I’m not quite ready to address the issue itself, or even most of the reactions. I’m still reading Breivik’s manifesto and the interviews with his family, so once I’m finished and analyze all of it I’ll have some thoughts on the whole thing. And by then, no one will be interested.

For now, I’ll content myself to comment on this article by Michael Leeden over at Pajamas Media. I’ve read some of Leeden’s work before. Liked it, if memory serves me. He has a good reputation among some of the conservatives I know, but this article is way off the mark, and to me, encapsulates everything wrong with the thinking process of the Right/conservative movement on issues of Islamism, the Left, and even the survival of Western Civilization at times. Perhaps it’s because I’ve actually really studied extremists as an “expert” (though my former colleagues would heartily disagree I was an expert or professional of any kind). Perhaps it’s because from the ages of nineteen to twenty-four I existed in the extreme Leftist echo chamber of academia and counter-cultural music and political scenes, and at the same time, interacted with and seriously studied people we then judged to be “on the other side”. So perhaps I’m analyzing the article as something as an organic intellectual– who has been immersed in the cultures of many of the sides considered. Except the Islamists. Everything I know about them is from reading and casual contact, though I did have contacts within the Arabic speaking- Muslim community.

So here’s the article

I don’t buy Leeden’s thesis at all– that the enemies of Islamism and Leftism that Brevik saw himself as facing don’t exist, and indeed, the view of Western Civilization he believed he was depending also didn’t exist. He couldn’t be more wrong. The fall of the USSR probably strengthened communism/socialism/marxism in the West because now that there’s no all-encompassing CSR state, it’s not a threat to us and anyone who talks about the threat can be written off as a nut. They’re all Gramscites in the West who have burrowed themselves into positions of power everywhere. And as for Islam being dead- WTF? These things: Islamism, Leftism, they’re like that goo in Ghostbusters Two down in the deserted subway- almost like a living force of powerful hatred that oozes around until someone with enough charisma can grab a hold of it and direct it for their ends. Doesn’t matter what the catalyst is, whether the cause at one point was really to fight oppression or not, it just turns to pure, stinking evil, and we see this starting with the French Revolution in the West, maybe earlier but I’m just going for the obvious one.

In the course of discussion of this article, a friend brought up this one. The take away point from this piece, in terms of the Norway incident and why Brevik chose his targets has to do with alliances between elites and Islamism, and the Norwegian government’s support for Islamist terror abroad.

Left-wing movements — as in Norway — hope that the Islamists will benefit them. They are wrong. An analogy here is the Communist Party in Germany (at Stalin’s orders, of course) arguing that the growth of the Nazis would benefit them at a certain point. They were dead — literally — wrong. That doesn’t mean the Communists were pro-Nazi, it meant that they were disastrously stupid.

It essentially makes my long repeated argument that the Left in the West is now largely an intellectual/ professional middle and upper class movement. (Note I said LARGELY). Street soldiers are few and far between, so they now have to depend on others, or as they’d have it in the post-modernist construction, “Others”.  They don’t want the Islamists to take over, but they wish to use them as their battering ram against the ramparts of Western Civilization– or what they identify as Western Civilization: Christianity, capitalism, imperialism (and yeah, they’re still on about that), and patriarchy. Friends have been subjected to my spiel on this before: in the US you can always tell who the Left is using as its muscle by who all the revolutionary chicks want to sleep with: Black radicals, then Latinos, now Arabs/Muslims. In general, since they lost the White working class, the Left is always set to use the “brown man” as their muscle, with the thought they’ll control them later because in the Leftist mind, they’re smarter than everyone– especially the brown man who does their bidding.

They don’t realize what Western Civilization really is, because they see it only as a negative. They’re not going to like their new world, because after the virus devours the host, destroying and degrading everything Western Civilization has made possible, it’s all going to fall apart. See how they like really living in a Third World country- instead of going on the well-appointed, well-choreographed, guided tours they’ve been in to Asia, Latin America, Africa, etc.

And Leeden is wrong on the idea that West, Christianity, etc no longer exist as the shooter believed they did. He’s wrong in how he’s defining what we’re fighting for, anyway. No one wants to go back to fin-de-siecle Europe. The system destroyed by WWI wasn’t a great system, AND it wasn’t the apex of concept of “the West” and certainly not “Christianity”. These are also idea-forces, similar to the ooze of Islamism and Leftism, but positive ones. Anyone can grab a hold of them and ride them to a better life. The difference: we build, they destroy.

So not really a response to what happened, just the beginning of analysis of what people are saying about it. What do I think? Well, still reading that manifesto and thinking. It’s a hard topic on which to write, but will get on it soon. Suffice it to say, that at this point, and from pretty much the beginning, based on my “expertise” ABB wasn’t religiously Christian in the way the media and the Left would like him to be, nor was he a White Supremacist. My reasoning for those judgments would take a separate post, and I’ll get to that in the near future.

