I think that I shall never hear a phrase more heavily loaded with skeptical sarcasm than the bromide of “Islam is a religion of peace.” It’s even more heavily loaded than the Soviet-era convention of client states calling themselves the “People’s Democratic Republic of Whatever.” I also will never see anything rhetorically speedier than those self-elected community Islamic community leaders who briefly note some horrific and murderous act committed by a member alleged to be in good standing in their community and then commence to whine about how they will be hurt (Hurt, I say, deeply hurt!) by the resulting (nearly always non-existent) anti-Islamic backlash on the part of the general public. Strong word whining, but no other expression quite hits the spot when it comes to self-centered self-involvement. The implication which comes across is that blowing off the legs of runners at the Boston Marathon, knocking down the Twin Towers, opening fire on a bunch of Army troops at a post processing center, or beheading a middle-aged female office worker while screaming Allah Akbar is more wrong because it makes Muslims look bad, not because it is mutilation and murder, mass or otherwise.
This whole ‘anti-Muslim backlash’ concept is richly ironic, considering how militant Islamics in the Middle East and in Equatorial Africa (by whatever name they go by) are working overtime with the social media, in putting out pictures and videos of beheadings, mass executions, mass kidnappings, boasting of these and encouraging adherents to greater efforts. Islam would seem to need very little help in looking bad, brutal and murderous.
Now after a summer of very well-publicized beheadings of Westerners in the Middle East, we have the beheading of a Westerner in the middle-west, although bless their hearts, the mainstream media combine is doing their very best to call it workplace violence, stamping their tiny feet and squeaking “Workplace violence! Workplace violence, I tell you!” By an ex-convict jailhouse convert, who had just been sacked for proselytizing and scaring the heck out of his coworkers, who immediately went to the administrative offices of his workplace with a big knife and where he would expect to find not burly warehouse workers and truck drivers but female office workers, and where he expended a great deal of effort in beheading one of them, all the while screaming Islamic slogans, until righteously dropped by a company c-level executive who happened to be a reserve deputy sheriff. Meanwhile another self-identified Muslim in Oklahoma has been charged with a terrorist offence in threatening to behead a co-worker at the very least, bad timing, and very bad taste if meant as a joke, as the co-worker apparently first thought it was. Alas, it seems that we are all losing our sense of humor regarding the “religion of peace.” Are we now at the point where we begin to play cowboys and Muslims?
Discuss.
(Cross-posted at www.ncobrief.com)
Not yet.
We will need to see the media abandon the Workplace Violence mantra before we’re there. I am gratified to see them calling 0 on the question of whether he was provided Intelligence on ISIS and continuing the use of ISIS instead of ISIL. But we’re not there yet. I’m expecting something bigger than 9/11 will be necessary to kick off a game of Crusaders and Muslims.
I avoid mainstream cable tv as much as possible, but I did scroll through to see if I could catch a news report on the victim, her photos, interviews with family members, witnesses etc. Nothing. I understand that these atrocities are done to provoke a response, to then force the “authorities” to take action against the outraged. I’m still waiting, perhaps in vain, for some elected official to just circumvent the MSM/White House and hold a series of press conferences, get the victims on camera and keep pushing the issue. Remember when they went after Mitch McConnell’s wife? He wouldn’t leave it alone, someone would ask him a question about an unrelated matter and he would answer with what he wanted to say. After the Lee Rigby slaughter, I was disgusted, but now?
Yes, it’s well past time for the muzzies to experience a good old fashioned Jacksonian response.
Islam pants the seeds and tends the garden of so called “radical Islam”.
This is a nice, tightly written post. Just as I wonder all the time when and if the people of Illinois will ever have enough of that scam of a state and just toss everybody out on their ear the next election, I always wonder when the USA will hit the breaking point with all of these head choppers and other mayhem causers. I would have to agree with Mrs. Davis above in that we will need something really extraordinary, such as a dirty nuke, poisoned water supply or the like. And all bets will be off.
“plants” the seeds
And we will hit a breaking point – as Mrs. Davis suggests, and as Wretchard at the Belmont Club also theorized in “Three Conjectures.”
And then all bets will be off. The backbone of the country are Jacksonians, which take a lot of provoking of late, but when they are finally provoked an inch too far…
We’ll likely be sorry afterwards, in a mild kind of way. But alive and free.
