its excesses yesterday, and by the similarities of that particular scene from the movie and the left's neverending comedic script about another "evil" cowboy, who "killed" their presidential candidate; "raped and murdered" women's rights", burned down southern California (and flooded New Orleans); "shot" their donkey, and stole the high moral ground right out from under their feet.
They will ride off into the sunset when their beloved "Jesse" wins the White House, symbolically slaying all those awful cowboys who took it away from them.
That's what the political left has become folks. A lough-out-loud, bodice-ripping farce of a movement, whose scriptwriters seem to always get carried away by the emotion and drama of the moment.
Which brings me to hysteria.
Hysteria is a concept characterized by a wide variety of physical and mental symptoms that result from dissociating one's cognitive functioning from one's emotion and/or behavior. The psychological defense that makes this happen is known as dissociation.
For the hysteric emotions are primary and are not subject to an objective reality.
When we speak of someone becoming "hysterical" or "histrionic", we are talking about behavior that exhibits overwhelming or unmanageable emotional excess.
Welcome to the wonderful world of feelings, nothing more than feelings (cue music), where there really is nothing more than feelings at play.
This is a world where there is no objective reality or truth; a world where, if you believe something is true, then it is. In other words, it is a world where something can be considered "fake but accurate" or where captured enemy combatants in the middle of a war are considered in a "gulag"; or, where a "religion of peace" beheads people; is so terrified of women's sexuality they must "liberate" them by forcing them to wear sacks over their bodies; and which promotes blowing yourself up in a crowd as a devout religious act.
A variety of altered states of consciousness may result from the dissociative process. In one dissociated or hysterical state, sleep-walking (sonambulism), the person appears to be out of contact with his environment, is seemingly unresponsive to external stimuli, and in many cases appears to be living out a vivid, hallucinated drama.
Drama of any sort suits the hysteric's modus operandi extremely well. The drama is designed to mask the fact that the individual is in psychological denial; and, as I have noted previously,
at the center of all psychological denial is a hidden agenda. That agenda is usually not completely conscious--meaning that the denier has not thought through the issues surrounding his denial; and may not even be aware of what his motivation is in asserting something is true when it isn't; or false when it isn't....
And that is their Savage Secret.
UPDATE: Of course we all know who's fault global warming is; and that it would have been dealt with swiftly and firmly if Gore were president.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:43 AM |
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
HOLY SMOKES, BATMAN
(Ok, I know that Batman is DC comics and not Marvel Comics, but somehow it's appropriate).
Just watch this trailer for HILLARY UNCENSORED--BANNED BY THE MEDIA. It is 14 minutes long, and on its own should be enough to totally sink the Clinton machine.
You might begin to wonder why this story has not been headline news on every major MSM outlet. Oh, wait....
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 1:38 PM |
DUMMYCRATS, DHIMMICRATS, DEMOCRATS
One of the definitions of the word dummy is "a large puppet usually having movable features (as mouth and arms) manipulated by a ventriloquist". Of course, it also is a word that means "a stupid person".
Per Robert Spencer, Dhimmitude is the status that Islamic law (i.e., Sharia) mandates for non-Muslims, primarily Jews and Christians. Dhimmis, “protected” or “guilty” people, are free to practice their religion in a Sharia regime, but are made subject to a number of humiliating regulations designed to enforce the Qur'an's command that they "feel themselves subdued" (Sura 9:29). This denial of equality of rights and dignity remains part of the Sharia, and, as such, are part of the legal superstructure that global jihadists are laboring through violence to restore everywhere in the Islamic world, and wish ultimately to impose on the entire human race
Both sets of definitions apply to today's Democratic leadership when it comes to their foreign policy positions regarding the war on terror.
Here is an extremely interesting bit of writing by Tariq Alhomayed, the editor of Asharq Alawsat, an international Arabic daily newspaper, who catalogs Iran's many efforts to destablize the region and accumulate power to itself. In "Washington and Tehran: Negotiating Over What?", Alhomayed says:
US Democratic candidates, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have expressed their intention to engage in “unconditional negotiations” with Iran, should either of them attain the presidency. The question is: Negotiate over what?
Are the conflicts in the Middle East a result of a crisis in Washington-Tehran relations; or rather, does it revolve around Iran’s expansion ambitions and its interference in the internal affairs of Arab states for over 20 years?
Is the Washington-Tehran crisis a result of the absence of dialogue, or is it by reason of Iran’s aspirations to destabilize the region?
The list he makes is rather impressive. Iran has
Alhomayed concludes with a blistering denunciation of the Democratic leadership in the U.S. who is sending the wrong--in fact, the worst possible, message to Tehran:
The strange thing is that at a time when international efforts are being made to establish an international coalition against Iran’s pursuit for nuclear weapons, the Democrats are waving the carrot before Tehran. As such, Iran will surely interpret the message as an invitation to consolidate position on the ground and in the region until the Democrats reach power, after which it can negotiate with Washington from a position of power.
The
The Democratic Party of FDR and JFK would have understood this reality; but the party of Pelosi, Reid, Clinton, Obama et al, are oblivious.
Dummies or Dhimmis? Or both? You decide.
That is why they cannot and should not gain the White House in 2008.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 9:36 AM |
Monday, October 22, 2007
DON'T FORGET
Check out the Sanity Squad Podcast at BlogTalkRadio. Click on the player on the sidebar for the latest podcast! You can also look to see the list of upcoming Sanity Squad podcasts and listen live or phone in to interact with the Squad!
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 4:24 PM |
UNDER A GLASS DOME
Michael Yon:
All describe the bizarro-world contrast between what most Americans seem to think is happening in Iraq versus what is really happening in Iraq. Knowing this disconnect exists and experiencing it directly are two separate matters. It’s like the difference between holding the remote control during the telecast of a volcanic eruption on some distant island (and then flipping the channel), versus running for survival from a wretch of molten lava that just engulfed your car.
I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions. Considering that my trip home coincided with General Petraeus’ testimony before the US Congress, when media interest in the war was (I’m told) unusually concentrated, it’s a wonder my eardrums didn’t burst on the trip back to Iraq. In places like Singapore, Indonesia, and Britain people hardly seemed to notice that success is being achieved in Iraq, while in the United States, Britney was competing for airtime with O.J. in one of the saddest sideshows on Earth.
No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian
Read on. Very illuminating.
Vanderleun has taken the measure of these pathetic little postmodern purveyors of hopelessness and doom, and gets it exactly right (hat tip: Larwyn):
Four years in. An inch of time. Four years in and the foolish and credulous among us yearn to get out. Their feelings require it. The power of their Holy Gospel of "Imagine" compels them. Their overflowing pools of compassion for the enslavers of women, the killers of homosexuals, the beheaders of reporters, and the incinerators of men and women working quietly at their desks, rise and flood their minds until their eyes flow with crocodile tears while their mouths emit slogans made of cardboard. They believe the world is run on wishes and that they will always have three more.
Like savages shambling about some campfire where all there is to eat are a few singed tubers, they paint their faces with the tatterdemalion symbols of a summer long sent down to riot with the worms. They clasp hands and sing songs whose lyrics are ash. "We shall... over... come." Overcome what, overcome who? Overcome their own nation? Is that their dream? It is the lifelong dream of those that lead them, that much is certain.
Four years in and we see these old rotting rituals trotted out in the streets like some pagan procession of idols and shibboleths, like some furred and feathered fetish shaken against the sky by hunkering witch-doctors, to hold back the dark, to frighten off the evil spirits and graven images that trouble the sleep of the dreamers.
Four years into the most gentle war ever fought, a war fought on the cheap at every level, a war fought to avoid civilian harm rather than maximize it. Picnic on the grass at Shiloh. Walk the Western Front. Speak to the smoke of Dresden. Kneel down and peek into the ovens of Auschwitz. Sit on the stones near ground zero at Hiroshima and converse with the shadows singed into the wall. Listen to those ghost whisperers of war.
Four years in and the people of the Perfect World ramble through the avenues of Washington, stamping their feet and holding their breath, having their tantrums, and telling all who cannot avoid listening that "War is bad for children and other living things." They have flowers painted on their cheeks. For emphasis. Just in case you thought that war was good for children and other living things.
There were children and other living things on the planes that flew into the towers.
Go read the entire piece, it is perfect. And extremely appropriate to describe the people who want to make sure we all live under a glass dome; and that any good news never makes it through.
Let's face it. The MSM, Democrats and their leftist base will never ever--under any circumstances and no matter what the actual facts are--say anything positive about the situation in Iraq. They prefer to live under the glass dome.
WE'LL NEVER ADMIT IT'S GETTING BETTER (Reprise)
It's fun to get mad at the Prez
And trash everything that he says
He's holding us down, making us frown
We'd rather love Hugo Chavez!
We'll never admit it's getting better
Here at home or in Iraq
We'll never admit it's getting better
'Til we get the White House back.
We used to be happy, you see
But now we're the knights who say NIE
Iraq got to vote
But we really hope
That no one pretends they are free.
We'll never admit it's getting better
We stand for nothing and have no plan
We simply hate to admit it's getting better
And we hate that we lost and that now he's the boss
And we'll thwart him as much as we can.
We'll never admit it's getting better
Here at home or in Iraq
We'll never admit it's getting better
'Til we get the White House back.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 4:20 PM |
THE REAL WAR ON CHILDREN: Jihadi Kids vs Metrosexual Kids
Mark Steyn has a column that addresses the recent SCHIP controversy and the remarks of Democratic Rep. Pete Stark:
On Thursday, Congress attempted to override President Bush's veto of the SCHIP expansion. SCHIP? Isn't that something to do with health care for children? Absolutely. And here is Bay Area Democratic Rep. Pete Stark addressing the issue with his customary forensic incisiveness:
"The Republicans are worried that they can't pay for insuring an additional 10 million children. They sure don't care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you're telling us today? Is that how you're going to fund the war? You don't have money to fund the war on children, but you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people? If he can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."
I'm not sure I follow the argument here: President Bush wants to breed a generation of sickly uninsured children in order to send them to Iraq to stagger round the Sunni Triangle, weak and spindly and emaciated and rickets-stricken, to get their heads blown off? Is that the gist of it? No matter, Congressman Stark hit all the buzz words – "children," "illegal war," "$200 billion," "lies," etc. – and these days they're pretty much like modular furniture: You can say 'em in any order, and you'll still get a cheer from the crowd.
Congressman Stark is unlikely ever to be confused with Gen. Stark, who gave New Hampshire its stirring motto, "Live free or die!" In the congressman's case, the choice appears to be: "Live free on government health care or die in Bush's illegal war!" Nevertheless, in amongst the autopilot hooey the Stark raving madman did use an interesting expression: "the war on children."
One assumes he means some illegal Republican Party "war on children." Last Thursday, Nancy Pelosi, as is the fashion, used the phrase "the children" like some twitchy verbal tic, a kind of Democrat Tourette's syndrome: "This is a discussion about America's children … We could establish ourselves as the children's Congress … Come forward on behalf of the children ... I tried to do that when I was sworn in as speaker surrounded by children. It was a spontaneous moment, but it was one that was clear in its message: we are gaveling this House to order on behalf of the children."
Pelosi and the Democrats go on and on blah blah blah about "the children", even as they continue to propose more and more entitlements/Ponzi schemes that will leave it to "the children" (when they are grown-up, of course) to figure out how they are going to pay for it. Steyn rightly points out the imminent societal collapses that can be expected in European countries who have been playing this game much more earnestly than in the U.S.
Betsy has more on the fiscal aspect of Steyn's piece, which you should read in full.
From a wider perspective, though, what Steyn is talking about is the politicization of children; i.e., the use of children to advance a political or ideological agenda. This sort of child abuse is going on on a number of levels, both in Western culture and in Middle Eastern culture. Specifically, I want to focus on the hyper-sexualization of children in the West, and the concommitant hyper-"aggressivization" of children in the Arab/Islamic world.
A recent search of the headlines will give us plenty to ponder on the sexualization being waged in the West. Consider this. And this. and this. In Norway: this Or how about this?
What does any of the above represent, except an all-out assault on the sexual identity and genitalia of today's children. Oh, don't bother to tell me this is all done with the best of intentions...quite frankly, I'm rather sick of hearing that particular line.
Don't these do-gooders ever consider the long-term consequences of their actions? Or is it just enough for them to feel in the moment oh-so-good about what wonderful, modern, tolerant, progressive people they are? They will conveniently forget that it was their policies and their agenda when the sexual chickens come home to roost (imagine an entire society of Brittainys and Madonnas and their male equivalents).
Meanwhile their socialist counterparts in the Middle East really have perfected a way to accomplish what the Stark Raving Mad congressman from Maine insinuated (i.e., "President Bush wants to breed a generation of sickly uninsured children in order to send them to Iraq to stagger round the Sunni Triangle, weak and spindly and emaciated and rickets-stricken, to get their heads blown off)--with one little creative modification!
When they blow their little heads off, they will be dying to blow yours off, too. These jihadi kids don't draw guns and play as a means of discharging youthful aggressive impulses on the road to civilized behavior; they shoot them for real, at real human targets and are rewarded according to how much they are able to express the uncivilized cultural hatred that motivates the adults in their society. Instead of learning civilized behavior, they learn to project their hatred onto Jews and Christians. This is a violent video "game" in real life.
Do you imagine there is not a difference between fantasy play (which teaches a child how to control impulses and tame his or her inner monsters in the safety of fantasy) and participating in real-life violence, brutality or sex (which gives tacit permission and actively encourages the child to become his or her inner monsters) ?
If you are unable to distinguish the difference, then you must be a member of the so-called "reality-based" community who seem to specialize in utopian fantasies where human aggression has been magically eliminated from the species, and we all "make love, not war" in some utopian meadow of the not-too-distant future.
Good luck with that.
Instead of channeling human aggression and sexuality into societally productive avenues that benefit both individuals and cultures in which they live, we are witness to the spectacle of the political left gleefully encouraging and supporting dysfunctional sexuality that reeks of entitlement, irresponsibility, and perversity. Their moral counterparts in the "religion of peace", channel it directly into hatred and religious fanatacism.
Frequent visitors to this blog might recall that I have written quite a bit about psychological defense mechanisms (and here, for example) which operate unconsciously for the most part; and that they exist in a spectrum from immature to mature. On the immature end we have psychotic denial and ordinary denial (which children engage in frequently). As they mature, ordinary denial will morph into psychological repression (a neurotic, lower level psychological defense) and with maturity, the individual may evolve into using a process of sublimation, one of the most mature defenses, to manage any inappropriate sexual or aggressive impulses.
Contrary to the usual marxist propaganda, it is not capitalism that is encourages the use of immature psychological defenses, but life itself. But, it is capitalism and the capitalist system that offer a healthy channel for the redirection of negative psychic energy into something positive for both the individual and the group at large.
Something, I might add, that marxism, socialism and all its malignant variants completely fail to do. In fact, what they encourage are the use of unhealthy defenses (acting out, reaction formation, denial, projection, displacement to name a few) which, because such defenses are suboptimal and even self-defeating in the long-run, do nothing to improve the lot of either the society at large, or the individual unlucky enough to be living in it.
Societies, like individuals, can adopt mature defenses and deal with reality; or they can deny reality and look elsewhere for the source of their problems. Many countries, like individuals, prefer to put the blame for their own failures onto an outside source, since that is safer for the self-image. In order to maintain the fiction that their problems are caused externally, a group or country or culture needs to indoctrinate children at the earliest age possible in order to make sure that their cognitive faculties are short-circuited and won't question the ideology or dogma.
A "healthy" country, like a healthy individual will utilize mature defenses to cope with their aggressive and/or sexual impulses. They are not afraid of their aggressive impulses because those impulses are reigned in by reason and not indulged in lightly. They are able to find pleasure and satisfaction in their sexual impusles, not by indiscriminantly indulging in every pleasurable urge or whim, but by harnessing that sexuality to values that promote true intimacy and happiness.
Healthy societies do not encourage either sexual or aggressive (i.e. violent) acting out in their children. On the contrary, healthy societies encourge responsible sexual behavior and appropriate and realistic compromise and accommodation of others.
Sex and aggression are very closely connected. According to Freudian theory, all behavior can be thought of as motivated by a desire to feel pleasure. That motivation is organized and directed by two instincts: sexuality (Eros), and aggression (Thanatos). Freudian psychology in its earliest incarnations was almost obsesively preoccupied with sex. This is because Freud himself lived in a puritanical Victorian-era society and was reacting against the extreme prudishness of the age. The psychological symptoms Freud saw in his practice and described so brilliantly were to be expected in a society that ruthlessly repressed sex.
One does not need to wonder what kind of symptoms are to be expected in a society that, instead of repressing it, glorifies it and indoctrinates its children into sexual pleasures without concomitantly teaching them about personal responsibility or that there are real world consequences to one's behavior (something that can only be learned with maturity).
In my profession, we have been dealing with these "counterFreudian" symptoms since the "sexual revolution" peaked in the middle of the last century. Nothing like a little Utopian Marxism-gone-berserk to really alienate people from themselves, destroy interpersonal relationships and produce a society that joyfully celebrates sex without personal intimacy for the glorification of the state.
Here in the West, we have glorified one instinct (sex) while ruthlessly suppressing the other (aggression)
Meanwhile, children on the other side of the world are indoctinated into violence without benefit of conscience, as their religion and culture ruthless suppress sex and glorify aggression and violence in the name of god.
Jihadi Kids vs Metrosexual Kids. Both are very similar psychic processes that pervert two natural human instincts and channel them them into mindless human actions, unconnected with human reason or compassion. Both have become deliberately politicized and foisted on children in order to advance a utopian ideology and agenda.
Now that is a real war on children.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:35 AM |
Sunday, October 21, 2007
THE SANITY SQUAD IS BACK !
...And we are on BlogTalkRadio !In our first podcast at BTR, Siggy and I discuss the political and psychological evolution of neoconservatism. Neo and Shrink were unable to join us, but will return next week.
For future scheduled podcasts you can go here and even subscribe to the RSS feed; as well as listen to archived podcasts.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 9:00 PM |
CARNIVAL OF THE INSANITIES
Time for the weekly insanity update, where the insane, the bizarre, the ridiculous, and the completely absurd are highlighted for all to see! This has been a week of rare idiocy (as always!). So, if you want to remain sane, the best thing is to poke some fun at the more egregious absurdities.Send all entries for next week's carnival to Dr. Sanity by 8 pm ET on Saturday for Sunday's Carnival. Only one post entry weekly per blogger, please. And you might read this before submitting an entry.
**NOTE: I am now getting many more submissions than I can possibly include in the weekly Carnival. Please don't be offended if your submission is not used (oh, okay, be as offended as you like) as it only means that for a variety of reasons I wasn't able to fit it into the "flow" as I put together each Carnival.
REMEMBER, THERE ARE SO MANY INSANITIES AND SO LITTLE TIME!!!
1. The insanity of Hitler's legacy continues...
2. A headline worthy of Scrappleface. Alas, poor Yorick!
3. Art imitates life? Or more money than taste?
4. File this under the heading, Too Little, Too Late. No wonder they call it the Holy Land. The Pope as human torch.
5. Clinging to their delusions to the last. Whatever will they do when Bush is out of office? There's always GDS...but copycat Krugman is off-base-- no one's ever compared Gore to Hitler; or even said that he's worse than OBL etc. etc. Only that he's a very useful idiot, a braggart, and a loser. Now is that deranged...or simply perceptive?
6. Now this is BDS of the really deranged variety; and this ; and even a rebuke doesn't change what she really believes.
7. Speaking of delusional. Speaking of deranged. Speaking of useful idiots.
8. Be careful what you wish for!
9. Heh Heh Heh. The ball is in your court, Harry. Rush, The Reid Slayer! Talk is definitely cheap, so here's the ultimate global warming challenge...
10. Required testing for a job at the NY Times. Qualifications for an academic position in today's market.... Do they have education envy? I'm not surprised--check this out.
