Current Mood:  grumpy
Current Music: Iron Maiden - Wrathchild (Squid's Redoubt)
You know, there I was, sitting around the virtual round table with  Eric the .5b, Liberty Libertine, riomccarthy and Mike, listening to their requests go scrolling through the Redoubt and generally having a good ol' time, when the thing I'd inserted at the end of the hour long request block finally shifted in. Yesterday's podcast. Now, I'm not one for being overly self-critical. Obsessively self-reflective and analytical, sure, but by and large I've given up the art of second-guessing myself into paralysis or into subverting the opinions I've espoused in a public forum. I reserve the right to change my mind, just as everyone has the right, but if I've voiced an opinion, odds are pretty good I've got some defense for it and actually believe what I'm saying. Not everyone operates that way (as Scyllacat was kind enough to show me by pointing me to the online forum where she's been feeling disgusted by the discourse), but I do, because I simply got too tired of folks who didn't and resolved never to follow in that path. All that said, here's the thought I had while listening to the couple of extended talky bits: Goddamn, I'm ranty.
Now, let me be clear. I'm not suggesting that I don't actually believe what I said. That is, to be clear, and to set it out simply: I generally find religion a waste of time, and a generally toxic concept. You can be religious all you want, but its a valid target of criticism, in my view. In particular, I find the perverse hands-off attitude of the current public media norm towards "The Religion of Peace," whose adherents and public voices have been stridently clear in exactly what abominations they think are just and moot, while Christianity espoused publicly is grist for the laughing stocks, to be repellently offensive. The best measure of a culture is to listen to exactly what they say they want to do.
So, shorter version: I think giving Islam a pass on the violence, suffering, political oppression, and general malaise it engenders in nearly every country on Earth in which its the dominant paradigm, while ripping apart, say, Harriet Miers, because she publicly espouses Christianity and isn't shy about it, to be both stupidly hypocritical and ultimately self-destroying. Mostly just stupid, though. In my perfect universe, they'd both be laughed off the public fora for being mystics, but that's a different issue. What I'm really getting at is I sounded terribly ranty during the podcast, to the point I felt a fleeting, vague desire to just take the whole thing down and bury it in the back yard, maybe replacing the 'cast with one with less focus on me sounding like I'm planning to start the Ku Klux Muslia. But I had to wonder then, and I'm left still wondering, if I'm actually wrong (and I don't believe I am), or whether I'm responding in a purely rational way to a well-verbalized, explicit threat that the public faces around me seem ignorant of, so in my own enlightened self-interest, I've cranked the volume to 11 on the issue. There've been roughly six terroristic threats or events of major proportion fielded in the past two weeks. Welcome to Ramadan! Bali, New York, France ... hey, al-Zawahiri says we should be on the lookout for a major Ramadan offensive! And its been like this for several years now ... like two-decades of it, if we're to actually look at the historical schedule of events. If, every year at Christmas, the military hanging out near Israel, every major metropolitan area, and most of the Western world looked around and said, "Fuck, its Christmas again; better jack the security level up. There'll be more bomb threats coming in for the next thirty days," while the Pope went on TV railing against the Great Satan and commanding that good Catholics should be willing to blow themselves up to see Bosnia destroyed, followed by Pat Buchanan immediately after nodding sagely and giving a quite erudite and intellectual analysis of the Bible and Protestant history, describing how Bosnia is clearly the place the Anti-Christ will rise from and linking the seven seals and seven horns to the last seven leaders of the country ... how long do you think it'd be before the Bosnians started scratching their heads and saying, "OK, looks like the Christians want to kill us all in our beds. We better keep an eye on those fuckers!" Even being aware that not every Christian is out sharpening a blade for a Bosnian throat, wouldn't it be reasonable to suggest that in a community whose foremost leaders were so obsessed and fixated on their destruction, its clear that the moderates really aren't, and worse than being ineffectual, are effectively empowering the folks at the top, rather than dragging them down and stomping a mudhole in their sorry asses? You'd think, right? That'd be the reasoned and rational assessment, right? And if it were Christians, there'd be a line out the door of media moguls ready to create WWII-esque documentaries on just how filthy and terrible those Christian bastards are. (The majority