So I was listening to Kansas today, the album Point of Know Return, which seems particularly poignant given the socio-cultural- political climate nowadays. Each song seemed to speak to me. I’m still enmeshed enough in the p0-mo, emotional culture of my revolutionary youth that songs still “speak to me”. But with all the talk about the inexperience, the recklessness, the just flat out stupidity and tin earedness of our current administration, and the resultant chaos this has caused in our economy and around the world, one particular song stood out.

Here are the opening lyrics:

It’s a strange aberration, this brainstorm of youth
Though it’s lost in translation from fancy to truth
It’s hopelessly human, both inside and out
A joyous occasion, no reason to doubt
It’s easy somehow, what once was elusive is calling me now

This speaks to me on a few levels, addressing the concerns of Conservatives and the joys of Liberals/Leftists with the entire Obama narrative.

“this brainstorm of youth“– This was a big thing in the 2008 campaign. Hope and change! A new beginning! Morning in America! (Oh wait- from what I’ve read, that particular stolen slogan was supposed to be the driving force of the 2012 campaign, but with a horrendous national debt, rising unemployment, rising casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as two new conflicts started– in case you missed it, now we’re flying aggressive drone missions into Somalia it doesn’t seem to fit– unless we’re talking the morning after a serious bender and we have a really bad hangover).  Everyone was so enthusiastic about this bright (show me the transcripts) young guy. He was going to bring intelligence and a breath of fresh air to running the government, post racial- yet we have Attorney General Eric Holder refusing to even look at the egregious voting rights violations by the Black Panthers because he’s not going to investigate his people, and the rising tide of Black on White violence in several cities (file this under the “bottom rails’ on top” ideology); transparent– yet there are so many meetings with lobbyists off the books, not to mention bailouts of corporations that supported the President, not to mention the recent firing of the ATF official who blew the whistle on the gun running scam into Mexico (and these things are the tip of the iceberg), transnational (okay, the President is a tranzi, so that promise was fulfilled, but transnationalism isn’t in the interest of the average citizen), et cetera, et cetera, et cetera….

“though it’s lost in translation, from fancy to truth…” The seas haven’t stopped rising, peace hasn’t come to the world, and nobody, unlike the happy youtube lady said, is paying off your mortgage, your car loan, etc. In other words, “we aren’t the ones we’ve been waiting for” to paraphrase Mr. Obama, because honestly, the problems he said we faced weren’t really problems (AGW) or couldn’t be solved by apologizing and bland, empty, immature platitudes. Or a lack of basic economic knowledge.

The great Myth of Obama, the narrative that has been spun is one of greatness. This is a great man. A savior. A Messiah. He’ll solve all of our problems. Young and bright (again- show me the transcripts, or a writing sample), a fresh, new wind to blow away the evil racist-sexist-imperialist-homophobic American establishment (I apologize for leaving out a few -ists in there). Once he’s in power, everything will be fine.

But it’s not. In fact it’s worse. And all they have to bring to the game is to blame the past administration. Funny thing, that administration, whose transition was held up by endless court challenges, whose very equipment in the White House was sabotaged by outgoing Democratic staffers, never publicly threw blame/cast aspersions on its predecessors, though they could have. Intelligence failure leading up to 9-11? Was part of the fault the wall of separation put up by Clinton administration appointee Jamie Gorelick (yes, partially). Cuts to funding to develop human intel in Muslim countries? Inaction or inappropriate action in response to escalating attacks beginning with the first World Trade Center bombing, to the bombings of embassies in Africa, to the attack on the Cole? (Most certainly). Running out of Somalia with our tail between our legs after the infamous Blackhawk down incident? And on the home front, economic side– setting up the entire home mortgage debacle by pressuring banks to loan to those who couldn’t afford to borrow, causig the housing and credit bubbles? Well, yeah, the Bush administration could have cast aspersions and blamed Clinton, but it didn’t. The sucked up the disasters and worked to alleviate the damage. Our current administration could learn from that, and do the job set before them, but the again, that wouldn’t fit in with their “y0uthful” profile. Because we know most kiddies never, ever take responsibility for their bad deeds and mistakes.

But there’s an upside in all of this. The nation, the world, is moving further towards chaos. Yes, I know, this has been said again and again. People will raise that point. They’ll point out that how in different times in history, the conservatives or traditionalists have lamented that the world was going to hell in a handbasket, so it’s nothing new. And they’re right, up to a point. If we look back to these flashpoints in history, there was a lot at stake. As there is now. I know people don’t agree, they think it’s hyperbole and over-statement, but the fundamental structures of  American government, of our constitutional republic, are being attacked and undermined by the Left. But that’s another whole series of other posts, especially on education…

People have been fond of saying, “We needed to suffer Carter to get Reagan”. And I can see some truth in this. The United States spent four years during which government engaged in wild Keynesian schemes– if it did anything economically, apologizing and weakening the US militarily and diplomatically, and running the country into such a state that pundits talked about a misery index. There’s a significant minority of Americans, and not all of them conservative, who feel we’re at that point. While I was no fan of Reagan when he was in office (of course I was in my Middle and High School Socialist-rebellion phase then) I’ve gained a greater appreciation of the man and his presidency since then. I don’t know if the Republicans have a potential Reagan in the field for 2012, but could be.