11. The Al Franken of Asia? Except that Al Franken isn't funny (or heroic).
12. Move East Jerusalem to Miami? What a great solution! Well, this is shocking news.... And here is a fantastic solution for another longstanding problem.
13. Vlad
A'Jad? Definitely a bad date! Iran is not anyone's friend...not even its own. Remember, boys, soya is not your friend either and don't work for this company if you're an alpha male!14. Never underestimate the therapeutic efficacy of cash.
15. You can black out from hunger several times while reading the article and not miss a thing! When more is not enough, you can take this pill--invented in NoKo, probably !
16. There's talking down to women and then there's talking down to women.... There's child abuse, then there's Palestinian child abuse.
17. Your first amendment rights begin (and apparently, end) here. Different cultures, different ways to protest medical care!
18. Ask your doctor if getting off your ass is right for you! Lose weight by reading sensational novels! Or, by eating crap; or squirrel pancakes!
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Carnival of the Insanities can also be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival and at the BlogCarnival.
If you would like to Join the insanity, and add the Carnival of the Insanities button to your sidebar (clicking on it will always take you to the latest update of the Carnival), click on "Word of Blog" below the button to obtain the html code:
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:45 AM |
Saturday, October 20, 2007
BONFIRE OF THE MORAL VANITIES
From the WSJ article about what really happened at Haditha (via Andrew McCarthy at The Corner)
The incident at Haditha--or the massacre, as it is often called--is due for a wholesale rethinking. The allegations are that in 2005 U.S. Marines went on a killing spree and deliberately executed 24 Iraqi civilians. The casualties have drawn an extraordinary amount of political attention, becoming an emblem for everything critics say is wrong with the Iraq war--in the common telling, another My Lai....
Many, including Members of Congress, were looking for another moral bonfire to discredit the cause in Iraq, and they found a pretext in Haditha. The critics rushed to judgment; facts and evidence were discarded to fit the antiwar template. Most despicably, they created and stoked a political atmosphere that exposes American soldiers in the line of duty, risking and often losing their lives, to b criminal liability for the chaos of war. This is the deepest shame of Haditha, and the one for which apologies ought to be made.
Sometime back, Scott Johnson from Power Line wrote a column that discussed the Vietnam template used since early in the Afghanistan war to measure all U.S. military behavior:
Many have noted the media's efforts to portray the the current war in Iraq as a replay of Vietnam. These efforts date back to R.W. Apple's invocation of Vietnam on day 24 of the campaign in Afghanistan:Like an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past, the ominous word "quagmire" has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad. Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam?
This drum of defeatism has not stopped beating. This past week, for example, Knight Ridder reporter Tom Lasseter portrayed the situation in Iraq's Anbar province as a repeat of Vietnam. Lasseter 's article is a troubling piece with relevant quotes from officers in the thick of the action.
But the Vietnam invoked by most journalists is the media's Vietnam: the Vietnam which Braestrup exposed as a false media construct. (David Brooks's column yesterday
is a notable exception.) The elite media organs covered in Braestrup's book didn't get it right the first time around; it would be nice if they took a timeout for some introspection regarding past errors before superimposing the Vietnam template (as Austin Bay calls it) on the current conflict.
If only one could put Lasseter in touch with the Power Line reader who served in Vietnam and last week wrote in from his current post in Iraq. He finds only one similarity: "[T]he deplorable way the mainstream media with their left-leaning bias have reported the two wars."
There is another similarity, although the political left is incapable of appreciating it. During Vietnam, the media; academics, intellectuals, many public figures, entertainers, and the antiwar protesters of the time consistently and stubbornly refused to see communism for what it really was. They steadfastly ignored the millions of deaths brought about by this ideology in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, and instead focused their attention on denouncing the United States as the center of all evil in the world.
Today we have the very same people consistently and adamantly refusing to acknowledge Islamic fundamentalism and the religious fanatics blowing up themselves and others for what they are.
Once again, the left prefers to ignore and/or enable a barbaric ideology that thrives on human enslavement, misery, and death. With tedious and infinitely repetitive talking points, they continue to subscribe to the comforting notion that the US is the cause of the mayhem and butchery and ignore the real butchers. And their deluded women's movement is more interested in forcing science to acknowledge that women are identical to men in every way possible, than they are in helping the women in the Middle East get out from under the oppression of Islam.
In other words, the MSM's Vietnam "template" is actually nothing more than that primitive and immature psychological defense mechanism known as DENIAL.
In two major wars, the political left has consistently perceived America as the threat to the world, and ignored to the point of complete hysterical blindness the real oppressors of human freedom and dignity. During Vietnam they deluded themselves into thinking that communism was okay (some even believed it to be superior to a free society) as long as you didn't provoke it. And now they prefer the same delusion about the religion of peace.
Does anyone doubt that they truly hoped and believed that Haditha would be the Iraqi Mai Lai--and that it would give them another chance to demonstrate their own moral superiority by loudly expressing the latent and fashionable anti-Americanism that is never far from the surface of leftist ideology.
But, as the WSJ article points out, the moral bonfire they gleefully stoked with their rush to judgment against the Marines in Haditha only exposes the flames of their own moral vanity.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:49 AM |
TRICKS AND TREATS
Today's nanny state, managed by the compassionate and selfless left! Working 24/7 to make sure that all kids have a chance to grow up to be as entitled, self-absorbed, sexually inappropriate and lacking in self-control as Brittainy--or any of a dozen other wonderful role models.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:42 AM |
Friday, October 19, 2007
IGNORING REALITY IS FUN !
It's always fun to ignore reality until the shit hits the fan. And that appears to be something our elected "leaders" do well, particularly-- but not exclusively-- on the Democratic side of the aisle. Their motto: Always put off till tomorrow what you should be dealing with today and maybe it will go away...and don't forget to posture, posture, posture!
And speaking of putting off till tomorrow...there are some projects I simply have to finish today; so, no blogging till tonight.
Consider this an open thread about social security ("Republicans hate old people"); S-CHIP ("Republicans hate children"); Jena ("Republicans hate Blacks"); the War on Terror ("Republicans are Islamophobic") or any other topic of your choice!
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:23 AM |
Thursday, October 18, 2007
THE APOCALYPTIC VISION OF ISLAMIC FANATICS: A Sobering Reality
David Ignatius of the Washington Post--certainly no right wing shill-- has a sobering column at RealClearPolitics about Al Qaeda's quest for a nuclear weapon:
We've all had enough fear-mongering to last a lifetime. Indeed, we have become so frightened of terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001, that we have begun doing the terrorists' job for them by undermining the legal framework of our democracy. And truly, I wish I could dismiss Mowatt-Larssen's analysis as the work of an overwrought former CIA officer with too many years in the trenches...
Mowatt-Larssen argues that for nearly a decade before 9/11, al-Qaeda was seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. As early as 1993, Osama bin Laden offered $1.5 million to buy uranium for a nuclear device, according to testimony presented in federal court in February 2001. When the al-Qaeda leader was asked in 1998 if he had nuclear or chemical weapons, he responded: "Acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so."
Even as al-Qaeda was preparing to fly its airplane bombs into buildings, the group was also trying to acquire nuclear and biological capability. In August 2001, bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, met around a campfire with Pakistani scientists from a group called Umma Tameer-E-Nau to discuss how al-Qaeda could build a nuclear device. Al-Qaeda also had an aggressive anthrax program that was discovered in December 2001 after bin Laden was driven from his safe haven in Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda proclaimed a religious rationale to justify the WMD attacks it was planning. In June 2002, a Kuwaiti-born cleric named Suleiman Abu Ghaith posted a statement on the Internet that "al-Qaeda has the right to kill four million Americans" in retaliation for U.S. attacks against Muslims. And in May 2003, at the same time Saudi operatives of al-Qaeda were trying to buy three Russian nuclear bombs, a cleric named Nasir al-Fahd issued a fatwa titled, "A Treatise on the Legal Status of Using Weapons of Mass Destruction Against Infidels." Interrogations of al-Qaeda operatives confirmed that the planning was serious. Al-Qaeda didn't yet have the materials for a WMD attack, but it wanted them.
Most chilling of all was Zawahiri's decision in March 2003 to cancel a cyanide attack in the New York subway system. He told the plotters to stand down because "we have something better in mind." What did that mean? More than four years later, we still don't know.
If we add the mad mullahs and their psychotic president to the list of Islamic fanatic groups obsessed with obtaining nuclear weapons, then any reasonable person should realize that "Islamophobia" is a manifestation of the survival instinct, and simply some irrational, non-sensical or purely emotional response to the realities of the 21st century.
Let's revisit this MEMRI Report from ‘Al-Qaeda Undercover Soldier, U.S.A’ threatening massive destruction and death in the US and other western countries unless they convert or submit to Islam:
"Despite the fact that the New York, Washington, Madrid, and London expeditions have been carried out a few years back. The search for clues on how they were conducted in such a successful manner is still going on and reports upon reports are still being written about them. However, the next expedition might not find someone who can provide analysis for. The top intellects, strategists, and analysts, will be totally clueless as to how to explain what occurred. Let me also inform you that we are talking about two operations, not one. The scale of one of them is larger than the other but both are large and significant. However, we will start with the smaller, and temporarily put the larger on hold to see how serious the Americans are about their lives. Should you value your own life and security, accept Muslims’ demands, but if you shall prefer death (over giving in to Muslims’ demands). Then, we, by the grace of Allah, are the best in bringing it (death) to your door steps.
You should read the entire MEMRI transcript. Despite it being the braggadocio of a rather depraved adolescent bully trying to pump up his pathetic ego; one cannot help but reflect that this is a bully who really really desperately wants to kill you and your loved ones. He has something to prove about his manhood, and by Allah, he intends to prove it though it be the last thing he ever does. Thus, it is wise to take him and his fellow punks seriously.
The reality of the Islamic threat to the world is incredibly sobering. And if you have any doubts about that conclusion, or are tempted to dismiss this discussion as "fearmongering", then I urge you to read this post, and then this post from archives of The Belmont Club.
The first link discusses what is called "the strategic issue of our time": Is Islam compatible with a free society. The latter evaluates three conjectures about Islam and terrorism; a discussion that remains all-too relevant today:
Conjecture 1: Terrorism has Lowered the Nuclear Threshold
These obstacles to terrorist capability are the sole reason that the War on
Terror has not yet crossed the nuclear theshold, the point at which enemies fight each other with weapons of mass destruction. The terrorist intent to destroy the United States, at whatever cost to themselves, has been a given since September 11.Their capability several years after the above was written has almost certainly improved dramatically. We know with almost complete certainty that a day is coming when we can no longer pretend that we have lots of time to stop the mullahs. Even as the international community ineptly moves toward some useless sanctions; there are too many among the world powers whose indifference will thwart any positive benefits such sanctions might have--as they did with Saddam. I would say that the Criteria to exceed Conjecture 1 have been satisfied. The threshold was lowered and terrorists either have nuclear capability or will have them imminently.
Only their capability is in doubt.
Conjecture 2: Attaining WMD's Would Destroy Islam
This fixity of malice was recognized in President Bush's West Point address in the summer of 2002, when he concluded that "deterrence -- the promise of massive retaliation against nations -- means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend." The enemy was equally indifferent to inducement or threat. Neither making nice -- Jimmy Carter's withdrawal from Iran, Reagan's abandonment of Lebanon, Bush's defense of Saudi Arabia, Clinton's rescue of Albanian Muslims from Serbian genocide, the payment of billions in aid to Egypt and Pakistan -- nor the gravest of threats would alter the enemy's intent to utterly destroy and enslave America. Allah had condemned America. The Faithful only had to find the means to carry out the execution.
Because capability is the sole variable of interest in the war against terrorism, the greater the Islamic strike capability becomes, the stronger the response will be. An unrepeatable attack with a stolen WMD weapon would elicit a different response from one arising from a capability to strike on a sustained and repetitive basis.
As we see from the MEMRI article from a few short days ago quoted above; this position has continued to be promoted by Islam's radicals, who appear to speak not only for themselves, but an increasingly larger number of Muslims worldwide. You also might want to check out this map from an Islamic website; and this documentation of the bloody borders of Islam's expansion since 9/11.
I think it is fair to say that all bets will be off when Iran's nuclear capability becomes not just a threat, but a reality. I suspect that Ahmadinejad's defiant and bellicose position indicates that they already have some limited capability which they will not hesistate to use if the West tries to shut them down.
The second conjecture posits that there will be an escalating exchange of nuclear attacks that will inevitably result in the destruction of Iran and other muslim nations, possibly Pakistan or Syria; but since the threat of terrorism is transnational, the threat's full eradication of necessity will escalate beyond Iranian borders.
Does Islam care about this possibility? In the almost four years since the conjecture was written there are clear signs that some Islamic countries are concerned and risking quite a bit to prevent this scenario. But the great majority welcome it as "Allah's will" and some even have intentions of precipitating it to give credibility to their own little religious sect.
The problem is that for the seeds of democracy and freedom to break through the infertile Middle Eastern ground in which they have been planted, let alone to bloom--a hope initiated by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by the Bush Administration--we are talking in terms of decades.
Thus, time is not on our side as Al Qaeda and Iran both rush toward accomplishing their apocolypse; and as the political left in this country is more intent on bringing down Republicans and doing battle with global warming than they are are preventing a devastating clash between the forces of civilization and the forces of barbarism.
Conjecture 3: The "War on Terror" is the Golden Hour -- the final chance
It is supremely ironic that the survival of the Islamic world should hinge on an American victory in the War on Terror, the last chance to prevent that terrible day in which all the decisions will have already been made for us. That effort really consists of two separate aspects: a campaign to destroy the locus of militant Islam and prevent their acquisition of WMDs; and an attempt to awaken the world to the urgency of the threat.
The policies initiated by President Bush bets everything on the hope that Islam can be changed if it is infused with some democratic opportunities and freed from some of the political and religious tyranny that has dominated the Middle East. If such a democratizing process had been started--and carried through-- twenty years earlier when the threat of Islam first came into Western consciousness...well who knows how much the situation might have changed by now? But the West, in its hubris, did not take the growing threat seriously enough because they were "realists"; and even today many in the "reality-based" community still dismiss or minimize it scornfully.
Even the devastating attack within our borders that finally spurred us to mobilize our resources and fight back both militarily and strategically is fading from our collective memory. Remembering 9/11 is now considered an act of "fearmongering" for political gain; and those who want to wipe it out of historical significance have the human tendency to forget whatever is unpleasant (sometimes called psychological denial by people in my profession) working in their favor.
And, contrary to the infantile imaginings of the antiwar and so-called "peace" movements, Bush's strategy actually represents the best possible hope for peace; even if it is slight. He has pursued the strategy, despite growing unpopularity in the polls, not because it will bring political glory, but because it is the 'best' option out of a plethora of really bad options.
It is a strategy that faces the grim reality of Islamic contradictions and historical brutality; yet has enough optimism and goodwill in it to be genuinely worth the price we are paying in Afghanistan and Iraq. If it works--and I haven't entirely given up hope yet-- millions of deaths might still be prevented.
If the peace crowd really cared about peace, then they would do well to reconsider their own perverse antics; and the Democrats their knee-jerk opposition to Bush.
Because, if both the antiwar fanatics, and the Democratic Party they increasingly seem to control, succeed in their determination to undermine the war in Iraq or the war on terror in general (as opposed to working to win it) ; or, if the Islamic extremists succeed in eliminating any voices for moderation and tolerance; then there will be only one strategic option open.
Whether it is appreciated or not, these last few years have indeed been our "Golden Hour" --the short time we have to deal with the threat that is represented by the radical elements of Islam.
So much of the last four years has been wasted and frittered away by the left and their carping and undermining of Bush's strategic ploy. The continual appeasement, encouragement and cover given to those who would destroy us without mercy, has markedly diluted what we might have accomplished up to now with our aggressive pursuit of a strategy that answers the strategic question of the day with a "yes".
The 'Golden Hour' is rapidly approaching an end. As the clock ticks down to answering "no" to that fundamental strategic question; and as we creep closer and closer to the ultimate confrontation with a medieval, uncompromising and fanatically ruthless religion which intends not only to obtain nuclear weapons, but to use them; there will be no deus ex machina --and no pointless protest marches with clever placards--that will be able to save the millions of lives lost in that conflagration.
ANSWER, Code Pink, most of the Democratic Party and all the other leftist nutjobs are already preparing to blame Bush if the worse happens. Rational minds--and history, if it survives--will recognize the truth: that President Bush has chosen a strategy and done everything possible to change the course of history. That the strategy was implemented too far along in the process to be able to wholly succeed; or that the enemy is even more nimble and eager to embrace death than western sensibilities could have possibly predicted-- are painful realities that must be faced.
Sir Winston Churchill once observed, "One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.
We in the West need to stop flinching at the reality that faces us. David Ignatius clearly had a wake-up call as he evaluated Mowatt-Larssen's analysis of the Al Qaeda threat--and the rest of his cohorts need to have the same kind of alarm bells go off in their own heads.
Time is running out.
UPDATE: A related post of mine that answers some of the questions in the comments: "Strange Love: How They Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Iranian Bomb"
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:27 AM |
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
AN IN-YOUR-FACE-MOMENT FOR THE DAVID DUKES OF THE WORLD
Meryl Yourish notices that all three of latest Nobel winners in economics are Jewish and says:
People talk about the brain drain of various nations’ top scientists and doctors coming to the U.S. because here’s where the action is. But let’s not forget the incredible addition of talent America has received due to the persecution of European Jewry for the last few centuries. The waves of Jewish immigrants from Europe brought America a lot more than the Hollywood studio system. It brought us top scientists, thinkers, doctors, technologists, and authors.
This is what I like to call an in-your-face moment for the David Dukes of the world. The convicted felon, whose only contribution to the world is the spread of hatred and bigotry, goes to Iran to be feted by his fellow bigots at the Holocaust denial conference, while back in America, the Jews that Duke hates so much are working hard at their respective crafts, and being recognized by the rest of the world for the valuable contributions they make. The fact that envy makes up a great part of the world’s Jew-hatred simply cannot be denied.
But there’s one country that has never expelled her Jews. And while there has been (and continues to be) anti-Semitism in America, there have never been pogroms, and Jews are safer, more protected, and more a part of society in America than they have ever been in Europe.
So let’s hear it for America, the nation where Jews have carved out one of our greatest successes since Biblical times. Let’s celebrate the nation of true diversity, not the faux diversity that is the European Union.
It was once noted that in an article "Are Jews Smarter": "Though Jews make up a mere 0.25 percent of the world’s population and a mere 3 percent of the United States’, they account, according to their paper, for 27 percent of all American Nobel Prize winners, 25 percent of all ACM Turing Award winners for computer science, and 50 percent of the globe’s chess champions."
This reality is pretty impressive; and a few months back, SC&A wrote a piece titled "Jews, Basketball, and the Human Potential" that discussed the phenomenon:
Pondering whether or not Jews are ’smarter’ than everyone else is like asking if basketball players are taller than everyone else.
The evidence speaks for itself. The real question, is why Jews are smarter. There are of course, many theories. Some point to genetics, others point to culture. Yet others see the Jewish achievement as a combination of factors, giving no added weight to culture or genetics. Let’s examine that.
The case for superior genetics is pretty easy to make. The smart Christian kid became a priest, or, if she ‘heard the call,’ became a nun- and that was that. The smart Jewish kid married the Rabbi’s daughter and produced more smart kids- and that was that.
From a cultural standpoint, there is an equally easy connection that can be made. Even in the most religious of households, Jews had to read and write in at least two languages, Hebrew and the ‘language of the land.’ In addition, Jews were obligated to participate in the welfare the community- not just their own, but the community of which the were a part. While many people have referred to the Jews as ‘clannish,’ the facts clearly indicate otherwise. As a group, Jews give more charity per capita than any other group. Various studies have concluded that most charity is given to make the donor feel good. Jews, on the other hand, historically give money because it’s the right thing to do. Within that community, there is a whole subculture of anonymous giving.