of the Arab world and a good chunk of Europe already thinks the Jews eat babies, drink menstrual blood to live forever, and truly rule the whole rest of the world; if only they did, rather than simply being one of the most abused and defamed cultural assemblies on Earth ... but that's a different post.) There'd be a nationwide crackdown on churches and associating remotely with one and being involved with criminal enterprise would be a death sentence in the public eye and much like drawing the gaze of Sauron to the media. So, where's the equivalent concern, or even a tenth of it, over Islam? MEMRI is good enough to bring us the internal communications of Arab rulers, media speakers, and clerics on the subject of ... well, the US, the West, and jihad, and since its cited by folks on both sides of the aisle, I'm thinking its about as balanced a source as we're going to find, short of learning Arabic ourselves. I take people at their words. When the biggest leaders in the areas of religion and politics say they think I should be destroyed utterly, I kind of get concerned. Do I think the majority think I, personally, need to be eradicated? No. But they certainly aren't arguing too hard I shouldn't be, or the folks at the top wouldn't be. So why isn't Islam being painted using the same brush methodology that, say, the media uses to colour the US Administration, the Republican party, or ... well, anything else on CNN with far less support and reason to demonize it? I mean -- let's get specific. How about the guy that blowed himself up real good in Oklahoma. You recall that, right? Vaguely? Maybe saw fifteen seconds of the issue on the news? Yeah. Did they mention he appears to be an attendee of the same mosque in Norman that Zacaria Moussaoui was associated with? Or that the explosive is the same type Moussaoui attempted to use -- one that's not exactly common? That he tried to buy a big chunk of fertilizer a few days before going boom outside a densely packed stadium? (You know, nitrate fertilizer, the stuff that, when mixed with fuel oil, in sufficient quantities, was used in OK to blow up another building ... Maybe you remember.) Did you hear any of that? Starting to wonder why you didn't? I'm not saying there's any vast conspiracy of Islamic Mind-Takers controlling the media and government. On the contrary, a conspiracy would work less well. My gut suggests that the problem is that of the folks with the mouthpieces and the folks holding the reigns, neither wants to appear to be anything other than pristinely politically correct unless there's absolutely no chance of being wrong. Its OK to beat up on Christians, especially if you're media, because -- like white Southern males -- they're the designated whipping boys to castigate ourselves for being legitimately better than others. You can't say that, though, so we (in the abstracted sense) have to keep flogging in public lest we be called out for arrogance. But actually targeting Muslims? Despite the fact there's more than a little evidence that not doing so will eventually lead to someone going boom in a public place with visions of sugar-virgins dancing in their heads? Bad form. I've gone in circles with both Heather and Scyllacat over the past couple days about my personal feelings about what we ought to be doing to secure our safety. I'm all for announcing publically that the next terrorist act on Western soil will result in the immediate destruction of Tehran, Damascus, and Ridyah, and if the folks at the top would like to keep their populations intact, its in their best interests to check them. They'll ignore the threat, of course, and as the rain of penetrators, cruise missiles, and immense FAE flatten the capital cities of the worst players in the region, we announce the next set of targets. And then we execute that set with the next inevitable act of carnage. Repeat until either the populace in general figures out we ain't playin', and comes to their senses and personally drags the terror-meisters out in the streets to be ripped apart by angry women and children, or there's no one left. In a sense, it would be the ultimate test of Pavlov's theory. Heather expressed the expected Canadian horror at the scope of devestation and loss of innocent lives, voicing concern that the innocent masses should not have to die because a percentage of crazies went jabbing at a dragon. Scyllacat was likewise dismayed for the same reasons, and stated that she wouldn't want to have the responsability for making that decision, or even calling for it. For my part, I agree with Heather that such destruction is undesirable, but from my point of view, that concern is simply asthetic. Would I prefer to spare the lives of thousands, perhaps millions of people and billions in property damage? Absolutely. But only because its unpleasant and distasteful, its messy, not because I think its morally wrong. Making such judgements on a moral basis seems self-destructive to me. Morally, one would always choose to not raise arms than to intervene in another's ability to do so