But regardless of the personalities of leaders on both sides,  I think the majority of the American people won’t be happy if the country ends up at the logical terminus of the road onto which the Left has steered us.  Many people think they might. The idea of a protective government that provides for your needs and cares for you sounds great. But with that “care” comes intrusion into your life, and a huge grant of power over you as an individual, a severe curtailment of your rights. If we accept the government as a parent– and in surrendering or expecting the care of the government that the Left promises we are making the government our parent– then we all know that with the care of the parent comes the restrictions of the parent. I feed you so you must eat this, and you can’t eat that. I clothe you so you can wear this, but not that. I care for you so I’ll restrict your movements/travel/learning/access to information, etc. And that’s exactly what we see in Leftist-fascist societies. We see it increasingly now, on all levels of government, from our schools (what children can and cannot bring for lunch), all the way to the myriad of new federal regulations and programs dreamed up and implemented by extra-Constitutional czars and their staffs and Executive Orders that bypass and ignore the will of the people as engendered in the Congress.

And as I said at the beginning of that last paragraph, I don’t think most Americans, when they see the price for easy comfort, will be willing to pay. We’re already seeing a reaction against it– in the anger about the recurrent TSA violations of the Fourth Amendment (the cries of the weak minded- ‘I’d rather they did that so we can be safe from terrorists’ and of course, ‘if you don’t like it, don’t fly, the government’s not restricting you’ – aside), the intrusions into health care by the state, establishment of a rapid response military force (part of which is the 3rd Infantry Division, I think) for use inside the US against American citizens, creation of “rural councils” to be called in in the case of a “rural emergency”, etc.

“It’s hopelessely human, both inside and out/ a joyous occasion there’s no reason to doubt…” And this of course, is the lynchpin of all the upset. We’re dealing with a temporal, human authority. And yes we have to live with it, and ramifications of what the government does. And it may well make us miserable. We may be oppressed, unjustly accused and imprisoned, have our rights and livelihoods taken, but in the end, there will be justice. Politics is of the world, and yes it’s a world we and our children, grandchildren, etc must deal with, but I try to keep in my mind a part of the Orthodox liturgy, “Put not your trust in princes, in sons of men/ in whom there is no salvation/ when his breath departs, he returns to the earth, on that very day his plans perish…”

Not that I’m advising we cede the field and wait until the hereafter to redress our grievances. Certainly not. There’s also that “render unto Caesar” line, and well, we all have a lot of rendering ahead of us in the next few years.

[Reference article is here: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.e48dcd2d7eded7c7afce6bcae05990d1.311&show_article=1 ]

Of course, the Catholic Church opposes IVF completely. There are some within the Orthodox Church who hold the same view. I have to guess that more traditionalists Muslim clerics would agree. My issue with it is the idea that the embryos that aren’t implanted are sometimes destroyed, and then there’s the issue of reduction, when too many of the implanted embryos “take” as it were, and then some are chosen to be aborted to prevent multiple births. Of course I knew a couple who used IVF after years of infertility and refused to reduce, so now have a set of triplets who are about seventeen years old.

So I agree with the Islamic Brotherhood. This makes me think of something that I’ve been told, and have thought, for some time- that people like me, socio-cultural religious conservatives, have more in common with similar people of different faiths and cultures than we do with the Liberals and Leftists of our own. Dinesh D’Souza makes a similar point in his book The Enemy at Home. He posits that there are some points of agreement between socio-culturaltraditionalists in the West and the East (not limiting his analysis to just Islamic traditionalists), and that this can be a starting point for dialogue. Of course he was lambasted from both the Right and the Left, which is always a sign to me you might be onto something.

From my view, it’s an idea worth pursuing, but I’m sure I’m by no means conservative/traditional enough to pass any tests among really strict traditionalists, be the Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, or other.  But I’m conservative enough to befuddle and upset my Liberal, Leftist, and Libertarian friends, relatives, and correspondents. And I’m flexible enough that moving between cultures, I have no problem wearing a headscarf when I work in a Moroccan hospital or travel without male escort (except our eleven year old son) into more conservative areas of the country.

This of course would bring howls of protest from friends on the Right, as well as my more Liberal Muslim friends, but it worked for me and I actually like wearing the headscarf. If I thought I could get away with wearing one with short sleeves and capri pants, I’d wear one all year…

Oh, by the way, I’m back.  We had a great time in Morocco. Quite eye opening in some ways. I’ll probably cross blog my ideas on those issues here and over at Teamskoi after the Feast of Feasts, coming this Sunday. For now, as Holy Week winds down, no more blogging on either site as we’re entering the holiest time of year.

