How dare I say "I am NOT Charlie Hebdo"!* How dare I think the World Trade Center twin towers were ugly (I did and I do) and the bond traders within were somewhat less than saints and heroes!
It turns out that the much vaunted freedom of speech does not extend to the contrarian who says "wait an effing minute, here" when everybody suddenly chants the same chant -- while the war profiteers rub their hands with glee.
In emails with a French friend across the Atlantic, who amuses me with her Gaullocentric opinions, I am hitting the bedrock of self-contradiction in the values of the Eurocentric West, which includes the United States and territories south and north.
Our supposedly open and free Western values prevent us from acknowledging that
the point of view and values of Jihadists, as distasteful as they may be to
us, are equal to ours.
The Jihadists feel about Western power pretty much the way Catholic
medieval Europeans felt about the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem and the
Holy Land. Their societies, let's remember, function largely as traditional
societies functioned in Europe 1,000 years ago.
They are not democracies and proud of that. All authority is theocratic and absolute. Women are subject to men. People get limbs (and sexual organs) cut off for transgressions, or to comply with law.
That's not my cup of tea, either, dear Western reader. But it's theirs and they have -- by our Western "enlightened" values -- a right to it.
Let's step back from our cultural biases for a moment.
When we Westerners go and try to "modernize" them with "human rights," we think we are being enlightened and helping them. Thus the huge Western mistake of demonizing the Taliban and anathemizing the burka.
When the citizens of countries that are predominantly Muslim look at our Western behavior, they reasonably think we are imposing our values. They think we are introducing heresies and wrongdoing. They are deeply offended by what they perceive as the blasphemy of humanism and the immorality of naked hedonism.
And this says nothing of the way Western governments have set up and supported all sorts of
monarchs, sultans and dictators -- none of them stellar advocates of human rights other than their own -- so long as they would sell us oil at a price we like.
So it is all fine and dandy to act outraged at their violent behavior in Paris, but it is only one more way we in the West ignore their cultural values and treat them as inferior savages in need of our superior ideas.
Who says democratic humanist secularism is better than theocratic Islamism? Didn't "civilized" Europe annihilate about 300 million people between 1914 and 1945? How dare we, Western Eurocentrics, proclaim that we have the superior values?
What gives us the gall to assert that all the brown and dark people, if they won't worship the Christianity we have never exemplified, should at least worship the human rights we don't respect?
This why I am NOT Charlie Hebdo. This is also why, the French and all their sudden "I am Charlie Hebdo" sympathizers, in the Shakespearean paraphrase, do protest too much.
* I apologize to readers who could not comment on my last post. For a variety of artistic and technical reasons, I wanted to change my post's headline and the headline-related link, ending up deleting and replacing the post. No Jihadists (or Western intelligence agencies) were hurt in the writing of this blog.
Friday, January 09, 2015
Thursday, January 08, 2015
I am NOT Charlie Hebdo
I said it on 9/11 and I'll say it now. It's easy to label someone else "terrorist" and be done with it, but what we should really be doing is trying to figure out what it is about the established order that propels some people to killing satirists.
I'm not saying I approve of the killings at all. But clearly, there is something afoot driving some people to clearly criminal and extreme behavior.
Maybe they have a grudge against the Eurocentric capitalist West? Is such a grudge justified, even if the murders are not? What can we, civilized and peace-loving citizens of the world do to heal the wounds that are causing such acts of desperation?
Because clearly, unless this was the work of provocateurs working for Western intelligence agencies, the murder of writers and artists at a satirical French magazine was a cry of despair. It's not a sane act, it does not gain anyone any profit (unless it is provocateurs trying to drum up more war).
Why did the murders occur? Why the Boston bombing? Why 9/11? Why the bombings in Madrid and London? There are people who obviously have despaired of having their grievances aired fairly and listened to with seriousness of purpose.
What are these grievances? How can we reach out to people who might become like these murderers and bombers and prevent the next loss of life?
I'm not saying I approve of the killings at all. But clearly, there is something afoot driving some people to clearly criminal and extreme behavior.
Maybe they have a grudge against the Eurocentric capitalist West? Is such a grudge justified, even if the murders are not? What can we, civilized and peace-loving citizens of the world do to heal the wounds that are causing such acts of desperation?
Because clearly, unless this was the work of provocateurs working for Western intelligence agencies, the murder of writers and artists at a satirical French magazine was a cry of despair. It's not a sane act, it does not gain anyone any profit (unless it is provocateurs trying to drum up more war).
Why did the murders occur? Why the Boston bombing? Why 9/11? Why the bombings in Madrid and London? There are people who obviously have despaired of having their grievances aired fairly and listened to with seriousness of purpose.
What are these grievances? How can we reach out to people who might become like these murderers and bombers and prevent the next loss of life?
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Why is it "death" when cops kill black men, but "murder" when a black man kills two cops?
I checked. Barack Obama repeatedly referred to the "death" of Michael Brown and of Eric Garner, with all the politically required sorrowful noises. Yet when it was non-black policemen who were killed, he used the m-word.
"I unconditionally condemn today's murder of two police officers in New York City," said Obama when two New York City policemen were killed, as unjustly and unjustifiably as Brown and Garner.
I am not aiming to excuse any killing. Nor do I intend to encourage killing. But a sense of even-handedness, of fairness, has to be raised here.
Not even President Obama seems to have the courage to speak up. Suddenly everyone is tripping over each other to say how bad this is and what a crime it is -- no ifs ands or buts.
No talk of sorrow, no compassion for the man who killed the policemen, even though his actions might have justified an insanity plea had he lived. In the eyes of the media and the president, the man was wrong.
Where was this moral certitude when cops were the killers? The cops were given all sorts of leeway, even to the point of walking scot free from any criminal charge.
Yet it was murder, too, in the cases of Brown and Garner.
The dictionary tells us to murder is "to kill or slaughter inhumanly or barbarously." The multiple bullets fired at Brown and the strangulation of Garner qualify as inhumane and barbarous.
Those acts should have been condemned "unconditionally" (I would say unequivocally), by the same president who now rends his garments. And by all the sound-bite seekers who are now lining up to express outrage.
"I unconditionally condemn today's murder of two police officers in New York City," said Obama when two New York City policemen were killed, as unjustly and unjustifiably as Brown and Garner.
I am not aiming to excuse any killing. Nor do I intend to encourage killing. But a sense of even-handedness, of fairness, has to be raised here.
Not even President Obama seems to have the courage to speak up. Suddenly everyone is tripping over each other to say how bad this is and what a crime it is -- no ifs ands or buts.
No talk of sorrow, no compassion for the man who killed the policemen, even though his actions might have justified an insanity plea had he lived. In the eyes of the media and the president, the man was wrong.
Where was this moral certitude when cops were the killers? The cops were given all sorts of leeway, even to the point of walking scot free from any criminal charge.
Yet it was murder, too, in the cases of Brown and Garner.
The dictionary tells us to murder is "to kill or slaughter inhumanly or barbarously." The multiple bullets fired at Brown and the strangulation of Garner qualify as inhumane and barbarous.
Those acts should have been condemned "unconditionally" (I would say unequivocally), by the same president who now rends his garments. And by all the sound-bite seekers who are now lining up to express outrage.
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