Let us, for a moment, look at the question from a slightly different perspective. Instead of asking, are Jews smarter? we might be better served to look at the significant individual and cultural impediments that stand in the way of both individual and cultural success.
Gagdad Bob wrote:
One of the most important but little known concepts in psychoanalysis is that of envy. It is a term of art, not to be confused with the dictionary definition. While potentially present in all people, it becomes much more problematic when aggravated by primitive defense mechanisms such as splitting and projective identification. It is one of the most important "mind parasites" discussed in my book, One Cosmos Under God.
According to Webster's, envy is defined as "malice," and a "painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another, joined with a desire to possess the same advantage." The psychoanalytic understanding of envy is that it is an unconscious fantasy aimed at attacking, damaging, or destroying what is good, because of the intolerable feeling that one does not possess and control the object of goodness. As such, it is an aspect of what Freud called the death instinct, since it ultimately involves a destructive attack on the sources of life and goodness. Particularly envious individuals cannot tolerate the pain of not possessing and controlling the "good object," so they preemptively spoil it so that they don't have to bear the pain.
Bob's post was discussing psychological dynamics of the political left, but the destructive and soul-eating envy that motivates third-rate individuals like David Duke and facilitates the decline of third-rate cultures like those in the Middle East can be understood in the same way.
To those multiculturalists out there who insist that cultural traditions cannot be interpreted psychodynamically; or claim that all cultures and cultural practices are equally good (except, of course, for Western culture which is uniquely evil by their standards) , I beg to differ. Here is an exchange that cries out for some pertinent psychological analysis:
Did you know that there are certain situations when a woman of Islam does not need to seek the permission of her husband to go without the veil?
Interviewer: "Dr. Al-Astal, we have seen that some of the female martyrdom-seekers set out on their martyrdom operation without a veil. To what extent does our religion allow women, when they embark upon jihad for the sake of Allah, to use means of camouflage such as removing the veil?"
Yunis Al-Astal: "When jihad becomes an individual duty, the husband's permission or consent is not required, because jihad becomes like prayer. Just like a woman does not have to ask for permission to pray, to fast during Ramadhan, or to give charity, she does not need to ask for permission when jihad becomes an individual duty. In my opinion, in places invaded by the enemy, jihad becomes an individual duty.
"With regard to your question about the veil, especially when it comes to martyrdom-seekers who had to go into the Zionist cities deep in Palestine - jihad is a duty, and so is wearing a veil, but the duty of jihad is ten times great than the duty of wearing a veil."
The psychopath being interviewed in this TV program is "Dr." Yunis Al-Astal, a Palestinian MP from Hamas. Clearly he was given his doctorate by one of the many fine Palestinian academic institutions that Hamas (and Fatah) has worked so hard at building to bring a better life to the people they represent. I believe the discipline Al-Astal majored in was Genocidal Studies, a popular area of study in that part of the world.
Women suicide bombers? Now there's an Islamic, and quintessentially Palestinian/Arab, cultural tradition that begs to be psychiatrically analyzed.
Consider for a moment the supposedly educated speaker in the TV program quoted above who authoritatively comments about the priority of jihad duty over wearing a veil; and then also consider the following TV interview translated from the always enlightening MEMRI . The discussion is an attempt to explain why more Muslims have not won Nobel Prizes :
Samir 'Ubeid: "Why has the prize been awarded to 167 Jews, and to only four Arabs out of 380 million Arabs - and all four are considered traitors? For example, Al-Sadat got the prize during the normalization process, and as a price for Camp David, together with Begin, who carried out the Deir Yassin massacre, and who was in the Hagana gangs. Later, the prize was awarded to [Ahmad] Al-Zewail, in order to buy his invention, and Al-Zewail has disappeared since."Let us analyze the remarkable cri de coeur of the interviewee. His is a hearfelt and passionate exclamation that stems from his righteous outrage and indignation at the unfairness of it all: "Are we all born idiots?"
Interviewer: "You mean the Egyptian Ahmad Al-Zewail?"
Samir 'Ubeid: "Yes, the Egyptian chemist. The prize was also awarded to Muhammad ElBaradei, and in this case, it is soaked in the blood of the Iraqi children and people. [...]
"Mother Teresa was brought, along with a group of people like her…"
Interviewer: "Some say the prize was awarded to her for her missionary activity in Africa, India, and so on..."
Samir 'Ubeid: "Let’s assume she was righteous, according to the logic of the media, which is now controlled by the Jews and Hollywood. When they awarded the prize to Teresa, they were trying to award an 'artificial hymen' or 'artificial honor' to this prize.
"My colleague said that there is democracy. What democracy is there, if out of 1.5 billion Chinese, only two or three were awarded the Nobel? If you examine the Russian scientists and writers, who shook the world with their literature and their knowledge...
"What about Sakharov, what about Tolstoy? In addition..."
Interviewer: "But Sakharov was awarded the Nobel prize."
Samir 'Ubeid: "I meant Chekhov. Chekhov! Chekhov! [...]
"Are we Arabs not included in the transfer of the scientific genetic code? We, the descendants of Al-Khawarizmi, Al-Jahez, Al-Razi, Avicenna, and Ibn Al-Haytham - are we all born idiots? Is there not a single scientist among us? Are we not included in the genetic code? Is intelligence not transferred down among us Arabs?"
Interviewer: "Scientific creativity occurs in freedom and democracy, brother."
Samir 'Ubeid: "Democracy does not explain how it was awarded to 167 Jews, from among those 15 million scattered around the world, while abandoning 1.5 billion Chinese, a billion Indians, and 380 million Arabs. This is racism. [...]
"The [Grameen] bank for the poor won the prize because some of its shareholders are giants like Haliburton and others. [...]
"They infiltrated this bank, which came to be in the pocket of the Freemasons. This prize stems from the core of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
That is a very important question, indeed. Are idiots of the magnitude displayed by the two experts above born--or are they made? If the former is the case, then there is not much hope that the culture or the religion will ever be able to function normally in civilized society.
I am not aware of any research that suggests that the differences in intelligence between different religious groups is large enough to account for such a significant discrepancy in outcome regarding the Nobel Prize. And it is worth noting, that, not only is the Nobel Peace Prize --which of all the Nobel Prizes probably represents the one that is most politically correct and awarded on the basis of prevailing political winds-- not awarded much to Islamic politicians (I wonder if that could it have something to do with the fact that many of them are psychopathic tyrants, despots, and religious bigots?) or even to citizens of the rigidly controlled Islamic regimes; there is also a noticeable lack of Arab/Islamic winners in all the other categories--i.e., medicine, physics, chemistry; as well as in literature and economics. Other subtle clues that might explain this state of affairs might found here, here, and here.
According to the second interviewee, this unfair outcome has something to do with a deliberate Jewish plot/conspiracy and is likely the reason why the learned doctor in the first interview so delightfully encourages women to kill Jews with girlish abandon.
If all this Islamic intellectual discussion sounds familiar, it should. Jewish Conspiracies is another discipline (along with Genocidal Studies) that is a favorite academic field of study in the institutions of higher learning (such as they are) of the Middle East. Indeed, these complex disciplines are taught even in institutions of lower learning, so that a vast majority of the Islamic population are completely conversant with them and find them extremely helpful for explaining away the oppressive, barbaric, and primitive aspects of their culture and religion.
The ubiquitous unwillingness to look within themselves or their cultural and religious practices to understand the serious defects that keep them among the most backward and ignorant people on the planet, despite their access to great wealth, is the psychological foundation of their dysfunction.
The psychodynamic explanation has been discussed many times on this blog, and it is a psychological defense mechanism called projection--which in more extreme and bizarre forms is referred to a paranoia. And this cultural projection and paranoia serves a very important purpose for the culture: it allows them to maintain a delusional sense of grandiosity and superiority, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary in the real world. Thus, they never have to confront their own inadequacies and failures. If everything is the fault of the Jews, then the solution is to eradicate the Jews and all will be well!
SC&A once observed:
By the year 2020, the projected Arab population will reach 400 million. Currently, there are less than 100 universities in the Arab world. Of that number, at least 10 are 'Islamic' universities that do not teach anything other than theology. Notwithstanding the obscene wealth generated by these oil rich nations, there is not a single Arab institution of consequence. There is no major research and no important scholarship that originates in the Arab world. In fact, the greatest scholarship concerning the Arab world and Middle East, originates outside the region, in America or Europe.
This is but one example of the consequences of the cost of dysfunction and repression.
...
Indeed, the total number of books translated into Arabic during the 1,000 years since the age of Caliph Al-Ma’moun [a ninth-century Arab ruler who was a patron of cultural interaction between Arab, Persian, and Greek scholars—WPR] to this day is less than those translated in Spain in one year.
The abysmal backwardness found in this culture and region of the world has been studied and several explanations just seem to leap out at the investigators :
The barrier to better Arab performance is not a lack of resources, concludes the report, but the lamentable shortage of three essentials: freedom, knowledge and womanpower. Not having enough of these amounts to what the authors call the region's three “deficits”. It is these deficits, they argue, that hold the frustrated Arabs back from reaching their potential—and allow the rest of the world both to despise and to fear a deadly combination of wealth and backwardness.
Or here:
The oil wealth is matched by social backwardness, and the only other region of the world with an income level lower than ours is sub-Saharan Africa. Productivity is decreasing, scientific research is virtually nonexistent, thzione region is suffering a brain drain, and illiteracy afflicts half of Arab women.
Or here:
The report mentions a number of factors that block the dissemination of knowledge. Among these factors are authoritarian and over-protective child rearing, the deteriorating quality of education in many countries in the region, curricula in schools that encourage submission, obedience, subordination and compliance rather than free critical thinking, the lack of autonomy at universities and the poor state of university libraries.
Note that nothing in these three separate reports implicates the fictitional Protocols of the Elders of Zion as the cause of Arab/Islamic intellectual stagnation! Nor do they provide any evidence of a Zionist conspiracy to restrict the development of Muslim IQs.
Yet, I would venture to say that a significant number of Muslims, like the good "doctor" who exhorts women to be suicide bombers and the gentleman interviewed by Al-Jazeera, are unwilling to consider their own cultural and religious beliefs and practices as causative and find it completely "logical" to blame Jewish conspiracies for their impoverished status in the middle east and elsewhere.
No, the members of this culture and this religion are not born idiots...rather their idiocy is carefully and deliberately crafted and molded by the societal and religious dysfunction so rampant in the Islamic world. Ignorance, stupidity, violence and blind obedience are rewarded; clear thinking is not particularly valued and often punished.
"Intellectual" debates about whether women should wear a veil when blowing themselves to kingdom come; or how grateful they should be to Allah that her sacrifice of her son has been accepted are not the hallmark of a sharp cognitive capacity, but rather indicative of a societal brainwashing that is so deep and totally pervasive that it has stripped women not only of their individual identity, but also separated them completely from their brains.
The stupid and the willfully blind are never willing to confront the true malignancy within and will forcefully denounce anyone who exposes their self-delusion, since that self-delusion is all that stands between them and a complete collapse of their basic assumptions about themselves as a culture or religion (i.e., that they are "religion of peace" is one, often-mocked self-concept).
To maintain the psychological denial, projection and paranoia on a cultural level takes quite a bit of group psychic energy. Constant vigilance must be maintained to prevent reality from undermining the fantasy. Consequently, there is little encouragement of independent thinking (too dangerous) or autonomous functioning (rules must be developed for even the most simple interpersonal interactions). Reality, truth and reason are the natural enemies of delusion, and all the cultural institutions must strive to eradicate any fertile ground for these to develop.
SC&A again (he is an expert on this part of the world, after all):
This is the kind of environment that allows for and justifies ‘honor killings.’ This is also how many young women are recruited into terror. If they are thought to have shamed the family, an act of terror serves as act of redemption for their family as well as themselves. The higher ‘morality’ of indiscriminate killing of innocents makes up for their transgressions.
This highlights another reality. In Arab cultures, there is no real reward or recognition for loving the sanctity of life. Those who profess a desire for real peace, non-violence, less corruption and less oppression are considered reformers.
In societies and cultures where increased violence is often seen after religious services (unique in the Abrahamic faiths), little emphasis is placed on self improvement, the betterment of society (the ‘real jihad,’ we are told) or humility. Rather, worshipers are whipped into a murderous frenzy directed at non- members. Each week, the hate is elevated.
These realities have brought Arab nations to their knees. Repression, oppression, terror, genocide and hate flourish. Entire populations are groomed to know only hopelessness, and not hope. There are failed economies, failed civil infrastructures and failed educational infrastructures. A child born in the Arab world today has little hope of achieving success on his own. There is little in the way of opportunities or a way out if the bleakness. There is no bright future to look forward to.
The only promise and guarantee that child can count on, is being taught to hate.
The only equality a woman in this sick culture can aspire to is as a suicide-bomber (and do they also get 72 virgins for their trouble? Inquiring minds want to know). Death, death, wonderful death is drummed into them during practically every waking moment because life is impossible when there is so much psychopathology. I can only imagine how the poor bastards--male and female alike, but perhaps specially the invisible women-- raised in such a pathological and dysfunctional environment must absolutely long for death after a lifetime of being hit over the head repeatedly by this cultural garbage.
The indoctrination into cultural idiocy starts young and continues throughout life, but the good news is that there is little evidence that the rampant idiocy found in Islam is biological or genetic. On the contrary, all evidence points to the fact that the underlying ideology embraced by the Islamic world deliberately ensures the "dumbing down" of the intellectual and moral functioning of its adherents.
So developing just a teensy bit of psychological insight into the denial, projection and paranoia that has run amok in the dysfunctional culture and religion of Islam could be an extremely helpful first step to finding real solutions to your very serious problems. Blaming the Jews is fun and all, but if you want to get serious about those Nobel Prizes, then you need a complete intellectual, moral and spiritual overhaul.
Sadly, Al-Astal represents compelling evidence that it is unlikely any insight will be developed in the present generation of Palestinians; and, since they have taken great pains to make sure that the next generation remains handicapped by the pervasive cultural idiocy, we might as well not expect any at all for some time to come.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:01 AM |
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
TURKEY TACTICS AND IRRESPONSIBLE POLITICS
Thomas Sowell this morning on sabotage in a time of war:
With all the problems facing this country, both in Iraq and at home, why is Congress spending time trying to pass a resolution condemning the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago?
Make no mistake about it, that massacre of hundreds of thousands -- perhaps a million or more -- Armenians was one of the worst atrocities in all of history....
Historians need to make us aware of such things. But why are politicians suddenly trying to pass Congressional resolutions about these events, long after all those involved are dead and after the Ottoman Empire in which all these things happened no longer exists?
The short answer is irresponsible politics.
People of Armenian ancestry in the United States and around the world are justifiably outraged at what happened in the Ottoman Empire -- and at subsequent governments in Turkey which have refused to acknowledge or accept historical responsibility for the mass atrocities that took place on their soil.
But the sudden interest of Congressional Democrats in this issue goes beyond trying to pick up some votes.
They want a resolution to condemn what happened as "genocide" -- a word that provokes instant anger among today's Turks, since genocide means a deliberate government policy aimed at exterminating a whole people, as distinguished from horrors growing out of a widespread breakdown of law and order in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.
These are issues of historical facts and semantics best left to scholars rather than politicians.
If Congress has gone nearly a century without passing a resolution accusing the Turks of genocide, why now, in the midst of the Iraq war?
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this resolution is just the latest in a series of Congressional efforts to sabotage the conduct of that war.
Large numbers of American troops and vast amounts of military equipment go to Iraq through Turkey, one of the few nations in the Islamic Middle East that has long been an American ally.
Turkey has also thus far refrained from retaliating against guerrilla attacks from the Kurdish regions of Iraq onto Turkish soil. But the Turks could retaliate big time if they chose.
There are more Turkish troops on the border of Iraq than there are American troops within Iraq.
Turkey has already recalled its ambassador from Washington to show its displeasure over Congress' raising this issue. The Turks may or may not stop at that.
In this touchy situation, why stir up a hornet's nest over something in the past that neither we nor anybody else can do anything about today?
...In a rare but revealing slip, Democratic Congressman James Clyburn said that an American victory in Iraq "would be a real big problem for us" in the 2008 elections.
Unwilling to take responsibility for ending the war by cutting off the money to fight it, as many of their supporters want them to, Congressional Democrats have instead tried to sabotage the prospects of victory by seeking to micro-manage the deployment of troops, delaying the passing of appropriations -- and now this genocide resolution that is the latest, and perhaps lowest, of these tactics.
Jonah Goldberg wonders where have all the Democratic foreign policy "realists" gone?
For quite a while now I've been hearing liberals insist that the Democratic Party is the home to serious-minded realism. Those whack-job, neoconservative-hijacked, Republicans are all a bunch of neo-Wilsonian idealists and democracy voluptuaries. Meanwhile, liberals are willing to make the cold, reasoned, case for America's enlightened self-interested. You'll even hear quite a few folks polishing apples from the Walt and Mearshimer's anti-Israel barrel.
Well, where are all these people when it comes to the Democratic Party's push to condemn the Armenian genocide?
Once again, the Democrats are unable to make a distinction between reality and myth when it comes to turkeys. Undoubtedly they see this sort of behavior as a way of gaining a little cheap glory for bravely standing up against the genocide of a few generations ago. What a bunch of courageous men and women!
Harry "the war is lost" Reid and the Democrats eager for defeat should be immensely proud. Not content with merely enabling Al Qaeda and encouraging them to kill American soldiers and Iraqis (not that they need much encouragement, but you would think that the Democratic bozos in congress would have some sense) ...at least someone finds their negativism and surrender mentality encouraging.
Not having the balls to actually oppose the war and be done with it, these useless hunks of flesh in Congress are trying to negotiate a way to sabotage that war, have the usual "plausible deniability" and at the same time make themselves look like champions of freedom and human dignity.
Sadly, they would appear to have more in common with the terrorist psychopaths they enable than with the troops they claim to "support" or the Americans they claim to represent.
From a purely psychological perspective, they are not your typical run-of-the-mill-cold-war useful idiots; they have taken useful idiocy to the next level and become both cheerleaders and pimps for Al Qaeda murderers. The lofty ideals they tend to espouse with such regularity pale next to their desire to recover their lost power and glory; and live once again in the White House.
There is nothing that the Democrats would like better than to declare the Iraq war officially dead and a disaster. Their inappropriate and reckless haste to surrender to Al Qaeda in Iraq-- without being seen to surrender (they would prefer to call it "redeployment" or "supporting the troops")-- has now deteriorated into frank acts of deliberate sabotage.
The psychological need to defeat and humiliate President Bush (and suck up to their lunatic base) has so overwhelmed their cognitive thought processes, that they willingly, and with malice aforethought, sacrifice our national security interests and American and Iraqi lives on the altar of their endless narcissism.
Why are they so desperate? See here and here for some clues. The Democrats have basically positioned themselves into a corner in which any good news from Iraq is viewed as catastrophic for their 2008 election prospects.
Like the Copperheads of the Civil War, whose unreasoning hatred of President Lincoln, the tinfoilheads of today aid and abet the goals of the enemy and prefer the path that weakens the country as long as it stands a chance of taking down an evil Republican President (Lincoln was a Republican, did you know?).
They have no shame whatsoever as they pursue their political agenda--no matter what the cost. They willingly abandon realism when reality has negative implications for their own antiwar posturing--a stance they take, not out of principle, but out of a desire to reassert a failed ideology and regain a position of power to implement it.
They give the phrase "a bunch of turkeys" a whole new level of meaning.