What would the USA “hitting the breaking point” mean in practice?
Don’t know, Lex – it’s an open frontier. I’d think some kind of atrocity involving a shopping mall, a la Westgate in Nairobi, or an airport. Possibly a Beslan-type school or day-care hostage taking, although in the wake of school shootings, they are now getting pretty hard to get into, by the casual passing stranger. My daughter and I have skulled out some possible local scenarios, which I will not put out there lest it give people evil ideas. I’m only a gifted amateur, not a pro – and I’ll bet that those pros who have not been corrupted with the virus of political correctitude will have come up with even scarier scenarios.
When we do hit it, though, I suspect that the best that Islamics can hope for – especially recently immigrated Islamics – is a fast trip with a single suitcase each back to where they came from.
Lex,
Try a Muslim suicide Ebola sliming of a major metropolitan area.
The Islamic leadership, and it’s painfully ignorant subjects, have made the same catastrophic mistake that our adversaries have made several times in the past.
The leaders of any autocratic cult assume the enforced uniformity of their movement endows it with a mystical strength which will overwhelm any opposition, especially a culture like ours which is in a constant state of turmoil from conflicting views and political changes in leadership.
In fact, like any unalloyed metal, the monolithic state and its culture are brittle, inflexible, and prone to shatter when stressed.
There has never existed a culture as coldly dangerous as western, mechanistic, empirical society. If anyone can look at the last few centuries, especially the 20th, and not understand that flamingly bright fact, then they are destined to experience it directly, as it appears the theocrats are determined to do.
The first half of the last century featured, initially, the overthrow of a centuries-long aristocratic order, and then the defeat of some of the mystic cults that attempted to replace it. The balance of the century was a “long, twilight struggle” to overcome the pervasive cult which had attempted to colonize the world.
Much as now, the west was often criticized as being fragmented, politicized, and lacking a coherent answer, ideologically, to the challenge it faced.
In the end, it was the great monoliths which cracked, and collapsed, while the fragmented west stumbled on.
Now we are faced, once again, with another theocratic fascism which claims the Mandate of Heaven, as the previous had claimed the power of racial superiority, or class consciousness, or superior spirituality.
I truly fear, not for them, but for our own future peace of mind, that these deluded cult leaders will once again push too far, arouse the sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve. Then there will be the war with no quarter, no sanctuary, no mercy, until they either agree to endure the unendurable, or cease to exist at all. There are ample precedents for both outcomes in the past.
We are on the edge of an abyss. I have no confidence that the current regime will be able to lead us away from that bottomless pit, indeed, their incompetence and ideological delusions are more likely to lead us over the edge.
We must make some profoundly significant decisions soon, beginning in November. There is no evasion, no avoidance possible. The question rings in our ears. What will we answer?
Are we now at the point where we begin to play cowboys and Muslims?
Maybe if they attacked Harvard, but I don’t see it happening easily otherwise. The governing elites are too isolated from those classes and occupations where these incidents happen. These things are like crime reports from a foreign country few have heard of, let alone visited. It will take a mini-revolution to change that. Meanwhile, the rest of us are perceived as barbarians to be kept in check by manipulation of the news.
“Breaking point”….well, it wasn’t 9/11. It wasn’t the Boston bombing.
I have seen Facebook threads where a discussion of beheadings of Americans & others in the Middle East quickly resulted in accusations that the war drums were being beaten for the benefit of Halliburton.
I saw another FB thread where the originator pointed out insane doings by an extreme Left-wing organization which wants to sue Obama for selling Iron Dome systems to Israel….and one commenter started his comment by saying “Wow, those people are even crazier than the extreme Right”…but couldn’t bring himself to stop there, and continued “nah. nothing tould be crazier than those people.”
See also Roger Simon’s description of a conversation with acquaintances re the Oklahoma beheading:
http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2014/09/29/liberals-as-low-information-voters/?singlepage=true
….Roger didn’t say who these people are, but it’s a fair bet that many of them are in positions of significant media influence.
I think vast portions of the American population are now so heavily indoctrinated, and/or simply ignorant, that a Jacksonian response…or even a Kennedyesque response…cannot be expected unless a terrorist atrocity is so far-reacing that most people know someone who was personally affected.
Boiling frogs.
And what the devil is a “a Kennedyesque response”: are people to go out and shag actresses?