I’ve been reading about this for the past day or so, wanting to get some facts before I shot off my mouth. This story is troubling to me on several levels as an international adoptive parent. The first is purely selfish, and revolves around the stupidity of these people, and the damage this could do to international adoption programs in general. Second, it was extremely arrogant and just confirms the negative image of Americans and Christians. And lastly, it was just damn stupid. First point, from my research into various IA programs, and the politics surrounding both specific programs and the issue of international adoption in general, there are several international organizations, including UNICEF and various NGOs that are rabidly opposed to international adoption. You see this everytime a celebrity adopts and there’s publicity about it. These organizations hate the idea of international adoption, and see it as another form of imperialism. They say they prefer to leave the children in their home country, and to develop their home communities so they won’t live in poverty, rather than have a few offered a chance for a more materially and educationally enriched life in the West. So it’s better for all the children to remain in an immiserated state, rather than have a few removed through the scorge of Western (mainly American) imperialism, and UNICEF hasn’t been shy about threatening governments with withdraw of funding if they make IA too easy. NGO staff just give interviews about how awful it is to remove the children and if Americans really wanted to help, they’d contribute to programs that work in country to improve conditions (my cynical self is thinking- programs such as theirs, for example). It never occurs to any of these people that some of these children who are adopted and make a life in the West will get a useful education and return to their countries of origin to contribute to the overall well-being of these places. A child who is adopted and taken to the US or Western Europe and gets a university education, perhaps enters into medicine, or engineering could return and make contributions to their home community they would most likely would have never been able to make had they remained there. These children can grow up to the best advocates for those left behind, both in the United States and in their land of origin. As United States citizens, they can work within the US political, educational, and cultural systems to bring awareness of the plight of children from their homelands to the attention of officials and the general population. These positive impacts don’t even take into account the rampant corruption we know exists in many developing nations, and the problem of what happens to all the aid that is sent to these country- the majority never making it to programs that help the people. Secondly, with legitimate international adoption programs under scrutiny, and the existence of suspicions towards adoptive parents by locals (the Guatemalan rumors that the children were being adopted for organ harvesting, is one example), these people have put back the hard work of legitimate agencies and their in-country NGOs that provide assistance for orphaned children in country. Both agencies we have used have established programs for abandoned children who can’t be adopted (Living Hope Adoption Agency’s children’s houses in several locations in China provide education and training for children who are abandoned but not eligible for adoption) or who never are adopted (WACAP has programs in many of the countries in which they work, China, Russia, and Ethiopia among others). And these agencies aren’t the only ones. The ill-conceived actions of Ms. Sisby and her group may well cause local officials and citizens to look aksance at the efforts of these agencies that are doing so much good, abiding by local laws and customs, and working for the best interests of the children, and negatively impact their work. Their behavior also justitfies the view that some outside of the US have of Americans, though from our travels we found people who were more friendly and accepting of Americans than Europeans, especially in China and Kazakhstan. The arrogance that led this group to think they could go down to Haiti and acquire children to move to their own orphanage in the Dominican Republic without knowledge of the laws governing changes in custody rights and the transfer of minors across international borders is astounding. There are rules. Everyone involved in adoption knows this. Layers and layers of rules. And in most countries, there are bribes. Some are paid directly by the adoptive parents in the form of “gifts” to the orphanage (we were hit up for such gifts several times in Kazakhstan) or in money to officials, facilitators, etc. Often, these aren’t outright, but masked as charges for rent, utilities, and “services” that are at far above the market rate. In some countries, these payments doubtless are built into agency fees, and parents are never asked. It’s the price of doing business. There’s an entire religious dimension to this as well. I ask forgiveness of my Evangelical readers, but have to express this aspect of it. It seems that people deeply involved in Evangelical missioning tend to believe that their will, their desire to bring Jesus to others, trumps all other considerations. Whether it’s going on mission to Greece and Russia to convert the Orthodox, or adopting Ethiopian children and denying them their Ethiopian Orthodox heritage, or doing things like this- taking children to Christianize and save them, it’s extremely problematic, and quite honestly, it makes people angry. It also makes people distrustful of Christians in general, and hurts the efforts of those who mainly wish to serve the poor. In many countries, specifically those that are predominantly Muslim, this is the behavior that’s expected of Christians, so when groups from the Orthodox and Catholic churches want to serve the population, their efforts are rejected as all Chrisitans are seen as prostelytizers who will attempt to upset local communities and cultures. All that said, we’ll continue to pray for justice and health for those involved.
Excerpt

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100128/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians

“Most of the rocket attacks on Israel hit civilian areas, which suggests that civilians were the target,” said Bill van Esveld, a researcher for Human Rights Watch. “Deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime.”

Van Esveld added that statements from Hamas leaders during the fighting made clear that they intended to harm Israeli civilians.

He said Hamas also committed war crimes by firing rockets from populated areas, which endangered the local population in Gaza by raising the likelihood of Israeli retaliation.

“Fighters intentionally fired rockets from near civilians in order to shield themselves from counter attacks,” he said.

Very surprised to see this. I have to say, I’ve been very adamantly on both sides of this issue at different times in my life. While at the university and grad school, and firmly and unquestionably identifying with Left, I was very pro-Palestinian and as many on the Left do, excused everything they did, even targeting civilians because what else could they do? I was far gone into the whole “Primitive Rebel” worship that infects the Left in the West, of which militant groups take full advantage.