UPDATE: This is an interesting bit of information (hat tip: Siggy) a letter from President Bill Clinton during his Presidency to Dennis Hastert, regarding the controversy during his presidency:
Dear Mr. Speaker:
I am writing to express my deep concern about H. Res. 596, dealing with the tragic events in eastern Anatolia under Ottoman rule in the years 1915-1923. Every year on April 24, I have commemorated Armenian Remembrance Day, mourning the deportations and massacres of innocent Armenians during that era. And every year, I have challenged all Americans to recommit themselves to ensuring that such horrors never occur again. However, I am deeply concerned that consideration of H. Res. 596 at this time could have far-reaching negative consequences for the United States. We have significant interests in this troubled region of the world: containing the threat posed by East and Central Asia, stabilizing the Balkans, and developing new sources of energy.
Consideration of the resolution at this sensitive time will negatively affect those interests and could undermine efforts to encourage improved relations between Armenia and Turkey -- the very goal the sponsors of this Resolution seek to advance. I fully understand how strongly both Turkey and Armenia feel about this issue. Ultimately, this painful matter can only be resolved by both sides examining the past together.
I urge you in the strongest terms not to bring this Resolution to the floor at this time.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton
Needless to say, the Republican-led Congress--in the interests of national security--listened to the wise counsel of then-President Clinton.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:53 AM |
Monday, October 15, 2007
FOR THE CHILDREN
One consequence of the Bush Administration policies in the Middle East is that a decades-long shadow war has been brought out into the open. This shadow war between increasingly mainstream elements of radical Islam and the West, became evident back in the 1970's with the taking of American hostages in Iran. It exists and is often justified by the very existence of Israel, a Western-style democracy, in the heart of the Middle East and the supposed "oppression" of the Palestinians by that state.
In the Times of London, Peter Jenkins writes about a letter recently sent by Islamic leaders to the Pope:
Coming at the end of Ramadan, the letter is impressive. The signatories embrace a global range of grand muftis, imams, sheikhs and scholars from all denominations of Islam, with a wide span of theological influence. The appeal to religious tolerance at a time of tension between Islam and the West is welcome. But what the letter means needs deconstruction.
Religious leaders like to claim headlines by subjecting politics to a downpour of platitude. The letter makes no mention of (monotheistic) Jews, let alone Hindus and Buddhists. It merely invites the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and others to acknowledge what the archbishop calls “their common scriptural foundations . . . as a basis for justice and peace in the world”. Two religions that embrace “half of humanity” should stand together or, by implication, there will be war.
Such an implication is grandiose, dangerous and wrong. It implies that the Muslim world has a politico-military power that is in some sense equal and opposite to that of Christianity. This elevates the so-called jihadist tendency within Islam to a status that it does not have and should never think it has. It suggests Islam has sufficient power to confront and possibly undermine the West. It implies a balance of power parallel with a balance of theological interpretation.
Such an implication feeds a no less dangerous paranoia in the West. By stating that the “survival of the world” might turn on a struggle between Islam and Christianity, the letter reinforces the militarist fantasies of neoconservatives who see the world as just such a struggle. It is a paranoia which, since 9/11, has driven the “war on terror” and fomented the tension and antagonism to the West to which the scholars’ letter is so vacuous a response.
The chief threat to world security at present lies in the capacity of tiny groups of political Islamists to goad the West into a rolling military retaliation. Extremists on each side feed off the others’ frenzied scenarios so as to garner money and political support for their respective armies of the night. Each sees the other as a cosmic menace and abandons communal tolerance and peaceful diplomacy to counter it. The authors of this letter would be better employed vetting their own blood-curdling mullahs and madrasahs than in writing platitudes to the Pope.
It's interesting that Jenkins basically destroys his own argument about the "lack of a threat" to the West from Islam with these words. He claims to be a "cheerleader" for Western values, but like all cheerleaders, he thinks that all you need to do is jump around enthusiastically and recite optimistic mantras and the game will be won by your team.
The fact is that radicalized Islam has indeed evolved into a serious threat to the West; and that there are a number of reasons they believe they can win a clash of civilizations with the West --even if people like Jenkins poo-poo the very idea.
SC&A bring up an important reality that must be considered before we, like Jenkins and many of the Democrats in our own country, write off the the threat of a nuclear Iran:
The best way to deal with Iran can be determined once we understand the threat Iran poses. Understanding how the current Iranian regime views itself goes a long way in explaining their world view. Ahmadenijad’s World, by Mathias Kuntzel is a must read. Iran is not posturing.
Dealing with Iran is not just about Congressional approval and declarations of war. How we deal with Iran will shape the values of this nation for generations to come and how other nations, hungry for democracy will measure our commitment to freedom.
The ‘freedom fighters’ supported by Iran are very different than the ‘freedom fighters’ and opposition in Cuba, Venezuela, China, Syria and even in Iran itself. Those supported by the Iranian want to impose tyranny on nations and will use terror to achieve their goals. That is not the same as ‘freedom fighters or dissidents in Cuba, Syria and elsewhere that want to shed the yoke of tyranny and repression.
Let me quote from the link Siggy cites, which tells the story of the Basiji in Iran, the children of the minefields:
In pondering the behavior of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I cannot help but think of the 500,000 plastic keys that Iran imported from Taiwan during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88. At the time, an Iranian law laid down that children as young as 12 could be used to clear mine fields, even against the objections of their parents. Before every mission, a small plastic key would be hung around each of the children’s necks. It was supposed to open for them the gates to paradise.
“In the past,” wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettela’at, “we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the mine fields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone.” Such scenes could henceforth be avoided, Ettela’at assured its readers. “Before entering the mine fields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves.”[1]
The children who thus rolled to their deaths formed part of the mass “Basij” movement that was called into being by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. The Basij Mostazafan – the “mobilization of the oppressed” – consisted of short-term volunteer militias. Most of the Basij members were not yet 18. They went enthusiastically and by the thousands to their own destruction. “The young men cleared the mines with their own bodies,” a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War has recalled, “It was sometimes like a race. Even without the commander’s orders, everyone wanted to be first.”[2]
The western media showed little interest for the Basiji – perhaps because journalists could not be present during the hostilities or perhaps because they did not believe the reports. Such disinterest has persisted to this day. The 5000 dead of Saddam Hussein’s poison gas attack on the Kurds of Halabja have remained in our memory. History has forgotten the children of the minefields.
Today, however, Ahmadinejad appears in public in his Basiji uniform. During the war, he served as one of the Basiji instructors who turned children into martyrs. The generation that fought in the Iran-Iraq War has come to power along with Ahmadinejad. He owed his election in Summer 2005 to the contemporary Basiji movement. In Fall, he announced a “Basiji Week.” According to a report in the newspaper Kayan, some 9 million Basiji heeded the call, “forming a human chain some 8,700 kilometers long…. In Tehran alone, some 1,250,000 people turned out.”[3] In his speeches, Ahmadinejad praises the “Basiji culture” and the “Basiji power” with which “Iran today makes its presence felt on the international and diplomatic stage.”
Interestingly, the Basiji were a product of a war between two Islamic countries and their continued existence and glorification--along with the celebration of the suicide bomber who murders as many innocents as possible-- are emblematic of a fundamental difference in values between Islamic cultures and those of the West. Nevertheless, Jenkins suggests that it is the West's "paranoid" response to radical Islam's continual aggression and barbarism; along with its justified assault on Western values that has caused an escalation to the problem.
On the contrary, I think it has been our lack of an appropriate paranoid response --undoubtedly facilitated by a runaway narcissistic culture, too self-absorbed to notice the threat--that has permitted the world to reach a point in history where a third-rate religion like Islam has ascended to the world stage. Islam's intellectual, cultural and moral achievements have been in steady decline for centuries; and the only reason it has not yet collapsed from its own inherent contradictions and its inability to sustain its adherents in the real world is due primarily to a fortunate geological happenstance.
For the last 100 years, Islam has abandoned any of the precepts that may have once made it a vibrant and positive force in the world. Today's Muslim leaders for the most part, have hitched their religious wagons to a variant of Marxist ideology, infused by a powerful religious fanatacism and funded by oil. You can hear the imams young and old sprouting the same tired old Marxist slogans for revolution, revamped to be consistent with modern interpretations of the Quran--just substitute the word "jihad" for talk about the "revolution of the proletariat".
Jenkins neglects to mention in his essay one teensy weensy detail that is not explained or mentioned in the 128-page document sent by Muslim leaders to the Pope: a religion that justifies and glorifies the abuse and death of children; a religion that enslaves, oppresses and humiliates women; and a religion that justifies slaughter and martyrdom as a way of life is not even in the same moral universe as any of the other major religions on this planet.
Until and unless that reality about today's Islam is addressed, these Muslim "leaders" are nothing but delusional about their faith.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have had the effect of bringing to the foreground a long-standing conflict between various sects of Islam ; and pitting the two major powers in the region (Iran and Saudi Arabia) against each other for dominance. It has also unleashed the rabid hatred that has existed for centuries and has been simmering all along within the 'religion of peace'.
For too long the world has pretended that peace plans, treaties, cease-fires and talk--lots and lots of talk--would bring about a change for the good in the culture of hatred and death that is being nurtured in that part of the world. But none of these things have helped the situation. Instead, they have only enabled the hate; facilitated the deaths; and emboldened those who thrive on the resultant chaos.
The world's insistent denial and smiling pretense that it was dealing with reasonaable people who sought peace and stability and a future for their children should now be able to be seen for the delusion it was. The West's good intentions have only managed to pave the road and make it easier for the Islamic fanatics to travel down it.
It is unquestionably true that this new landscape is fraught with danger and challenges; and that it has the potential to bring about violence and suffering and death. But what do you think has been going on for the last 50 years or so? There has been continual human suffering and death as a result of the never-ending shadow war; and its toxic ideology--a combination of Marxism and religious fanaticism has already poisoned minds of the next generation of children there, whose growth and individuality are stunted by the culturally-sanctioned and religiously-promoted hatred.
Aafter 9/11 it became obvious that it was not confined to one small part of the world anymore; and that what happened in that small art of the world had enormous repercussions for the entire planet.
The last 7 years have brought about a radical change in the playing field and shaken up the agenda of important Islamic players who had decades of evidence to suggest that they would never be held to account for their behavior. Slowly, surely, and sometimes subtly, the balance and focus in this war has been shifted; as one after the other, the old players have been supplanted; and seeds of democracy and freedom have been planted.
What we are seeing is the chaos that occurs when a static system is disturbed. But the old equilibrium never stood a chance to bring peace, only constant war and calls for jihad. The old equilibrium permitted the jihadis to operate under the radar and grow strong. And more importantly, the old equilibrium did not offer much of a strategic advantage for the forces of freedom and democracy.
The world is slowly awakening to the threat--and it is real, no matter how much Mr. Jenkins would like to believe otherwise; or how comforting it is to believe otherwise. There is less and less tolerance for the lies and brutalities of the jihadists; perhaps a little less appeasement of their agenda; or a passive acceptance of their irrational behavior.
Lines have been drawn in the Middle Eastern sands; and on one side is a path that leads to a chance for real peace and prosperity in the region; to increased freedom and for participation in the civilized world and to a future for all children. On the other side all that is offered is perpetual war and a one way ticket to martyrdom and death. Undoubtedly, many will choose the latter path as that has been drummed into their heads since childhood as the only path; the holy path of jihad and submission to the will of Allah.
This war is real; and it is one in which the West must prevail. For the children.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:42 AM |
Sunday, October 14, 2007
CARNIVAL OF THE INSANITIES
Time for the weekly insanity update, where the insane, the bizarre, the ridiculous, and the completely absurd are highlighted for all to see! This has been a week of rare idiocy (as always!). So, if you want to remain sane, the best thing is to poke some fun at the more egregious absurdities.Send all entries for next week's carnival to Dr. Sanity by 8 pm ET on Saturday for Sunday's Carnival. Only one post entry weekly per blogger, please. And you might read this before submitting an entry.
**NOTE: I am now getting many more submissions than I can possibly include in the weekly Carnival. Please don't be offended if your submission is not used (oh, okay, be as offended as you like) as it only means that for a variety of reasons I wasn't able to fit it into the "flow" as I put together each Carnival.
REMEMBER, THERE ARE SO MANY INSANITIES AND SO LITTLE TIME!!!
1. We can certainly expect that Muslims will respect this Holy Jewish site-- about as much as they respected this one.
2. A Sharia Bakesale --could the true horror ever be adequately depicted by overpriced brownies? Creative torture?
3. Like infidels through an hourglass, so are the sands of passion... (don't miss this series!)
4. A real Bizarro Chief Rabbi...
5. Move along...nothing to see here.
6. Which side has the better munchkin? It's all thinking with a little brain.... and every baboon is entitled to an opinion! And she's got a million of 'em. Is pork racist? Or just not PC?
7. Al Gore did it--you can too! Nobel Laureate--a look behind the scenes....But hey! Congratulations are due! He used to be just a failed presidential candidate. Now he is a superhero! And to think, his running mate used to be highly regarded by the left; and now he is apostate.
8. That Darn Sandy! What a character! Leaks, schmeaks. Whether they're "good" or "bad" depends entirely on which side does the leaking, capice?
9. Freedom? No thanks. What is it with these universities, anyway? Are they serious about diversity, or not? Wackademia at its best! Well, these med students have apparently taken the hypocritical oath. What a wonderful religion.
10. You'll have to pry that lipstick from my cold, dead hands! Chick flick flack.
11. Why Brits have bad teeth? (I'll have to ask Siggy if that's true). More national slurs!...this time it's the Poles.
12. Architecture from another planet. Religion from another dimension; and futuristic robotic neocon insects spying on leftist blogs! Cue the "Twilight Zone" music.
13. The government is definitely sending mixed messages. Men are officially off the hook! Now, saying "I love you" is just a poor substitute for true love.
14. Celebrate all those non-PC holidays in a PC style! Multiculturalism, diversity, and feminism for all! Celebrate Islamo-fascism Awareness week, it's very un-PC. This, OTOH is very very PC.
15. The best revenge is living well :)
16. MBFF, KR...almost Rovian in its diabolical cleverness.
17. Peanuts, a darker side.
17. Ouch. I don't even have one (but I am envious) and this article makes me cringe. No sex for 40 million years? I guess I shouldn't complain.
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Carnival of the Insanities can also be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival and at the BlogCarnival.
If you would like to Join the insanity, and add the Carnival of the Insanities button to your sidebar (clicking on it will always take you to the latest update of the Carnival), click on "Word of Blog" below the button to obtain the html code:
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:52 AM |
Saturday, October 13, 2007
HANDS IN THE AIR ! THIS IS A HOLD-UP !
From Larry Kudlow at The Corner:
I’m surprised that today’s Wall Street Journal story on income inequality failed to mention that while the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans earned 21.2 percent of all incomes in 2005, they now pay nearly 40 percent of all taxes.
In 1980, before the Reagan supply-side tax-cut revolution was launched, the top 1 percent earned 8.5 percent of all income and paid 19.1 percent of all taxes. So while the rich are getting richer, the rich are also paying the lion’s share of the taxes.
As others have pointed out, the top 5 percent of income earners pay 60 percent of the taxes. The top 25 percent pay 86 percent of taxes. And the top 50 percent pay 97 percent of all taxes.
It kind of puts a different spin on the WSJ story, doesn’t it?
You'd think that all those "equality of outcome" people would be outraged at this obvious "taxation inequality" that clearly discriminates against the "rich", i.e. the most productive among us.
Ok, forget that. It's unrealistic because it expects some degree of logical consistency from the left.
Fine. You'd think that there would be some gratitude or appreciation for that productive 50% of the population who work hard, pay up to 40 % of their income in taxes, and basically support programs that help the other 50%.
But it is never enough for the left, who are compelled by their ideology to despise the most productive people in society and to stoke the flames of hatred and envy.
Remember this exchange between Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson from the movie Key Largo?
Johnny Rocco: There’s only one Johnny Rocco.
James Temple: How do you account for it?
Frank McCloud: He knows what he wants. Don’t you, Rocco?
Johnny Rocco: Sure.
James Temple: What’s that?
Frank McCloud: Tell him, Rocco.
Johnny Rocco: Well, I want uh . . .
Frank McCloud: He wants more, don’t you, Rocco?
Johnny Rocco: Yeah. That’s it. More. That’s right! I want more!
James Temple: Will you ever get enough?
Frank McCloud: Will you, Rocco?
Johnny Rocco: Well, I never have. No, I guess I won’t.
The gangster Johnny Rocco is a perfect symbol for a side of the thuggish political left they don't care to ever acknowledge. Their behavior is a lovely mixture of both the grandiosity of the selfish Johnny Roccos and the idealism of the the classic malignant utopian.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 9:36 PM |
Friday, October 12, 2007
THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH FOR THEM
(with some apologies to William Wordsworth)
The world is too much for them; topsy-turvy,
Through polls and insanity they lay waste their minds;
Little do they care when reality unwinds;
Bleeding hearts infected with emotional scurvy.
The left which bares a collective bosom to the moon,
While antiwar activists howl at all hours,
Has been rotting since the 60's like over-ripe flowers.
In this, like everything else, they are far out of tune;
Unmoved by truth.--Dear God! They're worse than
Pagans suckled in a creed outworn;
Living in a floating bubble;
The pride of Marx and Lenin reborn;
Rising anew from the communist century's rubble;
to once again engage the reality they scorn.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 3:30 PM |
UNDOING: The Healing of the Traumatized Left Has Begun !
Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize? I'm amazed. I thought Cindy Sheehan had it all sewn up. Or Hugo Chavez.
I guess it just goes to show how much their cachet with the left has dropped in the last year or so; or, how much Gore's has risen in the pre-2008 election cycle.
Undoing is a psychological defense mechanism where there is an attempt to take back behavior or thoughts that were unacceptable. An example of undoing would be excessively praising someone after having insulted them.
I can't help thinking that Gore's prize is yet another attempt by the left to undo the horrible trauma of Election 2000. Ever the mouthpiece of leftist fantasy and delusion, Jimmy agrees (and don't forget, he was the 2002 winner of the same prize).
As a psychiatrist, I can fully appreciate and understand their delight and anticipation. For almost eight years--since the 2000 election was "stolen" from them, the mentally unbalanced left has been suffering from a sort of group PTSD.
Let the healing begin!
A Gore/Clinton ticket (or even another Clinton/Gore ticket) would be absolutely perfect from an unconscious, purely psychological perspective.
Scott Ott has, by far, the most psychologically satisfying take on the announcement; a scenario that in a fair, just, and compassionate world (or, at least one consistent with reality, anyway) might have been.
But seriously, folks, Glenn Reynolds has the absolutely best understated quote: "I think he makes a fitting addition to the pantheon of Nobel Peace Prize holders." Indeed.
Gore, Carter, Annan, Arafat.... can the peace-loving Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be far behind? Look for the President of Iran to win in 2008--especially if Iran gets bombed by the warmongering West.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:53 AM |
Thursday, October 11, 2007
AMMUNITION FOR THE WAR OF IDEAS HERE AT HOME
If you haven't read it already (or even if you have), now would be a good time to read Norman Podhoretz' essay titled, "World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win" from the September, 2004 issue of Commentary. This essay has been expanded into a book that is now on the best-seller list at Amazon (see at the end of this post).
Podhoretz wrote a follow-up essay in Commentary titled: "The War against World War IV".
In this latter piece, Podhoretz discusses the forces of defeatism that threaten to overwhelm our resolve in this war.
First, the corrupt, totalitarian regimes of the Middle East:
In Iraq, the insurgents—a coalition of diehard Saddamists, domestic Islamofascists, and foreign jihadists—have a simple objective. They are trying to drive us out before the seeds of democratization that we are helping to sow have taken firm root and begun to flower. Only thus can the native insurgents hope to recapture the power they lost when we toppled Saddam; and only thus can the Iranians, the Syrians, and the Saudis, who have been dispatching and/or financing the foreign jihadists, escape becoming the next regimes to go the way of Saddam’s under the logic of the Bush Doctrine.
The despots tyrannizing these countries all know perfectly well that an American failure in Iraq would rule out the use of military force against them. They know that it would rob other, non-military measures of any real effectiveness. And they know that it would put a halt to the wave of reformist talk that has been sweeping through the region since the promulgation of the Bush Doctrine and that poses an unprecedented threat to their own hold on political power, just as it does to the religious and cultural power of the radical Islamists.