It’s not always so easy to distinguish a boiling frog from an animal being pushed too far, even in hindsight in well-studied episodes like the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution. And it’s historically fairly common to reach a breaking point even without much help from Stein’s Law, and the Stein’s Law condition in the current US seems stronger to me than in those or many other breaking points in the past, and to my way of thinking that should tend to reduce stability significantly.
The backbone of the country are Jacksonians,
I’ve had the impression for about a decade that these Jacksonians have limited influence in the US as a whole and what influence they have is declining precipitously. I don’t live in the US so I’m going entirely by demographic info, national election results and cultural indicators from online and mass media (eg at no time in my life have such people been dismissed as low status). Approximately what percentage of the population could be said to make up this Jacksonian “backbone”?
> Approximately what percentage of the population could be said to make up this Jacksonian “backbone”?<
for a %, i would start with professional sports(baseball, football, basketball, hockey) radiate outward from that demographic.
Jacksonian America has compelled President Obama and Congress to reduce government expenditures and the bureaucratic workforce at an unprecedented rate over the past four years.
Jacksonian America just compelled President Obama to go to war.
The 2008 election is looking more and more like an anomaly.
It seems to me that the present American regime relies rather heavily on omnipresent propaganda and increasingly hysterical denial of reality, which will certainly become a problem should reality decide to retort.
About the Religion of Peace(tm), I recall that the phrase was oft-repeated by George Bush, including just after a rather famous incident. Much of his policy, I think, sprung from that false belief, which has had ugly consequences for the world.
But if you didn’t really think Islam was a religion of peace- well, where could you turn, politically? Surely not to the democrats.
So, as a Jacksonian sort myself, in my opinion there is no one of political prominence who speaks for my viewpoint, at least yet. In fact I’d say that both parties of the political class have spent enormous efforts attacking and de-legitimizing people who don’t share their idiotic globalism and transnationalism.
The problem is that reality doesn’t go away because you tell lies about it. Islam is not in fact a religion of peace, although there are many peaceful Muslims, and this is an important fact with many consequences.
I suspect we’re facing a another major terrorist attack, very likely with casualties worse than the last one. If you’re one of the people who has spent the last few years years lying to people- “workplace violence”- I think you’re going to have trouble selling your shinola.
Alas, I also suspect I’ll get to find out if I’m right, assuming I survive.
I’ve had the impression for about a decade that these Jacksonians have limited influence in the US as a whole and what influence they have is declining precipitously. I don’t live in the US
Jacksonians have limited influence because they don’t want influence, they want to be left alone. They are the people who live in Flyover Country between the coasts, south of the Ohio and West of the Missippi (more or less). What will be necessary is for the puritanical Wilsonians who certify the elite that runs the country to flip from Religion of Peace to Terrorist Cult that wants to destroy Liberalism. What it will take for this to happen is going to be dreadful if the Boston Marathon bombing didn’t do it.
Look at WWII. While the Anglophilic Wilsonian Roosevelt wanted to go to war, the Jacksonians weren’t ready for it till Pearl Harbor. This time the Wilsonian leadership of Bush and Obama aren’t ready to put the Cult of Evil label on Islam, these are just a few nutcases misusing Islam. Until they flip, domestic beheadings will continue to be downplayed as workplace violence. But once that flips and the media gives Ferguson treatment to a beheading or other act, things will move fast.
What Mrs. Davis said … but because we generally do want to be left alone, and as long as the puritanical Wilsonian elite classes aren’t effing things up badly, we won’t make much of a fuss over letting them run things, or let them think they are running things.
But the very real threat of Islamic terrorism here, and now the various epidemics (ebola, etc) likely brought in through not paying any attention to border security, I believe that Jacksonians are starting to re-think letting the Wilsonian elites continue. There won’t be much about this in the mainstream media,of course. But consider how quickly word got out this spring about the Bundy ranch affair, and how many people just … appeared at the ranch. They traveled from the ends of the country, the highway was jammed with people getting to the ranch.
The elite political class and their handmaidens in the cultural world and in the mainstream news orgs believe, somewhat naively, that nothing happens among the proles unless it is ordered by them and broadcast on CNN, or MSNBC. Something big can’t possibly happen at the grass roots, organically. And so they are surprised, every time.
The guys I’ve had lunch with most of my adult life aren’t any kind of modern, metrosexual, enlightened types.