against you, or destroy their ability to by striking those who are not the direct executors of the violation. But moralists die first in a conflict against those whose morality is more flexible. Survival cares nothing for morality, and the more power that is concentrated in the individual, the less society can afford to let threats slide. As such, a portion of every society must be made up of people such as myself without moral boundary, without consideration of the moral, in the protection of those who are moral. The moral survive at the sufference of the immoral. Likewise, I agree with Scyllacat that making such a decision carries significant responsibility. She would prefer to never have to carry such a thing, but I've been hungering my whole life for the opportunity to. The responsibility of such an act is both heavy and significant, but in the absence of those willing to shoulder it, it cannot be borne, and those who would suffer most at the depredations of lesser creatures are the ones which carry the burden of the failure of others to make the decision and see to its execution. I gave up innocence, deliberately, years ago. Like the moral, the innocent survive at the sufference of those who've burnt their innocence. How does this connect with what I was yamering about before? I think what we're seeing is the result of a society that's spent the past thirty years burning the very idea that morality can and should be flexible in the service of society, and that innocence is not something that can be afforded for everyone, all the time. For thirty years, higher education facilities have been cranking out innocent moralists with the expectation that the universe, as an enlightened place, rewards innocent moralists with the blessing of the just. The politicos play a fine job of appearing to be innocent moralists, in a profession that first targets the very traits they're trying to project, because they know that's the "ideal" to which Joe Average supposedly aspires. The media mouthpieces, being largely a product of the academic innocent moralist factories, lose their innocence early and compensate by redoubling their moralist sides (and that applies to those on both Left and Right). Joe Average knows that's all bullshit. How do Joe and Jane know that? Simple, they have to actually make a living in the world. Some of them get to be innocent moralists, some get to be innocently immoral, some get to be corrupted moralists, and some -- like myself -- end up being the corrupted immoral. Joe and Jane knows that different folks do better in certain roles, places, and times because they see different folks in different roles, places, and times. Joe and Jane aren't fuckin' stupid; they know cops tend to be corrupted moralists because that's the only kind of person that can be faced with the constant degredation of humanity and fight back the Dark day in and day out. Joe and Jane know the score. Sometimes, Joe and Jane get dazzled and let themselves forget that the innocent moralist isn't the end all, be all, but it generally comes back to them in extremity. Leaders on the ground don't generally get to be innocent moralists. Folks want people who can do the job. It catches up with them fast. Ultimately, it seems to me that there's a vast gulf between necessity and social awareness. The dream of the innocent moralist is pretty deeply rooted, and it keeps getting reinforced all the time. That's why Islam is just not getting the bad rap its more than earned lately; innocent moralists don't, and can't, judge other people like that. Its morally repugnant to judge others, and that judgement would require the judge to be aware of wrongdoing, thus corruption. I don't suffer those limitations. Per Scyllacat and Heather, this doesn't necessarily make me evil, though my position has been publically decried as such by, well, pretty much everyone with a bullhorn. I don't mind being evil. I embraced being the villain in my own story as much as anyone else's years ago, too, and my thoughts and acts don't require others' disdain to be mine. They both think I'm pretty cool, I think, though I'm neither moral nor innocent. And that's a good thing. But, being who I am, I can't let Muslims off the hook for what's going on in the world, not in good conscience or foul. I have to point it out, rub their faces in it, and scream, "You're responsible!" at the top of my voice until they get the hint. And I'll keep doing so whenever it comes up. But, goddamn, it sounds ranty in a podcast. Incidently, if you, my reader, are Muslim, I'll tell you just like I tell my Christian associates and as I said in my podcast: Can't you find something better to do with your time? For fuck's sake, get a better religion, like Thelema, or worshiping canteloupe, or being obsessed with sex as the gateway to the solar disc through the iconography of the vagina or something. Jesus, people, really. Please send all fatwa's to this email account. I'll be collecting them to share with Rushdie over a beer.
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