But the most important thing the insurgents and their backers in the neighboring despotisms know is that the battle for Iraq will not be won or lost in Iraq; it will be won or lost in the United States of America.
Then comes the defeatist voices of the "paleoconservative right":
Consider—to begin once more on the lowest rung of the ladder—the isolationists of the paleoconservative Right. Their line is that a conspiracy of "neoconservative" (i.e., Jewish) officials holed up in the White House and the Pentagon is dragging this country, against its own interests, into one conflict after another with the sole purpose of "making the Middle East safe for Israel."
And, of course, the isolationists of the hard Left:
These—exactly like their forebears in the late 1930’s who fought against America’s entry into World War II—have made common cause with the paleoconservatives at the other end of the political spectrum. True, the isolationism of the Left stems from the conviction that America is bad for the rest of the world, whereas the isolationism of the Right is based on the belief that the rest of the world is bad for America. Nevertheless, the two streams have converged, flowing smoothly into the same channel of fierce opposition to everything Bush has done in response to 9/11.
In the years before 9/11, Noam Chomsky, Buchanan’s counterpart on the Left, was very largely forgotten. After achieving great prominence in the 1960’s, he had come to seem too extreme—or perhaps too naked in his hatred of America—to serve the purposes of the New York Review of Books, through whose pages he had first made his political mark.
In like fashion he runs through the "Superhawks", the "Liberal Internationalists"; the so-called "political realists", and the mainstream media. This unholy, coalition of defeat has formed in parallel to the emergence of the Bush Doctrine after 9/11. Podhoretz points out something that, I think is important:
Suppose, then (as I do), that in a year or so, a duly elected coalition government is in place in Baghdad; that it is guided by a constitution guaranteeing political freedom and minority rights; that the economy is improving; that Iraqi soldiers and policemen have taken over most of the responsibility for dealing with a severely weakened insurgency; that the number of American troops has been reduced to the size of a backup force; and that fewer and fewer Americans are being killed or wounded. What then? Will the realists and their liberal allies bow to this reality? Will they be mugged by reality?
I think not. I think they will do unto a success in Iraq what they did when Hamid Karzai was sworn in as the president of Afghanistan this past December.
In other words, even if our efforts succeed in Iraq (as they finally appear to be doing), this coalition of defeat will not be appeased or comforted. They had the same defeatist attitude towards Afghanistan, and are unwilling to acknowledge the remarkable success that has occurred there and are not-so-secretely gratified that the Karzai government is still battling the Taliban in its various reincarnations. The freeing of millions of people and enabling Afghanistan to have the first democratic government in its history was not enough. Freeing millions is not enough. Liberating the women of two countries is not enough. Enabling Democracy and planting the seeds that is not enough. Preventing attacks on the homeland for 4 years is not enough.
No success will ever be enough for this coalition of surrender. They will never admit it is getting better in Iraq; nor will they acknowledge the reality of no attacks here in the U.S. since 9/11. Instead, they attribute this to (1) there never was any threat to begin with; or (2) pure dumb luck.
They will be happy if America loses. Period.
In a recent interview with Katherine Lopez at National Review, Podhoretz comments on a topic that I have dealt with extensively in this blog: the psychological denial of those who dismiss the threat of islamofascism. Here is an exchange from that interview:
Podhoretz: When people under threat are unwilling or afraid to fight back, they tend to deny that they are being threatened at all. We saw much the same thing in the early stages of World War III, when large numbers of Americans and even larger numbers of Europeans insisted that the real threat to the peace came from the United States under Harry Truman rather than from the Soviet Union under Stalin.Read everything to arm yourself for the war of ideas that is being fought right here, right now, in the U.S.
Lopez: I don’t get it. You point out that in his address to the joint session of Congress ten days after the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush got it. He got it was a world war. But because the Cold War isn’t conventionally called “World War III,” he probably figured he’d confuse people by calling this current war “World War IV.” But, come on, he’s a brave guy. If you build it they will come. Is that a leadership test he failed at a crucial moment? Because really, we’ve needed some clarity.
Podhoretz: I think that Bush will someday be recognized as a great president, much as it has been the case with Harry Truman, with whom he has a lot in common. Having said that, I will stipulate that we needed more clarity than he gave us both in naming the enemy and in naming the war. For this a very steep price has been paid in the coin of confusion about Iraq. Instead of being seen in its proper context as a single front or theater in a much broader conflict, it has been treated as a self-contained war in its own right. And instead of being understood as part of a long-range strategy to “drain the swamps” in which Islamofascism breeds, it has been misrepresented as the wrong place in which to fight terrorism.
Lopez: Speaking of mistakes: What’s gone wrong in Iraq? What’s gone right?
Podhoretz: The following things have gone right in Iraq: It has been liberated from a monstrous tyrant whose regime was the main secular face of the two-headed monster by which we were attacked six years ago. (The Taliban regime in Afghanistan was the main religious face.) And then the seeds of democratization were planted through three elections, the writing of a constitution, and the enjoyment of previously unimaginable liberties. Everything that has gone wrong stems from the desperate efforts of various forces, both indigenous and imported, to prevent those seeds from taking root. If the political transformation of Iraq were doomed to failure, why would these forces be fighting with all their might to turn it back? But it has taken us a while to figure out how best to defeat this so-called “insurgency.”
Lopez: It’s salvageable?
Podhoretz: Certainly — unless, that is, the Democrats, with a little help from pusillanimous Republicans, pull the plug. It has always been the case that the campaign in Iraq, and for that matter World War IV as a whole, will be won or lost not on the battlefields of the Middle East but in the war of ideas here at home.
UPDATE: 10/12 - I want to add this quote from Podhoretz which is posted at The Corner, which I think is pertinent:
It isn't that we don't have a strategy. As I try to explain in my book, the Bush Doctrine is to World War IV what the Truman Doctrine was to World War III. Nor—as I also try to explain (pp. 206-7)—did the Truman Doctrine achieve a truly national consensus until Eisenhower tacitly accepted it when he became president in 1953. Up to that point, it had been attacked both from the Left (as too aggressive), from the Right (as not aggressive enough), and from the Center (as having sounded, in Walter Lippmann's words, "the tocsin of an ideological crusade"). The difference is that the State Department under Dean Acheson supported the Truman Doctrine, whereas the State Department under Colin Powell, and even under Condi Rice (having reverted to her roots as a "realist" since moving from the White House to Foggy Bottom) has done everything in its power to subvert the Bush Doctrine; and so has the CIA. We aren't, then, "fumbling for a strategy." We are, rather, involved in a war of ideas that is being fought both within the government and throughout the nation as a whole between those of us who believe in the Bush Doctrine and those who desperately wish to return to the pre-9/11 attitudes and policies that the Bush Doctrine repudiated. Unless and until the Democrats do unto the Bush Doctrine what the Republicans under Eisenhower did unto the Truman Doctrine, the war of ideas at home will rage furiously on.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:07 AM |
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
CASCADE EFFECT
This is what happens when science is "advanced" by polls, as opposed to...you know, science:
But when the theories were tested in clinical trials, the evidence kept turning up negative. As Mr. Taubes notes, the most rigorous meta-analysis of the clinical trials of low-fat diets, published in 2001 by the Cochrane Collaboration, concluded that they had no significant effect on mortality.
Mr. Taubes argues that the low-fat recommendations, besides being unjustified, may well have harmed Americans by encouraging them to switch to carbohydrates, which he believes cause obesity and disease. He acknowledges that that hypothesis is unproved, and that the low-carb diet fad could turn out to be another mistaken cascade. The problem, he says, is that the low-carb hypothesis hasn’t been seriously studied because it couldn’t be reconciled with the low-fat dogma.
Mr. Taubes told me he especially admired the iconoclasm of Dr. Edward H. Ahrens Jr., a lipids researcher who spoke out against the McGovern committee’s report. Mr. McGovern subsequently asked him at a hearing to reconcile his skepticism with a survey showing that the low-fat recommendations were endorsed by 92 percent of “the world’s leading doctors.”
“Senator McGovern, I recognize the disadvantage of being in the minority,” Dr. Ahrens replied. Then he pointed out that most of the doctors in the survey were relying on secondhand knowledge because they didn’t work in this field themselves.
“This is a matter,” he continued, “of such enormous social, economic and medical importance that it must be evaluated with our eyes completely open. Thus I would hate to see this issue settled by anything that smacks of a Gallup poll.” Or a cascade.
A very interesting read, with some good points about the "cascade" effect--especially for someone like me in the medical profession where such fads come and go.
Does anyone see any parallels to current events--e.g., the supposed "scientific concensus" on global warming?
Rand Simberg at Transterestrial Musings notes:
Of course, it doesn't mean that all theories have this problem. But it does mean that we are entitled to a little skepticism when we are told that there is a scientific consensus. Particularly when we are bullied into believing it, and treated like heretics in our skepticism, and there are some other potential agendas at play.
In general, it is probably always wise to be skeptical of science when it is promoted by politics--or polls.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 1:37 PM |
WHAT A CONCEPT !
Competition in medicine? Patients deciding what they can afford? Doctors responding to consumer demands?
When consumers pay for medicine themselves, saving insurance for the big things, and doctors deal directly with consumers, doctors begin to compete. They start posting prices and work to keep them low.
And consumers gain more control of their health care. Instead of governments and insurance companies deciding for patients, patients decide.
Competition gives consumers more choices. And choice gives them power. Remember that when you hear a politician promise to make health case accessible and affordable through the force of government.
The free market. What a concept!
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:03 AM |
WHAT'S NEXT ?
Well, why not Osama at the Rose Parade?
It will provide further proof of how open, fair-minded, tolerant, and stupid we are.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 5:57 AM |
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN ?
Yesterday, ShrinkWrapped compared the contrasting myths of two "celebrated" men--Christopher Columbus and Che Guevara:
By now no one is surprised that Columbus is only understood as a murderer of Native Americans who lived in an idyllic state of nature before the white man arrived, or that he was somehow responsible for enslaving Africans, or that he didn't even discover the New World. This devalued mythology is as one dimensional as the typical idealized depictions of Columbus when I was in grade school; of course, in first grade, we didn't expect much nuance.
The contrast is most striking because there is another anniversary celebration going on. For those who have not been paying attention, apparently we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the death of that great humanitarian whose face launched a thousand T-shirts, Che Guevara....
The difference in treatment of Columbus and Guevara is notable for the way in which the cruelty of Columbus, who was the product of a simpler and more primitive time, is all that is left while the Guevara's more brutal, murderous cruelty, in someone who had the benefit of 500 years of civilization upon which to build, is completely ignored and glossed over.
More importantly, the legacy that emerges form the two disparate myths is of even more import. Columbus left a myth that through the years was used to support a National image of devotion to greater and greater freedom, to attempted redress of much of the damage he brought. Our Nation, resting upon the legacy of individualism and freedom grew wealthy and strong. The contrast could not be starker. Che's legacy has been used to support the noxious creed of Left wing idealism. Everywhere the Left has succeeded, the people have suffered terribly.
Both of the aforementioned myths are fascinating because they are key examples of how the political left manages and distorts history to the advantage of their totalitarian ideology. The myths are fueled by psychological denial.
The "Columbus myth" is prototype leftist distortion that attempts to rewrite history in order to delegitimize western culture and civilization (as exemplified by the U.S., of course) by setting up the fundamental Marxist dialectic. The "oppressor" is symbolized by Columbus, a white male European; and the "oppressed" role is given to African blacks and Native Indians.
The second prototype leftist myth is the "Che myth" that takes a brutal killer, Che Guevara, and rehabilitates and romanticizes his ruthless and murderous behavior, transforming it into something heroic instead of barbaric. The purpose of this type of myth is to legitimize the left's underlying marxist ideology.
As you can see, the left will use the Columbus-type myth whenever they want to undermine, minimize or ignore any accomplishment of Western Civilization. With a little creativity, you can delegitimize practically anyone--since human perfection exists only in a utopian fantasy--and practically any accomplishment can be ignored or undermined with a little historical finesse. Take, for example, the ending of slavery--one of the great accomplishments of the West and Western values--an accomplishment that is completely ignored when highlighting the West's early participation in a slave trade that had existed for millenia. This kind of historical reality is used as evidence of a fundamental "hypocrisy" inherent in the West which the left takes great pleasure in constantly pointing to as a way of enjoining their supporters to abandon the supposedly imperfect values of the West.
History for them has no particular meaning or purpose when it cannot be used to support the crumbling ediface of their ideology. But it is useful to the degree that it can be rewritten, revised and reinterpreted to fit the Marxist agenda. This revision is done deliberately and with the express design of molding historical reality to meet the needs of the present quest for power.
Thus, the left can fully understand and even support Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs as they 'study' the Holocaust. After all, what is the Iranian leadership doing that leftists don't already engage in with gusto (e.g., with Che and Columbus) ?
Or, take another leftist promulgated myth; the one where Israel and the Jews are made out to be the impediment to a Mideast peace; and that they ruthlessly oppress the peace-loving Palestinians who only desire their own state. In these two myths we also are able to see the delegitimization of the proponent of "Western" values; and a romanicizing/legitimization of an approved and sanctioned "victim"group--all perfectly consistent with the neo-marxist mindset of the 21st century leftist totalitarians who refuse to abandon their discredited ideology.
In order to succeed in undoing and undermining the clear and unambiguous evidence of socialism's and communism's utter human toxicity, the totalitarians of the political left have had to undermine nothing less than reality, reason, and truth. Not only are words and language completely redefined to mean whatever anyone wants, but more importantly, history had to be deconstructed--ostensibly to expose it's lies, but really to render it meaningless and supplant it with mythology. In this way, the ideas and values that are the foundation of Western civilization can be mocked and shown by postmodern "logic" to be no better than any other random ideas.
Thus, for today's nihilistic left, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose; and anyway, it isn't significantly different from slavery; democracy is just as much a fraud as tyranny; that which has always been considered as good, is really just as evil as evil; and so on.
Twentieth century postmodernists thus set themselves up as culturally and morally superior to all other humans in history, and with the postmodern relativistic advantage, they could pass judgement on everyone and everything. Thus from the superior postmodern perspective, there was nothing of value to learn from a slave-holding Thomas Jefferson; there is no moral superiority in a system that strives toward increasing individual human freedom and dignity compared to a system that doesn't even recognize the rights of the individual. There is no difference between right and wrong; good and evil--all are suspect, all are hypcritical, all are imperfect; and thus all such concepts are rendered irrelevant.
By now, everyone is familiar with this leftist delegitimization, since it is applied to anyone or anything valued by Western culture.
By using the "Columbus myth", all individuals, thinkers, explorers etc. from the past can be ridiculed, demeaned, and scorned because they failed to live up to the left's postmodern and politically correct standards of conduct. All their ideas and accomplishments are, ad hominem, are then able to be considered meaningless and described as "hypocritical"--the absolutely worse possible sin from the leftist perspective.
Thomas Jefferson, George Washington--all the Founding Fathers for the most part--did not have the consciousness of the postmodern intellectual: they were slaveholders! Yet they dared to consider the problem of human freedom, bound as they were to the cultural norms of their time. That they could not entirely break out of the culture of their time, but still could push the envelope of civilization forward is irrelevant to the postmodern left.
If we are only allowed to think of Thomas Jefferson and other founders as hypocritical colonial slaveholders, then we are forced to pronounce his ideas on the struggle for human freedom as no better and no worse than Hitler's Kampf.
Jefferson's mind-blowing, paradigm-shattering declaration, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" has no more meaning or worth than Yasser Arafat's statement that, "Since we cannot defeat Israel in war; we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel." Both are either completely meaningless; or both are examples of freedom-fighters--who cares which? Bush = Hitler; Good = Evil; Freedom = Slavery; there is no way to judge because the nihilistic relativism we subscribe to has taken away our ability to morally distinguish and discriminate between right and wrong.
At the heart of both the Columbus myth and the Che myth is a profound psychological denial and a desperate refusal to face reality and come to terms with the malignancy of their anti-human, utopian and totalitarian ideology.
Anna Freud once wrote that the ego of a child in denial "refuses to become aware of some disagreeable reality.... It turns its back on it, and in imagination reverses the unwelcome facts."
The essence of psychological denial is a refusal to look at or acknowledge reality.
Fortunately, reality exists outside of anyone's head and is objective and verifiable. It is not altered by whim, desire, lies or myth. This is not to say that people might not believe ideas that do not conform to reality--in fact, they do so all the time. Just like Anna's description of the child's ego, the ego of an otherwise normal adult may also resort to childish, immature and primitive mechanisms when it feels threatened.
You would think it would be a simple matter to be "in touch" with reality. But it isn't. It requires a great deal of cognitive effort--i.e., thinking--and often that effort must assert itself over powerful emotions that draw the person away from the real world to a place more comfortable and unchallenging to their inner reality.
So, how does a rational person determine what is true and what is delusion? How do you decide if something is a myth or is real?
Psychological denial and the avoidance of an unpleasant reality are certainly not confined to one side of the political spectrum or the other. But what I find endlessly fascinating is how the political left has created and fully integrated specific ideological tools that facilitate their ongoing psychological denial.
It reminds me of all the paranoid patients I have observed over the years, who effortlessly are able to dismiss or explain away any facts that don't fit in with their carefully constructed conspiracy theories. If you get too assertive in pointing out those uncomfortable facts, you find yourself in no time fully integrated into the theory. For the paranoid, the case is closed and the argument is finished. His self-esteem depends on it.
Columbus is evil and Guevara is good. The left's self-esteem depends on those myths.
The political left has been utilizing the same psychological strategies inherent in the paranoid style since the end of the cold war and the close of the 20th century. The rise of politically correct speech and the dogma of multiculturalism; the insistence on cultural diversity while enforcing a profound homogeneity of ideas and lack of intellectual diversity in academia; as well as the distortions and rationalizations that are currently the hallmark of intellectual debate within our institutions of higher learning and politics-- have all combined to dissuade those on the political left from pursuing a course of intellectual honesty and/or emotional insight.
This is what makes it so frustrating to debate or argue with today's typical postmodern leftist. Some are willing to engage in discussion, but you can always count on their complete dismissal of any fact that does not conform to their ideological perspective. No matter how many times you point out the historical facts and context of Christopher Columbus; no matter how much evidence of Che's brutality are brought forth, the myths have been pre-packaged to conform to the ideological dogma and there is no way to get them to think outside that packaging to the reality.
When it suits their purposes (i.e., when they are losing the argument), they will resort to the claim that reality and truth are merely subjective constructs anyway; that Che "meant well" because he believed as they do; or that Columbus was motivated only by "selfish" capitalist greed; and that any evidence you present to the contrary is only someone's "opinion" and that their opinions are as good as anyone else's.
Such a position should logically disqualify their position to begin with, but of course, it doesn't.
The essential problem of the left in acknowledging the truth of either Che Guevara or Christopher Columbus--or any of their other myths-- is that these myths have become inextricably entwined and inseparable from their most sacred ideological beliefs. They need both the kind that legitimize and romanticize their own fundamentally immoral ideology; as well as the kind of myth that delegitimizes America and the West. These sacred myths have become the cornerstone of their faith in the evil of American and Western values; and the false mirror in which they see reflected their own goodness and compassion.
At the center of all psychological denial is a hidden agenda. That agenda is usually not completely conscious--meaning that the denier has not thought through the issues surrounding his denial; and may not even be aware of what his motivation is in asserting something is true when it isn't; or false when it isn't. But when the hidden agenda is exposed--i.e., when reality is acknowledged and when the myths are busted; then it has to be accepted that all humans are imperfect, their behavior inconsistent, and their motivations impure....Yet, the ideas those imperfect humans champion must be judged according to whether they acknowledge reality; and whether they advance the cause of human life, liberty and dignity; or whether they destroy those fundamental values.