Their general feeling about stuff that happens in other places is, “Let ’em kill each other, who gives a crap.”
But when the US decides to get involved, or is attacked, the moderate opinion is, “more rubble, less trouble.”
They’ve been disgusted by much of our military activities over the past several decades, but not because we did too much.
Their sons and daughters are now in various branches of the military, as is one of mine, and they aren’t fooling around.
These kids have been playing “shooter” games for their whole lives. I truly pity the fools that get themselves in their crosshairs— they will receive no mercy in this life.
The islamicists had better hope they get some in the next.
Sgt. Mom, you are right, another alternative is that the Jacksonians depose the Wilsonians from control and seize the reins of power. But this rarely works well. Look at how effective the TEA Party has been in creating a leadership to take over the Republican party. And the Jacksonian presidency itself did not work out so well; think Second Bank of the United States, Panic of 1837, and the Trail of Tears, which Muslims would do well to study. The Jacksonians do produce Heros they will follow, but not the legion of subordinate leaders needed to sustain the crisis and post-crisis effort. They just want to go back home after the evil enemy has been utterly destroyed.
We have been much better served by Wilsonians and Hamiltonians leading the Jacksonians in a direction both agree upon. But this is not happening. And that is why we see gridlock in Washington. The plurality mass of the Jacksonians in the House of Representatives is acting as a check on minority Wilsonian and Hamiltonians in the Senate and White House. Until one of the minority groups adopts a strategy the plurality supports, we will continue to have gridlock and ineffective policies. Wilsonian Obama thinks ineffective air strikes will placate his Jacksonian opposition without offending his Wilsonian base. And he is wrong on both counts. LBJII.
East Anglian, If you have not read this I highly recommend you do so. The Arabs should do the same. Ask the Japanese. Or the Cherokee.
East Anglian, If you have not read this I highly recommend you do so.
I’ve been burned by WRM before. He’s not at all reliable. Maybe he knows more about his own country than he does about Europe (I certainly hope so!) but didn’t he vote for Obama expecting something completely different from what he got? If so, that tells me he’s one of these perennial American optimists who thinks there’s something magical in the air of America that makes it exempt from the forces that have destroyed other great powers in the past. They all thought they were exceptional but they all withered away, usually due to internal matters.
The Arabs should do the same. Ask the Japanese. Or the Cherokee.
The America that took the bull by the horns and defeated the Japanese in less than four years can’t take on Afghanistan and Iraq in more than a decade. Now it even has ebola. If Jacksonians, as described by WRM and posters here, were in power, I’ve little doubt that 13 years after 9/11 Mideast Muslims would be “in their place” so to speak, but my perception (again, as an outsider) is that the Jacksonian demographic is now such a dispersed and declining minority that they are unlikely to ever again have a decisive impact on US policy.
Perhaps if there were a total collapse in the authority of the institutions of the US government those Jacksonians, with deeper roots and greater motivation and willingness to act than most other demographics, would come to the fore again and have influence far greater than their numbers. But until that time they are up against the world’s most powerful state – a state that shows no signs of seeing them as anything other than cash cows to be milked and occasionally useful cannon fodder.
Europeans are constantly underestimating America. After getting all their information about us from either Hollywood or various New Age Conspiracists, they’ve been anticipating our collapse for years. Meanwhile, it’s Europe that’s dying.
Aside from the examples I gave before, here’s another. In 2008, we elected Obama, the man who promised to make Jacksonians’ energy prices skyrocket because they have a tendency to cling to their God and guns. Well now it turns out the opposite has happened. Jacksonians have made America the leading energy producer in the world, and Obama is trying to sell oil and gas to Europeans to offset Russian supply cuts. Who is milking who now?
Just this week Nigeria announced they no longer sell oil to the US. Due to the qualities of African oil, soon Libya and Algeria will follow, and no African oil will be sold in the US. Instead they’re increasingly selling it to China, where they will be competing with Middle East producers. It’s possible that the coming oil glut that will force OPEC nations to compete with each other for fewer markets will cause the cartel to unravel. Former rivals and enemies will be fighting with each other instead of America. It must be some freak coincidence how the Jacksonian “cannon fodder” always end up prevailing in the end.
Divine Providence.
Dearieme,
“Boiling frogs.
And what the devil is a “a Kennedyesque response”: are people to go out and shag actresses?”
Superb!
Mike