Friday, October 7, 2016

The Wall of Indifference

Michael Lumish

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under.}

Those of us who care about Israel, and who are concerned about the rise of Political Islam face a brick wall.

Those of us who prefer western forms of jurisprudence to the Sharia courts popping up all over Europe face it, as well.

Those of us who care about the maintenance of traditional liberal values, such as freedom of speech, as they erode in the West due to the encroachment of al-Sharia, also face it.

The great irony, of course, is that we often come out of the western-left, yet it is within the Left that the wall of indifference is the most reinforced and most well-guarded.

The progressive-left and the Democratic Party view concerns over Political Islam as a largely racist, right-wing issue to be ignored. Obama, and his people, pay a bare minimum of lip-service to some vague, unknowable curiosity which they call "violent extremism" and that they tell us has nothing whatsoever to do with formal Islamic doctrine.

They seem not the least bit appalled at the burying of Yazidis alive in mass graves by the Islamic State (or New Caliphate), nor are they particularly disturbed by the destruction of the ancient Roman city of Palmyra, Syria, nor the Stabbing and Car-Ramming Intifada in Israel, nor the daily calls for the murder of Infidels blaring from the mosques and taught to children in the Middle East, if not Europe.

{Video starts at the 13 second mark - ML.}


Nor does the Obama administration, the Democratic Party, or the progressive-left care about the well-being of Gay people who are hanged from cranes in Iran, Christians who are ethnically-cleansed from the Middle East and North Africa, Jews with their backs to the wall in Fortress Israel, or women throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds who are forced to go out in public dressed from head-to-toe in that most liberating of female apparel, the burka.

The fact that they cannot even bring themselves to name the source of this "violent extremism" screams volumes about their true intentions to do anything about it. If you breathe the word "Islam" in their presence they will tell you that the "violent extremists" within Islam are a tiny minority within a much larger peaceful population and that this is true for all religions and all peoples during all periods of history.

We are told that Jews and Christians and Zoroastrians and Mahayana Buddhists and Gardnerian Wiccans all have devotees of the "violent extremist" variety, so why should this be any different among Muslims?

As a primarily right-wing issue, we are told, these are the concerns of bigoted cretins, unreconstructed Klansmen, White Supremacist Skin-Heads, as well as a brand-spanking new group conjured up by the Democratic Party which they are calling "alt-conservatives."

No one is really quite certain what an "alt-conservative" is, but he, she, or it has arrived just in time for the pre-election ballroom dance.

Thus on the Left, and within the Democratic Party, the rise of Political Islam is of virtually no concern, which is also why mass Muslim immigration into the West is likewise of no concern. Immigration is immigration is immigration and this most current wave is not fundamentally different from, say, the second wave of immigration into the United States featuring nineteenth-century eastern and southern Europeans, including Jews.

Despite all the bloodshed and rapes and riots and general chaos in Europe - as conjured up by people like Angela Merkel sitting around the big table in Brussels - we are told that it is only the European equivalents of Alabaman pig-farmers who disapprove of EU immigration policies. It is only the uneducated, xenophobic, working-class who care about such things.

As for the well-being of Israel, why should a non-Jew care any more about Israel than, say, the Czech Republic? I do not have an answer to that question, do you? Besides, large numbers of progressives and Democrats view Israel as an apartheid state, beneath our consideration for their well-being.

As for traditional liberal values, western-progressives simply do not see them as under threat from Political Islam. Jihadis might put a death fatwa on the head of author Salmon Rushdie or shoot the Charlie Hebdo people dead in Paris, but these are supposedly isolated incidents that have no real influence over liberal western political sensibilities. We may be in a rough patch of global integration, but things will smooth themselves over within a reasonable period of time.

Or so we are sometimes told.

In any case, if you find yourselves a bit galled at your left-leaning friends when they stand behind the wall of indifference, this goes some way toward explaining why it exists.

How to get around it is the important question and I wish to G-d that I had that answer... but I don't.

8 comments:

  1. In the words of that famous militant, Jesus Christ, "The poor will always be with you".

    So while the left, and to be fair, their opposites, pick and choose different things in exotic far off places that attract their attention while ignoring others, they are simultaneously ignoring huge swaths of things that happen here, right here every day. I don't mean BLM or the 37 genders at Amherst. I mean the reality that at least one out 8 children in this country, here, today, go to bed hungry every day. And that's with 50 million people on food stamps already. I'm talking about the reality that working class is essentially dead and the middle class is dying and the best that our moral better angels can suggest is new A/C standards so that not living in Malarial west African conditions is unaffordable and unattainable for millions. I'm talking about the reality that millions of people are permanently homeless, here. I'm talking about how the average college student takes 6 years for a 4 year degree and winds up barely more educated than a 10th grader of 35 years ago.

    We can pay attention to strange people far away and their funny hats. We can wring our hands over the atrocities of the world which will always be with us or we can address more tactical things here. Because trust me, 'here' isn't that great. Here we have huge problems. 5 years after the ACA and mortality is up across the board in every age bracket. People are sicker now, dying faster and getting worse care now than we 'couldn't afford it'. and medical mistakes are now the 3rd leading cause of death. More than all gun deaths and traffic deaths and almost every disease excepting lung and heart disease combined.

    So all I can say is you should pick a battle you can win because it's the right battle to win. Riding your flotilla boats to Gaza and bullhorning Republicans over Iraq are fine, as hobbies, as avocations. But they don't do anything. To me all you accomplish is studied failure and irrelevance.

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    1. 37 genders at Amherst? For some reason I thought it might be 57. :0)

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    2. Call me an old fart, if you will, but why do I get the distinct impression that the current generation of academicians is going to help screw up any kid whose feet are not firmly planted on the ground by the time of arrival on campus?

      I mean, it's one thing if your kid knows who he or she is and what he or she wants at the age of 18, but otherwise everything is fair game.

      When you take 37 identity-types and multiply that by all the possible combinations within those 37 and THEN throw in all the hatred and condemnation that now goes along with the wrong slip of the tongue, it's difficult to imagine how any kid could manage such a gauntlet without coming out the other end entirely fucked up.

      Nonetheless, my guess is that most of 'em will be just fine.

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  2. "hung by cranes" should be "hanged from cranes."
    Sorry, Mike, but this is my personal obsession. The past tense of sense 2 of hang, i.e., killing someone by tying a rope around his/her neck, is "hanged." Pointing it out constantly seems to piss some people off. One such person opined to me that I know what the commenter meant so what's the big deal, and of course, the big deal is that it's the wrong form and we should get it right because someone getting hanged is a big deal.

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  3. Mike,
    I have been seeing this "alt-conservative," or "alt-right" all around lately, and I have absolutely no idea what it is supposed to mean, but I know what it smells like. My question is can "cis" be added to it or would "cis" have to be a replacement for "alt." Tell me if I'm getting warm.

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    1. Jeff, the "alt-right" serves a function... the very same function that Emmanuel Goldstein serves in the "two minutes of hate" in Orwell's 1984 and the very same function that the Tea Party served in the last election cycle... except for the small fact that the Tea Party is, y'know, real.

      It's a means of focusing hatred on some "other" for the purpose of bolstering support for the dominant politics of the Obama era.

      It is also a means of garnering support for the Democratic nominee because when these evil alt-right people are not chasing down ethnic minorities on horseback or beating their women for overcooking the steak, they can be found burning crosses at Klan Rallies for Trump.

      Who knew that The Art of the Deal would turn out to be the 21st century version of Mein Kampf?

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