All you have to do is look for the graveyards of the millions who perished in the left's implementation of their lovely ideology in the last century; the graveyards that their mythology has been designed to obscure and disguise.
In Pete Seeger's immortal words (but not, as Shrink says, exactly the way he meant them) :
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Covered with flowers every one
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 9:25 AM |
Monday, October 08, 2007
PSYCHIC INCOME, UTOPIAN PATRIOTISM, AND THE INFANTILE NARCISSISM THAT FUELS THEM
Michael Barone today tackles the intellectual dishonesty that is prevalent in the ivory towers of our academic institutions:
I am old enough to remember when America's colleges and universities seemed to be the most open-minded and intellectually rigorous institutions in our society. Today, something very much like the opposite is true: America's colleges and universities have become, and have been for some decades, the most closed-minded and intellectually dishonest institutions in our society....
Racial quotas and preferences continue to be employed, as a recent article on UCLA makes clear, in spite of state laws forbidding them, and university administrators seem to derive much of their psychic income from their supposed generosity in employing them. This, even though evidence compiled by UCLA Professor Richard Sander suggests they produce worse educational outcomes for their intended beneficiaries and even though Justice Clarence Thomas makes a persuasive case in his book "My Grandfather's Son" that they cast a stigma of inferiority on them.
Of course, college and university administrators insist they aren't actually using quotas when in fact they are, as O'Connor's decisive opinion in 2003 invited them to do. The result is that one indispensable requirement for being a college or university administrator is intellectual dishonesty. You have to be willing to lie about what you consider one of your most important duties. So much for open inquiry and intellectual rigor.
This is not the only way the colleges and universities fall far short of what were once their standards. Sometime in the 1960s, they abandoned their role as advocates of American values -- critical advocates who tried to advance freedom and equality further than Americans had yet succeeded in doing -- and took on the role of adversaries of society.
The inhabitants of the ivory tower are not the only ones who derive a considerable amount of "psychic income" from opposing Western values. Richard Fernandez (aka Wretchard) has an article at Pajamas Media about the same kind of cognitive process that has latched onto a bankrupt concept of patriotism. He writes in his own blog :
Patriots of the first kind owe their loyalty to the nation they hope the current one may some day become. The second sort is prepared to accept and defend the nation that is. Both elements are normally present in the patriotism of an intelligent, well-educated person. Every nation is compounded of aspiration and reality; and that consequently we owe our duty to something that is partly here and partly to come. No country is so perfect that it can be liked entirely for what it is. But no man is so abstract that he can limit his loyalty only to what might become.
We exist in the present; so do our friends, neighbors, home, the family pet, etc. They all occupy the time we call Today. Actual love and loyalty have no field except Today. Without a minimum regard for what surrounds him Today it's hard for any person to claim a full role in his society. That minimum must include a commitment to keep the ordinary population safe and to "do no harm"....
Therein lies the problem in claiming that "real patriotism" consists exclusively in a commitment to dissent; in an obsession with rebellion and in a total rejection of the present. Those who go to that extreme forgo all love for the present for the exhilaration of allegiance to the country of their fantasy.
What Barone and Fernandez are both writing about is the triumph of narcissism in our academic institutions and in our culture at large. The academics Barone writes about and Fernandez' "patriots" both live in a make-believe country of the mind where transient fame and cheap glory are easily purchased by self-righteously bashing of America and displaying a casual contempt for the values that this country and Western civilization stand for.
Such behavior is everywhere in our society. We see it in entertainment; we see it in politics. We even see it, as Thomas Sowell points out in another piece at Real Clear Politics, in the cheap shots taken by former presidents and presidential candidates; (and in military generals and lesser personnel that are trotted out by the political left to shore up their patriotic bona fides) that are self-serving and completely focused on temporary self-aggrandizement.
Those who engage in the behavior, spend a lot of time rationalizing it, too. That is why the most blatant examples are so sensitive to any comments about their patriotism.
Patriotism, for them, is always 100% compatible with their narcissistic sense of entitlement.
They bash America because they love America--or, rather, they love their own personal and private image of what America should be.
In their child-like minds, America should behave as they imagine "The Perfect Parent" does. Completely and without exception totally responsive to their childrens' needs at all times and in all circumstances. A parent who never allows anything bad ever to happen to anyone anywhere; who can control the weather; who can control the behavior of everyone threatening or dangerous; who is completely selfless and willing to endure any degree of abuse; and willing to suffer the daily temper tantrums of their narcissistically preoccupied children.
God help America if it doesn't live up to the demands of those children 24/7. That unleashes their destructive narcissistic rage. It also provokes the rabid sense of victimization and dramatic feelings of ill-usage that are always just below the surface.
neo-neocon in a recent post stated it this way:
To the child, the parent is omnipotent, and perfection is demanded and easily achievable. Everything that goes wrong must be the parent's fault, that much is clear; otherwise, the world would become a much more frightening place.
Because the truth is that if the parent is not omnipotent, or can't ever become perfect, then the child is exposed to truly frightening dangers that he/she is unequipped to handle. So it's far better to preserve the myth of parental omnipotence and perfection, and to get angry at a parent who, after all, (at least ordinarily, in the absence of major pathology) loves the child and is not about to retaliate harshly against that child.
The child knows the parent is strong enough to absorb the blow, so it's safe to direct the blame and the anger where it won't be dangerous to do so (if the US were really as bad as extreme leftists say, they'd all be in jail or worse). It's a win-win situation for the child, who gets to "vent," and to feel that the world isn't such a dangerous place, knowing the parent will not strike back and harm the child.
I'm not saying leftists--or those liberals who join the "blame America first, often, loudly, and last" chorus--are children. They are not. But in their relationship to their own government they seem to be acting out a similar dynamic.
The pursuit of these infantile fantasies provides a constant stream of psychic income needed to sustain their dysfunctional and narcissistic behavior.
You regularly see Hollywood elites, for example, patting themselves on the back for the brave, valiant behavior of standing up against BushHitler, even as they snuggle up to real despots and tyrants, engaged in real oppression and consolidation of power (e.g., Hugo Chavez for instance).
You can also see the pursuit of this cheap psychic income in the sneering contempt they display toward those who are willing to defend freedom in the real world--instead of the fantasyland that exists only in the windmills of the leftist mind.
Meanwhile, in that real world, real evil exists, as well as real threats to freedom and human dignity. People are being killed every day pursuing the freedom of speech that the likes of Lee Bollinger bravely extends to their murderers. People are being slaughtered and oppressed for even desiring freedom and democracy and the right to pursue their own individual happiness.
Standing up against those real world villians, though, is far too frightening for the narcissistically preoccupied academics and utopian patriots (why, they might get hurt! And they want to make sure they stand on the correct side of history, after all).
It is much much easier to bask in the cheap glory; and to keep on raking in all that feel-good psychic income from their fantasy world; all the while ignoring, denigrating, or mocking anyone who possesses the real courage to stand up and defend the values of America with their lives and their honor.
As Wretchards notes, "A person who loves only his vision of the future can only love himself."
But that is exactly the point of all these utopian and patriotic fantasies, isn't it? To have a never-ending source of psychic income with which to buy self-esteem futures.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:15 AM |
Sunday, October 07, 2007
CARNIVAL OF THE INSANITIES
Time for the weekly insanity update, where the insane, the bizarre, the ridiculous, and the completely absurd are highlighted for all to see! This has been a week of rare idiocy (as always!). So, if you want to remain sane, the best thing is to poke some fun at the more egregious absurdities.Send all entries for next week's carnival to Dr. Sanity by 8 pm ET on Saturday for Sunday's Carnival. Only one post entry weekly per blogger, please. And you might read this before submitting an entry.
**NOTE: I am now getting many more submissions than I can possibly include in the weekly Carnival. Please don't be offended if your submission is not used (oh, okay, be as offended as you like) as it only means that for a variety of reasons I wasn't able to fit it into the "flow" as I put together each Carnival.
REMEMBER, THERE ARE SO MANY INSANITIES AND SO LITTLE TIME!!!
1. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.... Mourning the loss of a defining atrocity. Sadness abounds. There's even bad news for shrinks!
2. HAMAS is the recipient of some poetic justice. A rather cynical sort of Mideast "peace".
3. The #1 video in Iran (not really, but it should be!) Definitely off the chart cute. And then there's the popular musical: Tiptoe Through The Toilets and the TV Series, Mahmoud in the City
4. A fellational report from the Beeb.
5. Oh yes, those Christian terrorists are all over the place. Islam is Peace. We all know that. I wonder if there is a sinister web of bloggers that facilitate their evil message.
6. No, really? Marxists? Who'd have thought it?
7. Marco! Polo! Finding the 2nd Amendment apparently isn't as easy as finding the internet....
8. Freudian comic books? 1000 Chinese Einsteins?
9. Is he most sincerely dead...or just plain dead? Who cares? Life is an allusion anyway!
10. How insane is it that this wonderful young man "got it" before he died and some people will probably never get it, even if they live to a ripe old age? Some wonder if we should refuse to wear an AIDS ribbon on the grounds that it's a subsitute for true charity? Good point.
11. Congress once passed legislation to crack down on the phenomenon? Tell that to Harry Reid. Clearly they must have been insulting our military! Name that party!
12. Note the "wonk" listed second for Hillary. Nice. He's just an absolute monster!
13. Guess who said, "About the only way I would get invited to Columbia is if I was a Middle East dictator with nuclear weapons." Answer here.
14. The DWSUWF strategy. Definitely has some merit!
15. Papa Ratzi and capitalism. Environmentally correct but horribly insensitive. Some call it "clueless"!
16. Uh-huh. Build your own Segway. For the geek inside who is coming unravelled! Or, feed your inner alcoholic.
17. The jig is up! There are people dangerously obsessed with sex; (ok, here's some gratuitous sex stuff) and then there're people dangerously obsessed with conspiracies
18. ...There are vast rightwing conspiracies (please, please read the insane comments) and then there are vast leftwing conspiracies
19. Get a (2nd) life
20. You might not lose weight, but you will lose your appetite
21. Breaking down the father-daughter barrier one tatoo or piercing at a time.
22. Sputnik is 50 ! It's launch was terrifying
23. Normal and outrageous ways to deal with your money. Redefining deviance
24. Whatever you do, DON'T try this at home.
25.Something everyone should know: how to foil farts.
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Carnival of the Insanities can also be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival and at the BlogCarnival.
If you would like to Join the insanity, and add the Carnival of the Insanities button to your sidebar (clicking on it will always take you to the latest update of the Carnival), click on "Word of Blog" below the button to obtain the html code:
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 6:35 AM |
Saturday, October 06, 2007
THE SOCIALIST FOOD CHAIN - Reprise
The cartoon from the previous post reminds me of a post from last May, which I reproduce in full so that my readers will understand that there actually is a "logic", more or less, to the insanity of today's postmodern left.
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Ever wonder how the socialists decide which of their special victims' groups will prevail when there is a conflict between them?We see a hint of how their food chain is constructed today in this article by Johann Hari (hat tip: Betsy):
Do you believe in the rights of women, or do you believe in multiculturalism? A series of verdicts in the German courts in the past month, have shown with hot, hard logic that you can't back both. You have to choose....
In Germany today, Muslim women have been reduced to third-class citizens stripped of core legal protections - because of the doctrine of multiculturalism, which says a society should be divided into separate cultures with different norms according to ethnic origin....
Indeed, in the name of this warm, welcoming multiculturalism, the German courts have explicitly compared Muslim women to the brain-damaged. The highest administrative court in North Rhine-Westphalia has agreed that Muslim parents have the "right" to forbid their daughter from going on a school trip unless she was accompanied by a male family member at all times. The judges said the girl was like "a partially mentally impaired person who, because of her disability, can only travel with a companion".As the Iranian author Azar Nafisi puts it: "I very much resent it when people - maybe with good intentions or from a progressive point of view - keep telling me, 'It's their culture' ... It's like saying the culture of Massachusetts is burning witches." She is horrified by the moves in Canada to introduce shariah courts to enforce family law for Muslims.
This application of 21st century socialist "justice" has been on the rise since the socialist remnants from the last century began to stage their comeback from a well-deserved near-extinction. This socialist revival and the strategies they are now using to achieve world domination has many important implications for humanity--not the least of which is described in the above article.
To understand their logic, we must examine the socialist food chain.
Other behaviors of the unrepentantly socialist dictators suggest that, while there are many victim groups, some groups are far more important than others. As the example above shows, the culture or religion's status as "victimized" allows (nay, it demands)the suppression of the various uppity victim classes within it (e.g., Women or Gays) who try to rise above their rightful place in the utopia.
From the perspective of the socialist utopian, what matters more than Women's rights or Gay Righs are the rights of a designated culture. The dogma of multiculturalism trumps the dogma of women's superiority. This is probably because for the socialist utopian, might makes right and the needs of the many always outweigh the needs of the few--and the few better remember that fact, or else. In the socialist utopia, there is no room for individuality or personal preference; or tolerance for differences. You always must subsume yourself to the collective; and the bigger the collective, the more
For example, we know from experience that blacks, women and gays lose their cherished victim status if they dare to become Republicans; and, to a lesser extent, if they choose to be Christian (except for most Episcopalians, who have seen the secular light).
Being black trumps being a woman or gay (i.e., there is more "social justice" mileage to be squeezed out of the oppression of blacks, i.e., racism, than there is from the oppression of women (sexism) or even gays (homophobia). Just ask Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.
The oppression of Jews is completely ignored because of the animus the "enlightened" have toward Israel; and anti-semitism, which in past times would have had a ranking up close to the level of dark-skinned people (probably because those who founded the Jewish state were dedicated socialists--unfortunately, they soon realized that in real life, their ideology didn't work too well); but anti-semitism no longer is a compelling issue for the socialists. In fact, they are among its worse practitioners as socialism has spread throughout the Middle East.
So far, we have established that the culture (except for Western culture, which is uniquely evil and oppressive) is very high up on the food chain, and can eat and kill with impunity. Is there any group that trumps the culture?
Again, there are hints of how socialist logic deals with this. The needs of the nation will trump a protected/victim culture for the same reason that being an independent woman, black or gay person loses their victim status: they act independently of the socialist gestalt (i.e., they refuse to stay in their pre-determined place in the food chain and dare to be different).
Thus, Saddam the socialist Ba'athist could rightly gas the Kurds and no one payed much attention to it. Even genocide is acceptable to the socialist logician, who must always take into account the following factors: 1) which group is larger (oppressed nations or religions > cultures > sub-cultures > small groups, e.g., "Democrats", > individuals, e.g., blacks, women, and gays; 2) When there is a conflict among groups at the same level of the chain, then precedence is given to the "purer" victim--i.e., those who know their place in the chain, are willing to remain victims for all eternity, and take no actions to stop being victims.
Thus for example, the Palestinians' as a group (considered an oppressed nation for reasons that elude me) have such a high victimization quotient, they can freely and "justly" oppress or kill any members of their own society that are not considered "good" Palestinians, as well as anyone outside their society with impunity (i.e., Israelis). Because the Israelis have such a low quotient, they are not even permitted to kill in self-defense. The same dynamic occurs when Muslim extremists (the extremely oppressed variety of Muslim) kill other Muslims (just ordinary oppressed Muslims) ; or when they kill Christians; or when they kill just about anyone in their usual indiscriminant manner. But Americans who take extraordinary precautions in war as in peace not to kill innocent people are damned to hell when they attack even the extremist Muslims who repeatedly try to kill them and state their intent at regular intervals.
Islamic fanatics can behead and mutilate non-combatant men and women at will. Americans are prohibited from humiliating Islamic fanatics or even frightening the poor dears (it is called "torture") ; Moderate Islamics can prohibit Westerners living in Islamic societies from owning a Bible; and punish them severely if they do; but Americans are not permitted to show any disrespect, let alone spit on a Koran even in America.
Clearly, if you are NOT one of the designated victimized or oppressed cultures, nations, or groups, then you and your non-victim-designated members are at the bottom of the socialist food chain and anything bad that is done to you by those above you in the food chain must be your own damn fault. This includes those who are Western, American/Israeli, Caucasian, Republican, conservatives, Rich, Capitalist, Christian, male, heterosexual and so on down the chain.
Thus, you can clearly see the intellectual origins of the many slogans that epitomize modern-day socialists:
IMPERIALIST AMERICA IS HUMANITIES NUMBER ONE ENEMY
DEATH THE THE WORLD'S NUMBER 1 TERRORIST: BUSH & HIS SHEEP
KILL TERRORISTS: BOMB BUSH IN HIS F****ING HOUSE
WE ARE ALL PALESTINIANS
IMPEACH THE GRINGOS
CONDI: I'M FIGHTING FOR WHITEY
BEHEAD THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM
ZIONIST PIGS
I LOVE NY EVEN MORE WITHOUT THE WORLD TRADE CENTER
NAZI KIKES OUT OF LEBANON
FUCK MIDDLE AMERICA
SMASH THE JEWISH STATE
And so on, ad infinitum, in the wonderfully peaceful and loving socialist manner we came to know so well in the last century.
Clearly, when all of humanity is at stake; when the socialist utopia is at-hand; lines must be drawn and the masses must be kept in their appropriate places in order to achieve social justice, peace, and universal brotherhood.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 10:15 AM |
Friday, October 05, 2007
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ATLAS SHRUGGED
October 10 is the 50th anniversary of the book Atlas Shrugged by philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand.
Today, Robert Tracinski writes about the historic significance of the book:
...in 1816, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, a group of Britain's best young literary minds—including Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (who later became Mary Shelley)—gathered together to explore their new school of literature, which they called "Gothic" because it took its inspiration from the mysticism of the Middle Ages. In that spirit, they challenged each other to write the best ghost story, and Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein—a story which portrays the quest for scientific and technological knowledge as a kind of dangerous madness.
Just as capitalism was propelling us forward into a technological future that would, among other advantages, double the average human lifespan, the intellectuals were looking backward to the Middle Ages and predicting that all of this new science and technology would bring disaster. (They're still doing it, except that now they conjure up the bogeyman of global warming in the place of Frankenstein's monster.)
A few decades later, a German intellectual named Karl Marx gave one of the most influential accounts of the new capitalist system—and he got everything wrong. An Industrial Revolution driven by scientific and technological advances springing from the minds of a few extraordinary individuals, he would describe as the anonymous, collective product of brute physical labor; an economic system of liberty, he would describe as a system of oppression; a system built on the right to property he would describe as a system based of expropriation—and then he would propose actual oppression and expropriation as the solution.[emphasisi mine]
This has been the pattern of the artists and intellectuals in dealing with the most significant phenomenon of our age. While the world was transformed around them, they refused to grasp the real meaning of these events, choosing to ignore or denigrate the forces that were rapidly improving human life.
In this context, we can see the widest significance of Ayn Rand's literary and philosophical achievement. She was the first thinker and artist to fully grasp the meaning of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution and to give them expression both in literature and in philosophy.
The most radical aspect of Atlas Shrugged is that Ayn Rand found epic drama, heroism, and profound philosophical meaning in the achievements of the entrepreneurs and industrialists who were reshaping the world.
Atlas Shrugged was written in an age of creeping global socialism. Extrapolating from the trends of the day, Ayn Rand projected a future in which most of the world's nations are collapsing into the poverty and oppression of socialist "people's states," while America itself is collapsing under the weight of an increasing government takeover of the economy.
She saw the dramatic potential in asking a single question: what would happen if the innovative entrepreneurs and businessmen—after decades of being vilified and regulated—started to disappear? The disappearance of the world's productive geniuses provides the novel's central mystery, both factually and intellectually....
Ayn Rand's detractors sometimes dismiss her novels as "unrealistic," but it is today's mainstream intellectuals who frequently seem as if they are wandering around in a fog of unreality, missing the monumental lessons of two centuries of history. The era of encroaching global socialism has since given way to an era of global capitalism, which is beginning to transform the lives of billions of people across the globe, from Eastern Europe to India to China. But there is no one to help them understand what capitalism is, its deepest personal meaning for their lives and values, and why it is good.