After much research I went full tilt the other way. Now, I’m more moderate, seeing legitimacy to claims on both sides. However, I can’t help but think had the Palestinians taken an approach similar to Gandhi’s with the British, they would have been more successful. Of course, it wouldn’t have matter much on the world stage, but in terms of real achievement of the goal to have a working, thriving independent state.

Unfortunately, as with other movements, an entire generation (at least) has been raised to know nothing but the desire to make war. How a successful nation can grow from that situation, I don’t know. So many missed opportunities, and for myself, so many mixed feelings and sometimes contradictory views.

But it was interesting to see HRW accuse the Palestinians of war crimes, and admit that they actually do target civilians, something the Left and the media routinely denies, or excuses, despite the insistence by many on the pro-Palestinian side that the “Zionists” and Jews control the media in the US. A charge echoed by their allies in White Separatist movement.

So I’m using a line from an old Duran Duran song for a post. This is obviously going to be a light, mindless post. No, it’s not, because my mind is working overtime and I need some sort of extreme sedative to calm it down.

I was  on the exercise machine- the tread climber of doom- and thinking, I don’t want to listen to anything that will make me think too much. So nothing religious. Nothing classical. Nothing Rai (because I try to understand the Arabic and French and get distracted). Definitely not PiL or any of the Oi bands. No Ska. So I’m clicking through my playlists and find Duran Duran.

Great, exactly what I want. Mindless. Happy. Hedonistic. Decent beat. Will make me remember when I was seventeen and thin, to motivate me to work harder. The choices on the MP3 player at this point is one playlist made of miscelleneous songs, some B-sides from old singles. Skip that. The first album, skip that, Planet Earth might make me think too much, and Girls on Film might make me think too much about Feminist Theory and popular culture’s objectification of women . Notorious: same thing, songs like Notorious and Meet El Presidente might bring up current political issues, resulting in excess analysis. Okay, last choice is Rio. That’s great. Completely mindless, nothing challenging.

So I’m listening and I get to the second song, My Own Way. Now Duran Duran, even back in the day, was a band that put out many different versions of songs with different sleeves so that crazy people would buy sixteen versions of the same song. And some of us did. So it shouldn’t have surprised me to hear some substantial changes to the music. But it did. Especially the abscense of the opening keyboard riffs. I was staring at the player thinking, “What the Hell is this? Who do they think they are, screwing with the music?” Later on, some of the alterations actually sounded better, but that’s besides the point. I listened to a few other songs, the ones I really liked on the album, New Religion, Hold Back the Rain, and they were different too. Not so much that I didn’t recognize them, but still, I was fuming, “Who do these guys think they are?”

And to many people that sounds strange, but not to us pointy-headed cultural studies types.  I remember the discussions about “ownership” of cultural things: especially writing and music. I remember being taught to analyze popular culture based on the interpretations of the consumers, and not the intent of the producers, because after all, nothing has any meaning until it’s imbued with it by those who use it. So it really wasn’t their music, the band’s, it was our music, the fans’.

Of course, pointy heads like myself make big deals about all sorts of similar nonsense, with our talk of the signified and the signifier, production and consumption, how the masses use popular culture to allegory address their issues in real life. We also talked about how we had to delineate the authentic voices of non-elites as they appeared in the writings and records of the  elite oppressors,  be they Medieval peasants, illiterate workers of the Industrial Revolution, or modern day people without a voice (and that could include anyone from suburban Western Youth,  to disenfranchised madrassa students, to poor peasant farmers in Asia or Africa, to Amazon tribes). And if all of that didn’t make you want to bash your head against a wall, maybe you should look into a career as an academic.

We also do research and write papers about how “girl bands” or “bubble gum” bands like Duran Duran, though some of  their songs and videos are obviously sexist and exploitative of women, and though they might play into anti-feminist fantasies  of love and marriage, actually produce a state of fandom that empowers their young, female fans.  They do this because of the whole consumption side of pop culture. The girls who consume what might be slightly or outright sexist products produced by male bands actually interpret them in a different way. They use their fandom to create a space for themselves in the public arena: the concert hall, the street, the music industry, and they make their voices heard in these male normative environments. No, I’m not kidding. I have the proposal and part of the finished product in a box in my garage. Here’s a  photo of me with an update of the project in hand, meeting Duran Duran in I think 1992? I don’t know, the tour for the Wedding Album.

So, obviously, everything has to be serious, for some of us. Even ’80s pop stars make me think too much. All of this rant, all of this jargon, because of a few missing keyboard riffs in a song that already had three or four different versions (two of which I own on vinyl) before the version on the remastered Rio CD I bought for $3.99 in out of the Shop Rite bargain bin even came to my attention.

My friend Hafid is right. I need to clear out all the intellectual crap from my brain, all the noise, and just do something relaxing.

Maybe I’ll run for public office.

