Recommended Reading

onparkstreet:

September 13th, 2010 at 10:39 pm

Re: John Robb’s excerpt:
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The event was amplified by many forces outside the individual. The individual – in a sense – is completely irrelevant. The individual acts in a way that resonates with larger forces and the more powerful among us. They direct attention.
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I guess what I am saying is that you don’t have to play. You don’t have to say a word. The event was not created by the individual. He’s still powerless unless the act fits a larger narrative and catches hold of the imagination.
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Hmmm, where am I going with this? 🙂
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– Madhu

onparkstreet:

September 13th, 2010 at 10:40 pm

Oh, yeah. Why did the more powerful allow themselves to be caught up in a global act of theater? They should have refused the theater tickets and stayed home with a nice novel.
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– Madhu

zen:

September 14th, 2010 at 4:22 am

Hi Doc Madhu,
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"Oh, yeah. Why did the more powerful allow themselves to be caught up in a global act of theater?"
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Good question. You raised it the other night but we did not delve. Here’s my take:
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The reason the powerful took the bait is because the scenario was "bait" to them; it played viscerally into their deep-seated prejudices, anxieties and challenged their professed political pieties. So they reacted rather than thought. That’s how most ppl, even highly educated and intelligent folk go through life, on autopilot.
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The minister was a redneck from a white clapboard, po’ white trash, born-again, perhaps a Holy Roller (charismatic) Christian denomination in the cultural context of the deep South. In the elite worldview, he’s a villainous caricature. Burning a Koran ( or any book) is a gesture of rage or hatred, not an argument, which violates elite sense of discourse but most importatly the tenets of multiculturalism which has a moral calculus that is weighted by race, gender and degree of "victimhood" much the way Marxists used class to mete out "revolutionary justice".
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Personally, to me burning a book is a fascist act but there is something deeply troubling about the elite worldview that 100 x more attention was given by them to this minister with a Koran that didn’t burn than was given to the little girls that radical Islamists burned alive.  Or gassed. Or doused with acid.
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Are ppl who conflate all Muslims with Islamist terrorists making a grevious error ( and driving normal Muslims toward radicals) and committing slander? Sure. But the intellectual flip side to that Islamophobia is the unending special pleading Islamophilia on behalf of the acts of Islamist monsters that the world would not condone from any other group.

Thoughts from seydlitz89 « The Committee of Public Safety:

September 15th, 2010 at 4:47 am

[…] It was like being linked by Ashton Kutchner. Then seydlitz89 linked to Lex’s post, Zenpundit linked to seydlitz89′s post, and Lex replied to […]

onparkstreet:

September 15th, 2010 at 11:03 pm

On a related note, I call out for your – or your readers – expertise in the following post:
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http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/15755.html
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– Madhu

onparkstreet:

September 16th, 2010 at 10:40 pm

Thanks for responding, zen. I learned a lot from that thread.