No one, that is, except Ayn Rand. And that is why Atlas Shrugged is even more relevant and necessary today than it was when it was first published five decades ago.
Read it all, of course.
Rand, the novelist, had a significant impact on my teenage self...I still remember reading The Fountainhead and being knocked out of my adolescent complacency by the characters and themes of the book. Soon I was reading everything that Rand had written, including the dauntingly long, Atlas Shrugged.
Even after my fictional tastes outgrew the excessively romanticized writing style and moved on to other novelists; Rand, the philosopher, continued to have a profound influence on my evolving intellectual life, and does so to this day.
I find myself returning frequently to ponder her stimulating and sublime ideas about metaphysics, epistemology and ethics in order to make sense of the enormous amount of bullshit and insanity pouring forth from the mouths of today's "intellectual" elites, who have abandoned reason, truth, and objective reality in their pursuit of the postmodern utopia.
In fact, Rand's intellectual legacy has become one of the pillars supporting much of my own thinking on political and psychological issues.
Leszak Kolakowski, a Polish philosopher expelled from the Communist Party in 1968 for his heretical views made the following keen observation about the morality of socialism (from My Correct Views on Everything:
Socialism as a social or moral philosophy was based on the ideal of human brotherhood, which can never be implemented by institutional means. There has never been, and ther will never be, an institutional means of making people brothers. Fraternity under compulsion is the most malignant idea devised in modern times; it is the perfect path to totaltarian tyranny.
The most important intellectual breakthrough that Rand helped me to understand was how the social engineers of the left, motivated as they are by their creative utopian aspirations--expressed by the desire to impose (forcibly, if necessary) universal peace, social justice and brotherhood upon humanity--are completely oblivious to the malignant side of their own natures. Both they and the capitalist entrepreneurs of the right who they despise so vehemently are both driven by the darker human emotions: envy, greed and a need to dominate others.
However, there remains an extremely crucial difference between them:
The do-gooder leftist in all the various ideological incarnations--the antiwar crowd, the environmental crowd, the communists, socialists, and assorted collectivists--offers the rationale that he does what he does for the "common good" and for "social justice", "peace" and "brotherhood". His high-minded, self-righteous rhetoric justifies (to him anyway) imposing his will and beliefs on others for their own good; and he will not hesitate to use whatever coercive capablity he has at hand to get others to do what he wants and what he says.
The capitalist, on the other hand, is overtly out to pursue his own selfish profit, and understands he must use persuasion. That is, he must convince people that his ideas and the products of his mind are better than all the rest so that they will be willing to part with their hard-earned money to possess them. His desire for power over others is manifested in an indirect manner because people must want what he has to offer and believe that they will benefit from an interaction with him.
There is no parallel social limitations on the behavior of the leftist. This tyrant wannabe does not feel the need to convince others of the veracity or even the effectiveness of his ideas; nor does he accept defeat when others are not interested or resist their implementation. He knows in his heart what is best for everyone, and he will use coercion if necessary. He will not allow options; nor will he permit others do do what they think is right for themselves. Their feelings or concerns are a matter of complete indifference to him. Only his own matter.
The leftist's desire for power is direct and absolute; and this is a direct consequence of his utopian ideology.
And there is no area of your life which will escape his intrusive psychopathology, because he justifies it by saying he is really doing it for your sake.
The clever leftist always manages to hide these darker motivations--the envy, greed, and desire for power--and pretend they don't even exist--even to himself. He tells himself he does not possess such dark motives; that his motives are pure and uncontaminated by the kind of self-serving goals the selfish capitalists pursue. The banal platitudes and silly slogans he chants during his protest marches make him feel oh so good about himself; and experiencing too much knowledge and insight about his inner state would make him extremely uncomfortable; perhaps even causing him to question some of his basic assumptions about himself or his beliefs.
This is the essence of the "dilemma of the utopians". They see themselves as so pure and righteous; so correct and virtuous; how is it possible that their beautiful utopian dreams always turn into such horrible human nightmares?
You can then count on the true leftist believer to close his eyes not only to his own internal reality, but also to the external reality that proves the uselessness of his beliefs in the real world. Few on the left have ever acknowledged the nightmare of the Soviet gulag; or Lenin's purges; or China's crackdowns. Few have ever even accepted the incredible human cost their ideologies have taken on humanity; the death the suffering and misery. Even today, they actively support the Stalin's and Hitler's of today's world-- like the Venezuelan thug, Chavez; and the Iranian murderers, Ahmadinejad and his mullahs-- in their grabs for unparalleled power. Chavez, of course, follows the pure utopian aspirations of the typical leftist and is only allowing himself to become "dictator for life" because he wants to help his people. [See here about the rise of neo-fascism in Latin America and here about the neo-marxist fascists of the left].
Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad is given a podium in our highest intellectual establishments so that he can cynically admonish America for being a "dictatorship":
Remember how inviting Ahmadinejad to Columbia University was supposed to impress the Iranian president with the power of American freedom and the courage of American academia? Well according to Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Ahmadinejad has just called the US a "dictatorship" whose citizens are not allowed to know the facts and described the Columbia invitation as a "Zionist plot".Referring to his speech at Columbia University, President Ahmadinejad said, "The Zionists wanted to turn the event into a trial of the Isalmic Republic of Iran, but with help from the Almighty God, the plot turned into a scene in which nations could express their hatred with the rulers in the White House. The behavior of the government and media in the US shows that there is dictatorship in that country and people are not allowed to know the facts," said the president.
Despite the implacability of Ahmadinejad's remarks, there will be those will persist in attempting "dialogue" and bending over backward in the belief that American goodwill towards "the Iranian people" has simply been misunderstood or misrepresented by the Bush-Hitler administration.
Indeed. There seems to be no end to the denial and delusion that runs rampant on the political left as they invert and distort reality itself to preserve their utopian dreams and nightmares.
Celebrity after celebrity kisses up to tyrants like Chavez, Ahmadinejad and others, possibly hoping that the powerful aura of glorified evil will enhance their own fragile selves. They jubilantly celebrate these demagogue's "courage" in taking power to do what they believe is "just "and "helps the poor". They cheer on the thuggish oppression because they believe their ends justify any means. Every obscenity is tolerable-- as long as you rant about the evil capitalists and their "exploitation" and "oppression"; or say you are only taking control of everyone's lives for the sake of "social justice".
When you consider the historical --and catastrophic -- human consequences that have ensued whenever their perfect utopias are implemented, it is little wonder that they will ignore, deny and distort any information that exposes the underlying envy and rage that drive their sociopathic selflessness. Their precious self-esteem would surely plummet, and their self-esteem must be preserved at all costs.
While societies that operate under the rule of law have all the necessary checks and balances that prevent the capitalist from cheating or robbing his clients and hold him to account if he does; civilization has been fooled repeatedly throughout history by the virtuous, self-righteous, anti-capitalist robbers and cheaters of the left who simply disguise their robbery and fraud behind the stated purity of their motives (see here, for the most recent example).
SC&A wrote in a post some time ago :
Many on the left believe their agenda is driven by a piety that only they, in their heightened awareness, are capable of. Their motives are pure, they say. Disagree with them and you are evil. They are true believers, and as such, they are entitled to make decisions for others, on behalf of others and despite others. They love their fellow man, they say. They hate injustice, they say. They are true believers in the highest calling of mankind.
Well, the Nazis were true believers, too. There were communists that were true believers and they have the blood of 50 million people on their hands. The North Vietnamese killed 2-3 million after we left Vietnam. Castro and Che slaughtered hundreds of thousands between them. African communists have shed the blood of millions.
All of the aforementioned were true believers. All of them believed they were serving the best interests of mankind.
Being a 'true believer' is no mark or guarantee of moral or ethical superiority.
That applies to all 'true believers' of every political, religious or ethical stripe. When you are not open to new ideas, thoughts or challenges, you are no better than ther legions of evil 'true believers' that preceded you. This latest crop of 'true believers' are intellectual pygmies, the 'useful idiots' and apparatchiks of our time, afraid of debate and most of all, afraid of accountability.
They are the true enablers of evil. They deliberately choose blindness and deafness, so as to affirm their 'righteousness.' They see themselves as charged with a mission-- to blind and render deaf others, so that their status might be validated. Without their distortions,evil would be held to account. Instead, evil is allowed to flourish.
They are no more than the fertilizer for evil, violence and death.
Today's left promises wealth and happiness and justice and brotherhood. What they have always delivered is poverty and misery; injustice and death. It will be no different this time around.
Every time I hear the left voicing their utopian aspirations and dreaming their totalitarian dreams, I think about all the victims that will suffer from their selfless virtue. I remember Ayn Rand's heroes and heroines as they struggled to achieve their supposedly "selfish" pursuits; and I think of the words of a contemporary Randian hero, Mal Reynolds, in the movie Serenity, after discovering an entire planet's population has been wiped out as a result of the same kind of selfless utopian motivations:
"Somebody has to speak for these people....Sure as I know anything, I know this, they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, they'll swing back to the belief...that they can make people...better.
And I do not hold to that."
Neither do I.
Happy Birthday, Atlas Shrugged. And, thank you, Ayn Rand.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:37 AM |
Thursday, October 04, 2007
LIGHT POSTING
Sorry for the light posting...a bit under the weather and overwhelmed with work stuff. Will blog more tomorrow.
Check this article out: "Women in Saudi Arabia: "Why Was I Born A Girl?"
Also, you might go listen to Fausta's Podcast with Phyllis Chesler and Siggy from last night, which discusses many issues relevant to that article and my post from yesterday.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 4:03 PM |
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
SACRIFICING THE SOULS OF THE CHILDREN
Here's how a Hamas children's magazine glorifies jihad and martyrdom:
The 60th issue of Al-Fateh features a story about Sa'id Hassan Hutari from Qalqilya, who carried out the June 2001 suicide bombing at a disco near the Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv, killing 21 people, mostly teens. The magazine presents Hutari's last message, in which he says: "I shall turn my body into pieces and bombs that will pursue the sons of Zion, blow them up, and burn the remains [of their bodies]." He then addresses his parents, telling them not to weep over his death, saying, "There is nothing greater than to give one's soul for the sake of Allah on Palestinian soil. Mother, utter cries of joy; Father and brothers, hand out sweets. Your son is awaiting his betrothal to the Virgins of Paradise." [1]
An illustrated story in Issue No. 69, "A Mission of Peace," tells of a boy named Basel who sets out to carry out a martyrdom operation against the "Zionist soldiers." [2] Issue No. 71 presents the story of Nasim Al-Ja'bari, who carried out a bombing in Beersheba. In the story, his mother says: "Before he left, he gave me 800 shekels. I felt deep sorrow, and cried six times that day without knowing why. When I heard the news that he had martyred himself, I took the money and bought dates, sweets, and coffee for the guests who would be coming to congratulate me." [3]
The "Palestinian Jihad" section in Issue No. 87 describes the 1974 "Um Al-Aqarib Operation" at a kibbutz, in which several Israelis were killed. [4]
Issue No. 9 features a poem glorifying the first Palestinian female suicide bomber, Wafa Idris, who in February 2002 carried out an attack in Jerusalem, killing one and wounding 140: "Glorious Wafa will always be with us. / She sacrificed her soul. / She stood up in the square proud, tall and defiant, / to punish the Zionist gang for the barbaric war, / and to teach the world a lesson about [the meaning of] nationalism. / Hurrah for this believing and loyal young woman. / She gave her soul to redeem the Al-Aqsa [Mosque] and Arab Jerusalem. / She uttered a cry of truth, which paved her way to eternal [life]. / She [entered] the Creator's Paradise and met Sumayya [the first female Muslim martyr]."(emphasis mine)
The Hamas children's magazine Al-Fateh is published biweekly in London, and is also posted online at http://www.al-fateh.net/. It began publication in September 2002, and its 108th issue was released in mid-September 2007.
This article from MEMRI is just a small portion of the ongoing depravity of Palestinian--and modern Islamic--culture.
Apparently, the character of today's Islam is such that it encourages the creation and nourishment of monsters:
Pakistan - The boy with the knife looks barely 12. In a high-pitched voice, he denounces the bound, blindfolded man before him as an American spy. Then he hacks off the captive's head to cries of "God is great!" and hoists it in triumph by the hair.
A video circulating in Pakistan records the grisly death of Ghulam Nabi, a Pakistani militant accused of betraying a top Taliban official who was killed in a December airstrike in Afghanistan.
An Associated Press reporter confirmed Nabi's identity by visiting his family in Kili Faqiran, their remote village in southwestern Pakistan.
The video, which was obtained by AP Television News in the border city of Peshawar on Tuesday, appears authentic and is unprecedented in jihadist propaganda because of the youth of the executioner.
Unprecedented, perhaps; but not unexpected.
If you have the stomach for it, go and read this "beautiful story" told on Egyptian TV about the wonder of child martyrdom. It begins:
"Let's listen to a very beautiful story to learn about the courage of a child, and how, when a child is brought up in a good home, and receives proper education in faith, he loves martyrdom, which becomes like an instinct for him. He can never give it up."
Another religious leader on the same program, tells a tale about Mohammed and a Jew, then asks what the children have learned from it.
A young child replies, "I learned that the Jews are the people of treachery and betrayal..."; and the Sheik, overjoyed that his message has come across so clearly, responds, "That is the most beautiful thing I have heard - that the Jews are the people of treachery, betrayal, and vileness."
These religious hatemongers brought to mind something that Gagdad Bob at One Cosmos wrote a while back. He was talking mostly about the left and child-rearing, but his words are certainly applicable to the discussion:
It has always surprised me that more historians and anthropologists don’t look at child-rearing practices to try to understand the basis of cultural health, pathology and change, and why some cultures are so much sicker than others. But hardly any do, mainly because of the dominance of the politically correct view that no culture is better or worse than any other--except for Western culture, which is the worst. And yet, how could it not be? If you have a culture that systematically abuses children in the most grotesque way--say, the Palestinians--why should anyone be surprised that they are arguably the most comprehensively depraved people on earth?For anyone who cares to actually look at the evidence, the romantic idea that Islam has ever been a "religion of peace" has also been thoroughly debunked. The heirs of Mohammed have had ceaseless war, violence, oppression of women and children and frankly crazy cultural beliefs and practices since the religion's inception; and all of it has been culturally designed to keep practitioners from noticing their own religion and culture's inadequacies, irrationality, and barbarism.
[...]
Harrison cites a couple of scholars who have attempted to quantify the link between child-rearing practices and cultural progress, in particular, progress toward democracy, economic prosperity, and social justice. As I noted in my own book, the further back in history you go, the more evidence there is of abominable child-rearing practices--what we would now call outright abuse. Perhaps this is why, as Harrison notes, “Early humans were neither democratic nor egalitarian during the first 80-90 millennia of human existence.” Instead, we see ceaseless war, violence, oppression of women and children, and frankly crazy cultural beliefs and practices. The romantic idea that humans were ever peaceful “noble savages” has been thoroughly debunked by anyone who cares to actually look at the evidence.
But what do the medieval child-rearing practices of today's Islam--as evidenced by the stories above--show us about the culture?
What a good parent does is hard to remember; and what a bad parent does is hard to forget. When we are confronted with repeated behavior that shocks us, dsmays us and even repulses us, we can be sure that something has gone wrong somewhere.
Without ignoring the role of biology, it is clear that family obviously plays an extremely important role in the development of personality, especially in providing values and role-models. There is an entire dissertation or two in the dysfunctional family of Middle Eastern Muslims, where women are hidden and prevented from being able to be whole persons.
What impact does such a system--even in its mildest incarnation--have on the developement of BOTH girls and boys? Under the Taliban, which arguably was the most malignant iteration of Islam's dysfunction (unless we now count the evolving Somali incarnation), women were actively oppressed and beaten for any attempt to express themselves.
Even today in the halls of "modern" Islam, there are actual "debates" about whether women can drive cars or go out into public alone. The double standards of modesty and behavior encouraged by the current practice of Islam are destructive to the normal development of personality in both males and females.
Is there anyone who believes that such medieval attitudes towards women don't have a profoundly negative impact on the personalities of both the men and women who develop in such environments? Males are encouraged to be psychopaths; females to be their willing victims and enablers; as well as breeders for the jihad. When you see large groups of men willingly blowing themselves up to kill innocents, you know there is some sort of psychopathy at work. When the only way to express "gender liberation" is for a woman to imitate the homicidal / suicidal rages of the males--you know there is a problem.
Consider also, how a child could grow up in any sense normal-- knowing that their mother and father think of them only as fodder for jihad and that he has no worth to them otherwise.
Along with parenting issues, cultural factors in child-rearing play an extremely important role in personality formation and can, under certain circumstances, "stack the cards" against normal develoment even if all other factors, including biology, are benign. Michael Stone, the author of Abnormalities of Personality: Within and Beyond the Realm of Treatment comments:
Children born into authoritarian, tyrannical regimes are systematically programmed (by teachers or political authorities) to develop habits of thought and behavior at variance with parental and ommon human values. Such programming deforms the personility in any of a number of ways: one will become rigid, or mindlessly obedient, or cruel, or rebellious, or dour and bitter, etc.We see in research studies of people from fringe or outcast social groups (such as gangs), that the members of such groups often behave respectfully and honestly toward others within their own group, but treat outsiders as if they were not human, without any sense of wrongdoing.
The ringleaders of such groups are often the the true psychopaths, and these leaders have a seemingly unlimited supply of morally weak or immature individuals (many of them very young)--who embrace antisocial behavior under group pressure.
We also know that in time of war, or social ferment, many formerly respectable, or at least "contained" non-aggressive persons (young men, especially) turn to thuggery--their morality extending only so far as expediency and conformity to the mob or gangster group of which they have become a part. Some will remain antisocial even after the crisis/riot/war passes; the majority revert to outward respectability.Having already a predisposition because of parenting issues, the culture of Islam "stacks the deck" further by first encouraging the subjugation of women by men and giving it a religious blessing. This is nothing new in the history of the world, and it certainly occurred throughout the history of Christianity too. But the idea that women are inferior to men has been challenged for a thousand years, and as women have taken their equal place with men in the countries promoting women's rights, there has been an incredible improvement in those countries' economic and political standings.
The culturally sanctioned misogyny of Islam results in a dysfunctional family unit that has tremendous impact on both male and female personality development.
The Koran says (Sureh 4, Verse 35) that men have authority over women (not just the wife but sisters, daughters, and all females). If they disobey, "first admonish them, then refuse to sleep with them, and then beat them". In Islamic countries, women are second-class citizens. They are counted as one-half a witness in a legal proceeding; and they can inherit only one-half as much as a man. Their sexuality is considered so inflammatory, they must be hidden under clothing that prevents anyone from seeing them. In Saudi Arabia, sons may be sent to foreign universities but daughters are not even allowed to drive.
Why are women's rights issues--or rather, the lack of them-- of importance in developing antisocial psychopathology? In the case of Islam, the religion itself has set the stage for an ongoing potentially abusive situation in the family; in heterosexual relationships; and in the culture.
The subservient role of women in the religion and their status as lesser beings breeds sadism in the male, simply because it is so easy (and sanctioned) to take out your frustrations or impotence on the "inferior" half of the population. This practice is not dissimilar to why people will take out their anger and negative emotions on pets or children. Being allowed to do so teaches an important psychological lesson that all budding psychopaths learn: "I am more important and powerful because I can hurt or kill this weak person". It is often a matter of honor to have absolute control over the identified weak person; and a matter of shame if they disobey you (see here). A male's status as a man can only be maintained by having power over the women.
Through a process that Anna Freud documents called "Identification with the Aggressor" these dynamics also breed the same sadistic tendency in women, though they have many fewer options in acting it out (female suicide bombers; and mothers who cheer the deaths of their sons and daughters in Allah's cause etc.)
The second factor in Islamic culture that "stacks the deck", encouraging abnormal personality development is the perpetual war against the infidel inherent in externalization of the concept of " jihad".