(And here’s a video of the song that started this whole thing. Note this isn’t even the version on the original album.

Yes, I’m  loser. I’m on the internet on New Year’s Eve. Actually, I’m also writing and watching The Three Stooges with Monster 2 (Monster 1 is out with friends at the fireworks downtown and Monsters 3 and 4 are asleep). The Three Stooges episode I just saw (I’ll Never Heil Again) reminded me of my days doing Cultural Studies, and my aspiration just a few years ago to get back into the game, albeit on a freelance basis.

So below you’ll find a political-type Cultural Studies essay that I wrote sometime in late 2003 or early 2004.  It’s not the best piece I’ve done, but I’ve been drinking vanilla vodka and coke and I’m beyond embarrassment at this point. Hopefully I can write on all the topics I really want to in the next year, as I love to deconstruct popular culture and not-so-popular culture. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you my essay on the evil Ewoks. If you don’t know what Ewoks are, in the words of my children, you must be a Commie. Either that, or you’re not American, so go watch the original three Star Wars movies.

I have to say that my views on the Palestinians have moderated somewhat since writing this, but not a whole lot. And any anger there might be is really aimed at those in the West (mainly on the Left) who excuse everything the Palestinian militants do. But that’s not the point. And remember, this is sort of tongue in cheek, a one off that took me about all of fifteen minutes to write one afternoon as we were watching Return of the Jedi.

Ewoks: Cute Cuddly Creatures, or War Mongerers, Waiting for a War?

We’ve been watching a lot of movies lately with the kids. I don’t know why, but we have. The last batch has been the original Star Wars trilogy. Okay, we all know George Lucas is a Moonbat– note his campaign to get Michael Moore an Oscar for best picutre, but the kids like the movies.

So we were watching Return of the Jedi and got to the scene with the Ewoks. I remembered reading an interview with Lucas where he talked about wanting to show a battle sequence in which a “primitive”,tribal group defeated a modern, highly trained and usually efficient army. Hmmmm, the great Leftist dream– I know, I dreamed it myself as a youngster. Those primitive rebels, Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth”, the cogs in Chomsky’s anti-capitalism machine facing down the evil oppressive imperial forces (the United States) and defeating them by their wits, their ability to cooperate, and willingness to sacrifice their lives for a “Noble Cause”.

The Left is continually getting behind these movements, whether in real time as with the Radical Islamists and Palestinians, or in recent history as with Vietnam and the various Latin American movements including FARC, or in history where they love to mythologize the perfect, noble native cultures in North and South America that should have killed all the Whities so the world would be in perfect harmony without America. Because we all know that according to the Leftist fairy tale script, the primitives win, and all is sunshine and happiness, cooperation, love and flowers and peace. You know, like in Vietnam and Cambodia after the fall of South Vietnam.

So George had his opportunity to live out his fantasy, to play out the Left’s Primitive Rebel Narrative Script in absolute safety, under his complete control. He created the Battle for Endor, where the “good” and “peaceful” Ewoks- short, furry, buck-toothed, pre-industrial, communal living creatures took on the technologically superior, evil Imperial war machine. That the Ewoks are good and peaceful is evident because they’re pre-industrial, materially and technologically deficient. The Empire is clearly bad, well, because they’re the bad guys and they oppress people. We accept this dichotomy because we’ve embraced the Primitive Rebel Narrative, and we cheer for the good Ewoks as they team up with the out numbered, noble Rebels (who are poor, struggling freedom fighters with insufficient weaponry and finances) to whip the Empire’s butt.

Here’s the problem. He’s just outright wrong. A person who watches the finished product closely, without accepting the underlying premise of the Primitive Rebel Narrative, sees the problem immediately. The Ewoks aren’t cute, cuddly, peace loving creatures. They’re actually warlike dominators, seeking to control and exploit their environment, and engaging in barbarism against captured and wounded enemies. They are war mongerers waiting for a war.

Why do I say this? Let’s look at the evidence. The Ewoks first capture the Rebel mission leaders– Han, Luke, Chewie and the droids. Their intent is to eat all of them, except C-3PO who they believe is their god. When C-3PO seeks to intervene to save his friends’ lives, they disregard the dictates of their god to satisfy their own hunger (literally because they’re hungry, and figuratively because they have to destroy and consume the invaders). The only thing that prevents them from roasting their captives alive is an appropriate show of force, obviously the only thing that the Ewok leadership respects and responds to. As a result, the Ewoks decide to aid the Rebels.

Cut to the battle, which occurs the next day. The initial assault fits the PR Narrative– where we see the brave Ewoks, armed with Stone Age weapons throwing themselves at the Emperor’s finest legion (or so the Emperor claimed). The poor rock throwing rebels, who are so obviously fighting against the evil Imperialist dominators, fall back, but continue their struggle, hoping to gain the Rebels time.

