What?? Worldview Blather?!!

I've been delighting over Steven Colbert's White House Press Corps monologue, just a totally balls on presentation, less than 15 feet away from President Bush, with great admiration.

http://tinyurl.com/fodxn

I also saw Ann Coulter get her smarmy 'beguiling' ass handed to her by ANOTHER attractive blonde who decided that Coulter had said something so incredibly stupid, it bordered enough on depraved to ignore her for the rest of a televised interview segment.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/08/24/ann-coulter-gets-her-freak-on

Now I've received the following short piece sent to me by my boy, Ralph Carney, and it appears, having been stimulated above and beyond the sports section (a really shitty one in Akron anyway) I thought my response to him worthy of my inflated sense of self, now printing the note he sent, followed by my articulate, timely, and sensitive response:

The Noble Palestinian Savage?
by Acharya S

???

I've tried to stay out of the neverending mess in the Middle East, as
it just seems so futile and useless to take a stance. Historically
speaking, neither side is right or wrong, so no one has any clear claim
on the territory, which at first glance seems to be at the heart of the
struggle. The fact is that very few countries or nations can claim that
they were not founded using force, slaughtering and displacing the
previous inhabitants, who themselves often had massacred the previous
inhabitants. Hence, the argument that Israel has no right to exist
because it was founded upon violent displacement of previous
inhabitants is as ridiculous as stating that America or Australia, et
al., ad nauseam, have no right to exist because of their similar
foundings. In other words - and I do not say this lightly, because I am
no fan of "Zionism," whatever that term may mean - Israel has as much
right to exist as does any other nation, based purely on the aggressive
state of human history.

Now, I know well that it is quite fashionable in some quarters to
champion the Palestinian cause, as, surprisingly, Jewish-owned or
operated media around the world take the "bleeding heart liberal"
perspective, which finds a ready audience in aging and vocal hippies.
Don't get me wrong - I find all the violence and bloodshed to be
despicable and abhorrent, to the point where, if I really inspected it,
I would blow chow. It has always been my fervent wish that human beings
would just stop fighting - in other words, cut it out already! It is
for this reason that I continually stick my neck out and roundly
criticize and condemn diviseness of religion as so much deleterious
dementia. As far as I am concerned, no religion is "the one and only
truth," and most, in fact, border on retardation. For the purposes of
this essay, however, I will not go into great detail about my
criticisms of religion, as they can be found all over my website, my
blog, my forum, my discussion groups and in my books.

All that having been said, with what I know about the Palestinian
culture, which isn't a great deal but which is significant, I have to
scratch my head at the fervent liberal perspective that demonizes the
Israelis and angelizes the Palestians. In reality, both sides have
behaved badly, and neither should be exonerated - which means that the
Palestinian culture is not without its serious blemishes that need to
be pointed out and condemned. Nay, "blemishes" is much too gentle a
word. Horrors is more applicable, in fact. Well, what on Earth am I
talking about? And why, if I am correct, are not more people bringing
it up in the mainstream media? Why are women's groups in particular not
harshly condemning these horrors? These are good questions that can
only be answered by the fact of the basic human capacity for denial.
**

Now me -

I've never been a student of this, and have thus fostered what are pretty standard issue opinions of what's going on in the world, specifically for the sake of this diatribe, the middle east. As a pretty secular, "enlightened" Jew, I'd adopted the view that it's a totally unreasonable and ugly position for the Israelis to take that it made all the sense in the world to fight, bleed, kill and die for a homeland, and yet is unreasonable and to be resisted at all costs when The Palestineans look for same.

Now... there are arguments that 'Palestinean' does not describe a tribe of people so very bound together by religion, a region, AND culture for over 5000 years and thus are not so very, very entitled to a sliver of the sliver that is Israel.

I also know that an Israeli, while being intelligent, often quite Western, erudite and sophisticated, sadly, can have all these qualities co-exist with a worldview carved out of living in a place where every country around you and many who live in your very own country, have historically wanted to drive you into the sea and commit genocide upon you as a people, chronically setting off bombs, chopping heads, and killing your family, declaring some sort or another war upon you as a people... this all in the face of a holocaust that proved that the absolute extreme of evil CAN take place.


So, if all this can explain why the Israelis, as a people, might be aggresive and less than warm and fuzzy as they face their paranoia and occasional leanings towards psychosis, this profile of a people something we can't process, well... I looked to my friend Daria, an Israeli of priveledge, an army vet like everyone there, who's lived in NYC for years and years, one of a few trusted to use that alchemic mix of artistry and chemistry to restore priceless art works. So lets assume a bit of refinement. She tells me she thinks that what's going on in Lebanon was stupid, and simply someone in power in Israel finally just getting a little too pissed off and acting without Israel's characteristic strategic prudence and precision, a recipe for disaster. Her husband, my business partner, a New England educated American actually sees it as someone in power justifiably saying "Enough!" to a constant stream of violent and heartbreaking deaths perpetrated by... and here I'll yield to my lack of education and follow through in this area... 'people' who simply need to be stopped, or at the very least, forcibly made to pause and reflect on the consequences of these actions.

Looking at things in broad brush strokes, if dieing means nothing (or conversely, a positive 'everything') to these people, then why not just wipe them all out? Fact is, living means a lot to many of them, so this wholesale attack, the killing of all sorts of 'civilians,' a murky definition unto itself, should yield some sort of internal pressure from those who want to live out their lives peacefully placed on those who are wearing plastic explosive vests. Looking at it that way, of course, makes the 'normal' folks softies, and the suicide warriors the bullies, thus the dominant force, making the big bombings and killing perpetrated by Israel pretty much useless.

Then there was Jimmy Carter who spoke to the Muslims in the Middle East in the only way he could, or should have, as a compassionate, intelligent rational person. This was perceived by his adversaries (the people holding the hostages) as weakness.Where all this leads me, the simpleton, is in the direction of the old school of isolationism. I think we need to understand, particularly now, given the effective might of the U.S (that was written facetiously, btw), that in 2006 we are no longer capable of effectively being the world's police force, probably never having been really, as we always face the conundrum of 'enforcing laws' that are arrived at case by case, subjectively, by a random group of policy makers, with a variety of motives, and clearly, a really limited understanding of the cultures we're dealing with.

And if we DO understand the cultures we're dealing with , we should already know that what we're trying to accomplish is simply not possible. But it's hard breaking the habit of being an Imperialist.

So should we continue to support Israel who will get into skirmishes doing things we would generally consider 'reprehensable' yet in the face of other aggressors who operate even moreso with the 'gloves off?'

So easy to just say, "They're all nuts. Let 'em kill each other off and be done with it!"

But that would be wrong.

The Empire, 'tis crumbling.