Those who see "jihad" as an inner struggle will not generally evolve into psychopaths, because internalizing the process has a greater chance of fostering insight and self-awareness, rather than brutality. But even these "moderate" practitioners of Islam do not stand up and loudly contradict the psychopathic elements in their religion; rather, they invite these elements to come "teach" at their mosques and abdicate leadership roles to them.
Those who do not have the innate biological or parental resources to prevent it become the disposable fodder that can then act out the psychopaths' scripts for them. Such individuals become the stooges--the suicide/homicide bombers--who mindlessly carry out their leaders' orders without every once considering that if holiness and sainthood are guaranteed by becoming a human bomb for Allah , then why is it that their leaders are not jumping with joy to grab the opportunity for themselves?
Islam has become toxic, infusing the entire Middle East with a culture inimical to not just the 50% who are female; but equally to the half who are male and consider themselves "superior".
Children are raised in a misogynist family unit and within a cultural environment that encourages the young boys to extremes of hatred and violence. This has been going on for decades among the Palestinians in particular; but it is everywhere the jihad mindset has spread it cancerous message.
The child-rearing practices of a toxic Islam have achieved a pinnacle in the suicide bomber/murderer; and the religious indoctrination of children into the cult of jihad and hate. The young beheader is only the first of many to come, because the culture will celebrate and lionize these "heroes".
I predict that there will soon follow a video of a young girl beheading someone, since this is what passes for gender equality in this culture of death and depravity.
Those who willingly follow this cult of death meet many of the psychiatric criteria for an antisocial personality including: (1) A glib, superficial charm (especially the leaders--Nasrallah, Al-Sadr; Haniyeh; Zawahiri ...the list goes on and on) (2) A grandiose sense of self-worth; (3) Pathological lying; (4) Manipulative behavior; (5) Lack of remorse or guilt for their behavior; (6) Lack of the usual behavioral controls; (7) Deviant sexual behavior and attitudes (this has repeatedly been reported on in the Arab and Islamic culture and would not be surprising considering the distortion and denigration of females in the society); (8) Jealousy and envy; (9) A sense of entitlement; and (10) A failure to accept responsibility for one's own actions.
A combination of cultural and social factors in Islam encourages the development of the many of traits inherent in the psychopathic or antisocial personality. The predominance of this personality pattern fosters and feeds on phenomenon of terrorism and provides the cultural underpinnings that support its continuation.
Psychopathic behavior exists within all cultures. What is different about Islam is that the content of its creed has given personal and societal sanction to such behavior when it is directed toward "inferiors" within the culture and anyone outside the culture. Within this religious framework, murder, torture, intimidation and brutality can be used --not only with impunity--but with guarantees of holiness and rewards in the afterlife. Not only are the adherents safe from censure, they are actually lauded and celebrated as heroes of Islam.
Here is a news story out of Iran:
The Iranian Supreme Court has overturned the murder convictions of six members of a prestigious state militia who killed five people they considered "morally corrupt."
"The psychological consequences of this case in the city have been great and a lot of people have lost their confidence in the judicial system," Nemat Ahmadi, a lawyer associated with the case, said in a telephone interview.
Three lower court rulings found all the men guilty of murder. Their cases had been appealed to the Supreme Court, which overturned the guilty verdicts. The latest decision, made public this week, reaffirms that earlier reversal.
"The objection by the relatives of the victims is dismissed and the ruling of this court is confirmed," the court said in a one-page verdict.
The ruling may still not be final, however, because a lower court in Kerman can appeal the decision to the full membership of the Supreme Court. More than 50 Supreme Court judges would then take part in the final decision.
According to the Supreme Court's earlier decision, the killers, who are members of the Basiji Force, volunteer vigilantes favored by the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, considered their victims morally corrupt and, according to Islamic teachings and Iran's Islamic penal code, their blood could therefore be shed.
The last victims, for example, were a young couple engaged to be married who the killers said were walking together in public.
Walking together in public!!! But it can even get more absurd under Islam. Not long ago there were a number of blog posts on the extreme absurdity of today's interpretations of Islamic law: Wretchard, for example, writes in "Deliver Us From Evil" that:
According to the AP. Iraqi insurgents are now fighting each other, as "moderate" Sunni terrorists tangle with "extremist" al-Qaeda whose brand of Islam is so radical that it prohibits placing cucumbers beside tomatoes because these vegetables have different genders. (read it all)
He goes on to talk about the gift of freedom, which is a wonderful thing-- unleashing all that is good within human beings;, but it can also unleash all that is evil and depraved, too. He adds:
A healthy culture instills in its members guideposts, as orderly societies put up highway signs, not in order to block the roads, but to guide us in our freedom.
Psychopaths cannot function openly or for long where there is freedom, equality, and the rule of law. The more we understand about Islamic law--Shar'ia--the more we come to understand that it is simply another aspect of a dysfunctional and depraved Islamic culture.
The guideposts that today's Islam sets up merely funnel human nature into the worse sort of psychopathy, and then maintain that the behavior they glorify is in the name of "peace" and "justice" and "freedom". This places them in the same psychological camp as the "peace-loving murderers" I talked about yesterday.
Terrorists, the most visible of the Islamic psychopaths, are quite desperate to prevent the establisment of democracies and quite naturally prefer Islamic law which encourages and supports their psychopathy. Individual thought and creativity; reason and justice; and the pursuit of happiness--all are completely incompatible with the psychopath's agenda.
The ongoing abuse of children, both psychological and physical, in Islamic culture today is of monstrous proportions. It may already be too late to rescue even the smallest children from this kind of abuse because the next generation of terrorists have already been indoctrinated and brainwashed from the earliest possible age to believe that the greatest aspiration in life is to blow one's self up into tiny little pieces for the glory of a bloodthirsty god-- and, to make their parent's proud of them.
..."When I heard the news that he had martyred himself, I took the money and bought dates, sweets, and coffee for the guests who would be coming to congratulate me."
How depraved do you have to be to celebrate such madness?
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 9:23 AM |
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
THE IRANIAN VILLAGE PEOPLE SPEAK OUT
Who would have guessed that this song would have rocketed to the top of the charts in Iran!
Or that Mahmoud would inspire this wonderful love song?
OK, I admit it: I guess there was a plus side to his vist to Columbia.
Mocking evil is such fun ! From a professional perspective, I highly recommend it for maintaining mental health.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:33 PM |
THE 21st CENTURY SELFLESS PSYCHOPATH: PEACE LOVING MURDERERS
In a previous post, Malignant Narcissism: Sociopathic Selfishness and Sociopathic Selflessness, I wrote:
The unopposed Grandiose Self [GS] gives rise to tyrants big and small; to megalomaniacal dictators and dictator wannabees; to unbelievable corporate greed and plundering; and to the typical criminal sociopath in all his/her glory. The damage that such individuals do in individual relationships, in business, in politics and in all spheres of human behavior, is well documented and appreciated in the world. Most children are abjured repeatedly never, never to be "selfish". To always consider others. Laws are set up to protect people from victimization at the hands of these unrestrained grandiose monsters, unable to see other people as distinct individuals separate from their own self. These "others" exist only as the means to achieving their own desires.
But far more menacing to humanity as a whole is the less well-known side of narcissism that originates from the unrestrained IO [Idealized Object], which has unlimited potential to cause human misery and death; and whose destructiveness we have seen dominate the 20th century. The countless dead bodies that are the direct result of this form of malignant narcissism are quickly forgotten because they died as some nations, religions, ideologies attempted to implement their IDEAL in the real world.
This second type of evil is more subtle, and it derives from the ethics of the IO side of the self. The IO also does not see other people as distinct individuals with needs and desires of their own, but only as fodder for the expression of an IDEAL; or as pawns for the wishes of a deified GS. People with this narcissistic defect completely reject the needs of the individual and enslave him or her to the service of their IDEAL. Eventually, the enslavement--whether religious or secular--snuffs out human ambition, confidence, energy, self-esteem, and life. These mindlessly malignant "do-gooders" -- like our Nobel Laureate mentioned at the start of this article-- do far more harm than good and their ideologies can lead to genocidal practices and unbelievable atrocities on a grand scale, all in the name of an IDEAL or GOD.
The malignant and sociopathic potential of both the GS and IO are inherent in all members of the human species. They are flip sides of the same human coin, you see. One side cannot exist without the other. Either a way is found to synthesize the two, or an individual will forever flip-flop between them--coldly and viciously tyrannical toward all humans in pursuit of his own desires on the one hand; and on the other, coldly and viciously determined no matter what the cost in human lives and suffereing to implement his IDEAL in all human society.
We are always warned about the individual narcissitic sociopaths; but most people don't appreciate the sociopathic qualities of groups, religions, nations, and ideologies that demand all individuals sacrifice themselves for the good of the latest utopian ideal or some blood-thirsty god.
In our modern world, the Islamic Jihadists have perfected this ethical demand; and the suicide-bomber is the ultimate expression of their ethics. (see the post "Union With An Evil God" and "Narcissistic Rage and Awe" for more on this).
But they are not alone in their disregard and contempt for the individual, who they see as only existing to serve the IDEAL, or to bring about the utopia/paradise/caliphate/[insert fantasy delusion here].
Extremes of both the political left and the political right are also dominated by the malignant narcissism of the GS and the IO.
If we go back to our understanding of healthy narcissistic development, we appreciate that the GS and the IO in adults is a result of the failure of narcissistic synthesis. The developmental process that should lead to a healthy self is broken; or fractured; or poisoned.
This can happen under many and varied circumstances--some of which can be prevented and some of which cannot (but that is for another post). We see it happening to the Palestinian children, taught from birth to hate the other/Jew; taught to die for the IDEAL. We see it in college students who are encouraged by their malignantly narcissistic professors to reject traditional moral values; embrace nihilism, and transform the world according to the professor's utopian fantasy. We see it in the postmodern rhetoric of the socialists who still dream of a universal socialist utopia, no matter how many people they have to kill to make it happen.
It seems to me that, just as the 19th century was the age of hysteria; and the 20th the age of narcissism; the 21st is well on its way to being the age of the "selfless psychopath", that individual (primarily found lurking in the environment of the political left, but certainly not exclusively) willing to sacrifice everyone on the altar of their idealism. Or, as Caroline Glick so aptly refers to them: Peace Loving Murderers.
Glick is speaking specifically about Palestinian murderers and thugs who are celebrated as heroes in Gaza and the remarkably clueless current Israeli government that enables them; but her term captures the essence of today's "antiwar" movement and the neo-Marxist ideology that animates it.
Scratch most of today's antiwar activists and you find people who are not so much antiwar as they are anti-capitalist, anti-America, anti-Israel, anti-freedom and anti-reality. As for being "antiwar", they are entirely willing to wage war and kill indiscriminantly when it is in support of their underlying ideology.
These are the "peace-loving murderers" who support and enable utopian ideologies that oppress, brutalize, and kill--but in the name of "peace" and "social justice" and some distorted concept of "human rights". They invite murderous, lying thugs like Ahmadinejad to tea and celebrate the likes of Hugo Chavez, even as he slowly and methodically destroys the soul of Venezuela.
These are the naked, or pink, or Kaffia-wearing protesters who claim to "support the troops" even as they encourage and enable those who are killing them.
Never in history have so many displayed so much casual psychopathy. Most could care less about the genocide going on in Sudan--but let the U.S. decide to intervene to try and stop it and you will be astonished at how their focus will shift as they sense yet another opportunity to undermine and demonize that which is good on the altar of their endless narcissism.
Even now, they are in the process of transforming the ugly, repressive regime of Iran and the psychopaths who run it into victims of U.S. aggression and imperialism.
Siggy has been writing a series on the age of psychopathy for Pajamas Media (see here and here) in which he notes:
Left unchecked, pathology always escalates to a higher level of dysfunction, and narcissism of the malignant variety almost always progresses to frank psychopathy.
In free societies, political discourse has become extreme. In not-so-free societies, it has evolved into denial of reality and calls for violence and even genocide. In the latter societies, people really do believe the most bizarre, horrific and genocidal ideas foisted on them by the dysfunctional regimes that rule them. They willingly construct fantasies and complicated conspiracies to support and buttress those beliefs.
But free societies are not immune or blameless. For example, Holocaust denial, anti-Semitism and 9/11 conspiracies flourish in the Arab world. But the only reason those dysfunctional beliefs continue to be regarded as ‘acceptable and ‘mainstream’ is because there are dysfunctional individuals and groups, even in free societies who give those paranoid ideas credibility and support.
If that sort of cognitive malignancy which can take hold even in a free society were to be denounced and exposed for the cancer it is, the people who hold those beliefs would be marginalized.
The reason such dysfunctional and irrational thinking is not denounced has nothing to do with good and evil, or even right and wrong. The vast majority of people are able to distinguish between right and wrong. But that said, the evils that arise out of the mental dysfunction, and which have underwritten the deaths of millions upon millions, are frequently not denounced because of political agendas and the ideologies that drive them.
We simply don’t want to admit that politics in free nations, expressed by supposedly caring souls, can be as deadly as the ‘politics’ in nations governed by tyrants.
In this new age, it has become de rigueur for the poltical left (and sometimes the political right) to mouth the slogans of peace and social justice, even as the accompanying behavior enables and facilitates the objectives of tyrants, murderers and psychopaths on the international stage.
This is the legacy of the unrestrained idealism of malignant narcissism. The human misery and the millions of deaths brought about by the glorious revolutions and utopias of the 20th century are going to pale by comparison when placed side-by-side with the efforts of the caring and compassionate, peace-loving murderers of the 21st.
God help us.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 8:06 AM |
Monday, October 01, 2007
OPPORTUNITIES FOR SELF-CONGRATULATION AND RISK-FREE DISSENT
In case you missed Mark Steyn's column, "Democracies Talk, Tyranies Act", from yesterday, here are some relevant passages :
"I'm proud of my university today," Stina Reksten, a 28-year-old Columbia graduate student from Norway, told the New York Times. "I don't want to confuse the very dire human rights situation in Iran with the issue here, which is freedom of speech. This is about academic freedom."
Isn't it always? But enough about Iran, let's talk about me! The same university that shouted down an American anti-illegal-immigration activist and the same university culture that just deemed former Harvard honcho Larry Summers too misogynist to be permitted on campus is now congratulating itself over its commitment to "academic freedom." True, renowned Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo is not happy. "They can have any fascist they want there," said professor Zimbardo, "but this seems egregious." But, hey, don't worry: He was protesting not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presence at Columbia but Donald Rumsfeld's presence at the Hoover Institution....
So much of contemporary life is about opportunities for self-congratulation. Risk-free dissent is the default mode of our culture, and extremely seductive. If dissent means refusing to let the Bush administration bully you into wearing a flag lapel pin, why, then Katie Couric (bravely speaking out on this issue just last week) is the new Mandela! If Rumsfeld is a "fascist." then anyone can fight fascism. It's no longer about the secret police kicking your door down and clubbing you to a pulp. Well, OK, it is if you're a Buddhist monk in Burma. But they're a long way away, and it's all a bit complicated and foreign, and let's not "confuse the very dire human rights situation" in Hoogivsastan with an opportunity to celebrate our courage in defending "academic freedom" in America. Ahmadinejad must occasionally have felt he was appearing in a matinee of "A Chance To Hear [Insert Name Of Enemy Head Of State Here]." Could have been Chavez, could have been Mullah Omar, could have been Herr ReichsfuhrerHitler himself, as Columbia's Dean John Coatsworth proudly boasted on television.
...Bollinger got raves even from the right for "speaking truth to power." But so what? It's like Noel Coward delivering a series of devastating put-downs to Hitler. The Fuhrer's mad as hell but at the end of the afternoon he goes back to killing, and dear Noel goes back to singing "The Stately Homes Of England." Ahmadinejad goes back to doing – to persecuting, to murdering, to terrorizing, to nuclearizing – and Bollinger cuts out his press clippings and puts them on the fridge.
Far be it from me to psychologically rain on the left's self-congratulatory parade, but their artificial sunshine needs to be replaced by a little reality.
In fact, they make my job as a psychiatrist easy. For example, consider this cartoon:
Though they believe that this cartoon and others like it expose the "brutality" and "oppression" of America, it really reveals far more about how members of the antiwar crowd view themselves:
- The lone, courageous and morally righteous troubadour, speaking truth to power
- Theirs is a simple message of peace...
- But the bullying, thuggish rightwing nutjobs will use any means--including violence to shut them up and prevent that message from being heard
- Their brave dissent is crushed by the evil that is America
This heroic self image must comfort them greatly, since in fascist state that is the America of their imagination, this is the only kind of vile "persecution" they suffer when they dare to question or oppose the BushHitler and Darth Cheney.
Nevertheless, at the risk of catastrophically cracking that wondrous bubble of narcissism the left hangs out in, I must point out that they desperately need to do a great deal of soul-searching and open their eyes to reality and get a grip.
Beneath the priggish self-righteousness; beneath that romantic and suffering image off moral superiority that they cultivate religiously, they have become nothing more than the appeasers and enablers of those who represent the very opposite of peace.
Here is reality--if they have enough of that courage to face it instead of the rightwing strawman they are constantly speaking their "truth" to:
- Iran is not only pursuing a nuclear program in order to "wipe Israel off the map", they are also actively engaged in direct military conflict with the US and responsible for the loss of both American and Iraqi lives.
- Caroline Glick writes about those "peace-loving", oppressed Palestinians:
...in 2006, the Palestinians imported 30 tons of explosives into Gaza from Egypt. Hamas has dug 10 tunnels into the western Negev from which it will be able to launch attacks against the IDF or against civilians. The situation along the breached Gaza-Egypt border is even worse. Diskin referred to the weapons and personnel smuggling tunnels there as "one big rabbit warren."
As the Palestinians prepare themselves for battle, this week they invented their justification for attacking the Jews. Just as they did in September 2000, this week Palestinian and Israeli Arab leaders opened their propaganda campaign for war by falsely accusing Israel of conspiring to destroy the mosques on the Temple Mount.
Like its excavation by the Western Wall that has been going on quietly for the past several months, the Israel Antiquities Authority coordinated its salvage dig by the Mughrabi Gate of the Old City with the Islamic Wakf, the Jordanian government and all other relevant authorities before its archeologists began their work this week. Everyone understood that the excavation is being conducted 70 meters away from the Temple Mount and will in no way affect it.
But facts are irrelevant. The Arabs are not interested in the facts. They are interested in war. Sheikh Abdullah Nimer Darwish, the head of the southern branch of the Israeli Islamic movement, made this point clearly Thursday morning when he told Israel Radio that the war will likely begin when the heads of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh, return from Mecca. - How about some moral outrage at Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel and its continued committment to it's destruction :
Hamas said Friday that it would never recognize Israel and will not, as a movement, abide by previously reached Palestinian peace accords with Israel as urged by President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah. “We will never recognize Israel. There is nothing called Israel, neither in reality nor in the imagination. - Even when the beasts of Hamas or the psychopaths of Iran don't bother to disguise their genocidal and apocalyptic agenda (which is not particularly peaceful), the antiwar crowd somehow remains completely oblivious.
It would seems obvious to even a child that the biggest imepdiment to any real or lasting peace is not conservative or neocon ideas; not capitalism; not America and not Israel; not, in short, any of the strawmen so carefully set up by the left just so that they can protest and feel good about themselves (see some recent photos of self-congratulation and risk-free dissent here).
If they care to demonstrate real courage, then I suggest the leftist antiwar clowns speak their peaceful truth to the real warmongers and barbarians. Of course, they should then bravely prepare themselves for some real persecution and oppression which will likely suffer as a result.'
Or, as Steyn suggests (and you should read his entire column) do the needs of the humanitarians always outweigh the needs of ordinary humans in the lefty la-la land, where being virtuous and courageous means never having to do anything in the real world.
All I am suggesting is what I've suggested many times on this blog: give reality a chance....
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 7:10 AM |
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