However, the rock throwing, stick waving Ewoks are only seeking to lure the Imperial troops deeper into the woods where a horrible fate awaits them, and this is where we see the true nature of the Ewoks. Deep in the woods they have complex traps and weapons set up. There are huge stacks of tree sized logs which are released into the path of the Imperial walkers, causing them to tangle up and fall. There are larger, heavier logs that are hung like pendulums, and swung with another force to crush armored metal vehicles. There are stockpiles of other weapons cached around the woods. These obviously weren’t things the Ewoks would have been able to set up over night. These are the equivalent of Endorian Weapons of Mass Destruction, waiting to be unleashed on the first foe foolish enough to stumble into range.

These weapons are quickly augmented by the Imperials’ gear. Seconds into the scene the Ewoks are seizing the Imperials’ advanced weaponry and then using it. Sure, we cheer to see the devices of the evil Empire used against its own troops, but who will be the next to fall prey to the Ewoks with their warlike nature and their new, deadly weapons? And it’s not just a few laser guns, but also AT-STs– the armored, laser shooting, missile launching battle machines.

Last, let’s consider the scenes of carnage in the battle, and from its aftermath. Whenever a Stormtrooper goes down, he’s immediately swarmed by Ewoks who hack and chop at the wounded/subdued Imperial. There’s no chance for surrender, no compassion shown to a wounded and disarmed enemy. Just hacking, plain and simple hacking and chopping (reminiscent of the treatment of the four contractors captured in Fallujah in the early stages of the Iraq War). After the battle, after the destruction of the Death Star, we’re left with images of Ewoks playing music on the severed heads of Stormtroopers– and the happy Rebels are dancing alongside them, ignoring the barbarism.

This is the truth of the Primitive Rebel Narrative. The Primitive Rebels, whether they be the North Vietnamese, Cambodians, Palestinians, Castroites, Latin followers of Che and revolution, or the current crop of Islamist butchers being funded by the al-Saud family, aren’t cute, cuddly, freedom fighters, innocent of bad intentions and selfish motivations. Often, those championed by the Left as the last hope of freedom against the oppressive, barbaric United States and our militaristic, capitalistic order are far more oppressive and barbaric than the force against which they’re supposed to be fighting. They’re not minding their own business, struggling to eek out a life, suffering under the cultural and economic tyranny of “the man” until they can take no more and lash out. They’re stewing over their lack of progress, seeking to assign blame. Meanwhile, their leaders are stealing their aid and development money (most of which comes from the alleged oppressors) to build palaces. Then they fill their minds with propaganda against some alien enemy who is the source of all their suffering to distract their own suffering masses from the pain their own greed and backwardness has caused.

So that’s why Lucas failed. A close reading/watching of his film shows that he debunked his own favored narrative, the favored narrative of the Left, the one which shows the superiority of the primitive over the industrial, the “peaceful innocents” who live a simple life forced into violence against the inherently warlike, greedy, forces that seek to dominate and destroy them.

Don’t even get me started on the idiocy of the Jedi Council and the Senate in The Phantom Menance, and the moonbatitis that has so infected the Republic in The Attack of the Clones. You can see why no one likes to watch movies with me..

I used to run a political blog.  I gave it up a long time ago, because it made me crazy. Thinking too much about politics leads to an unsettled mind, or at least it does in  my case. So when I started this blog, I was hoping to avoid politics, but that seems impossible for me.  But this post will be brief (for me) and hopefully I’ll get back to posting  photos and Arabic (maybe some of my Arabic speaking readers hope I won’t be doing that) and our travel plans.

I was on Facebook the other day, not managing my farm, or digging up treasure, or playing Bejewelled Blitz (high score this week of 378,000+). I wasn’t torturing the Arabic language, or linking music either. I was actually reading through my newsfeed, looking at friends’ pages and using it for what it was probably intended for. In this process, I came upon a conversation about someone coming back to visit the old neighborhood, a neighborhood where I still live.

The conversation centered on how the neighborhood had changed, and how it would be necessary to bring a  translator (either Asian, Arabic, or Russian). The comments were made in a joking  fashion, but having perused other comments on those pages before, I’m sure there’s something more behind them.  As has happened a few other times while reading other people’s pages I was thinking, “Wow, this is pretty ignorant, looking down on people who speak different languages, who come from different places, who are grouping together and attempting to hold onto some part of their native culture. Where the hell did your people come from, and how did they live when they got here?”

I’ve been in the middle of these immigration arguments before. I know there are people who are dismissive of the entire, “we were all immigrants at one time” view. They’ll point out that they were born here, their parents were born here (as in my case), and some of them go back all the way to the 1700s with family here in the New World. But at some point, even if you’re a Native American/Indian, your people came from somewhere else at some point. And when they came, they had to learn the ways of a new land: the language, the culture, the ways of civil society, and how to keep what was most vital of their own ways while assimilating into the new land. With some people, and some groups, it took longer.

I think people also forget, or never knew, the reality of their own family’s immigration experience. They don’t realize that their family was clannish with their own kind, settled in an ethnic neighborhood, and retained quite a bit of the language and culture. I know mine did, both my Ukrainian/Georgian Jewish grandparents and my German Lutheran grandparents. Of course both of my grandfathers insisted the children learn and use English, but my neither of my grandmothers were completely fluent in English when they died, and were far more comfortable speaking their native languages and associating with their own kind. My German family went to German speaking churches, lived in predominantly speaking neighborhoods for most of their lives, and my Jewish family, though never religious, did the same. It’s not much different than what the Russians, Arabic speakers (because this a broad group of people in our city, including but not limited to Yemenis, Palestinians, all the way west to Moroccans), Vietnamese, Chinese, and Brazilians (and yes, they’re Brazilians in our neighborhood, not Spanish speakers) are doing today. They’re moving into the same neighborhoods, opening businesses to serve their clientele where people can speak their native language, establishing places of worship, etc. Nothing different from what our ancestors did. My Lord, look into the records of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and you’ll find multiple Catholic churches in the same neighborhood, each on catering to its own ethnic group.

So as “native Americans” let’s try not to be afraid of, or hostile to, or filled with superior feelings for, the newcomers. Let’s get to know them. Go to their shops and restaurants. Engage them in conversation. Get to know them. Make them feel welcome in this country. This is the route we’ve always taken, so our homeschooled children (whom the NEA and other groups insist must be socially retarded, sheltered, and unexposed to the rich multicultural environment of public schools)  have been exposed to many different cultures. They’ve been welcomed in the homes of our Bangladeshi neighbors and known what hand to use for eating. They’re comfortable with all races, religions, and ethnicities, and can quickly adapt when necessary, then find and embrace the good things about the new cultures with which they come into contact.

It’s too bad I can’t say the same about many of the adults I know.

Logic is lost in your cranial abattoir

As I mentioned, I’ve been listening to a lot of music. A few weeks back it was Christian Contemporary (don’t laugh at me or I’ll set you on fire, I mean it). Before that, it was a lot of Rai, and Ska. On the way down to my last Arabic tutoring session (as opposed to my class) I was listening to Public Image Limited, the music from the album/cassette/CD that was simply titled “Cassette” when I bought it back in the mid ’80s. A lot to wrestle with on this album, let me tell you. But today, and recently, one song has been speaking to me strongly. FFF, from which the brilliant quote above comes.

Those who know me well and with whom I discuss “weighty matters” on a regular basis will know I’m going through something of an ideological crisis. It’s nothing so severe as when I went from extreme Left to the conservative Right (and I was extreme Left, and extreme gender Feminist). It’s nothing so dramatic, nothing so earth shattering, and the fallout is not nearly as devastating.

When I moved Right, first being openly pro-Life, and then deciding to leave law school to stay home with our oldest child, I was deserted by my friends on the Left. With those two things, I achieved pariah status. (Yay me!) The fall out from my question of the orthodoxy of my conservative compatriots is more one of a desire to bring me back on those issues on which they think I’ve fallen into error, rather than a casting out as I experienced before. But still, the idea that some people with whom I’ve shared ideas, thoughts, and who have provided a good support system for me through Dad of Monsters deployment, Monster 4′s various medical issues think I’ve gone a bit off the rails because my mind has been opened somewhat on the issue of Muslims (not agreeing that they’re all just waiting for the radicals to call for open jihad to restore the caliphate), immigration (doesn’t work me into a lather, sorry),  and a few other minor issues is bothersome. I understand of course, that some of them are genuinely worried about me, especially for my safety as I go off to Morocco and Lord knows where else, and hang out from time to time with my Arabic teacher, but I’m okay.

Of course, if some of them knew the depths of my heterodoxy (a bad word for an Orthodox Christian to use, as it implies something bordering on heresy), they’d be a little more than miffed, or amused, or worried. But still, it would be nothing close to the treatment I received at the hands of my “friends” and comrades on the Left when I questioned their orthodoxy, or rebelled against their paradigms. It was mainly those people, from my undergrad and grad years, that I think of when I listen to the song that’s been running through my mind, especially the lines quoted at the opening, and the following”

Whatever you want it to be
For you that’s what it will be
Honesty to you is arbitrary

Logic is lost in your
Cranial abattoir

Shallow
Empty inside
Sly witted
Full of snide

Bad times
Now they must end

The shutter-speed of your thinking process
Is small
Too small
Too full of pride

Linky to the song in it’s full glory. Nobody beats John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) for sneering, self-righteous, condemnation.  Nobody.

Some of these changes are more nuanced than others. Most people with whom I engage in political discourse tend to be a bit more extreme than the norm, both on the Left and Right. Some people I know pretend they’re moderate, but I often manage to catch them out, which makes me happy but can be hell on a friendship. My issue with intellectual pride and having to one up my opponents always beats out my better nature, as does my tendency to sarcasm and love of snark. But I’m working on it.

So shortly I’ll be moving some of the political and semi-political things from the Teamskoi blog, and I have a few things I want to write in response to two articles I recently read on Moroccan Post, but I have a few other things to take care of, like dinner, since Oldest Son has to go to Tae Kwon Do and needs to eat before he goes.