August 07, 2003

HORSEFEATHERS AWARD FOR REASONED DISCOURSE

        Horsefeathers offers another glimpse of human folly before departing on vacation outside the range of computers and the New York Times. We will return in the last days of August.

        Drawing on a combined 70+ years as physicians, observing human nature up close and personal, we have concluded that the capacity and desire for self-delusion is limitless. It is far easier to attribute one’s failings to external forces rather than acknowledge one’s own shortcomings. Call it denial and projection, it is as true of cultures as individuals. Failed Arab thugocracies prefer accusing a successful democracy, Israel, of the very savageries they themselves regularly practice (think Jenin “massacre”). God forbid they should recognize their own gross failure to contribute anything of cultural significance in the last 13 centuries, other than the perfection of suicide bombing. Similarly, if every ideology is a species of auto-biography, we have learned to beware of grand schemes for human improvement, so appealing to failed cultures and individuals unable or unwilling to grapple with the limitations imposed by reality. These ideological schemes are doomed by virtue of the impossibility of transcending human nature, but it is always easier to blame enemies and find scapegoats than to acknowledge failure. Totalitarian ideologies seek to create human nature anew. Whether “Soviet Man” or “Aryan Man” or the latest Wahhabi version of perfect “Islamic man”, these rest on a view of the perfectibility of human beings that is unattainable. Infidels must be blamed—and destroyed- to achieve a perfect world. The malignant nature of such ideologies draws power from the yearning in everyone for a blissful world of perfection in which peace, love and understanding effortlessly prevail . Thus there is always a ready pool of benign, kindly, useful idiots. In the West these are the liberal wordsmith intellectuals in the media and universities, for whom shared conviction of their natural superiority makes them impervious to self criticism or self awareness. Instead they are aggrieved, resentful, because they are insufficiently appreciated. They bolster one another's sense of specialness and entitlement. How can it be that their glib, utopian advice is so undervalued? It must be that stupid white men like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have fooled 'Boobus Americanus'. They wax nostalgic for the “idealism” of failed utopias like Communism. And so they are receptive to conspiracy theories of the sort that endlessly pour out of the Arab media. Because of this shared mind-set it should come as no surprise that the Op-Ed page of the New York Times has come to sound much like Al-Ahram, the Arab News and the Zayed Center of the United Arab Emirates. The world's problems are traceable to George W. Bush and his neo-con advisers. There is no need for rational debate because, to the true utopian believer, it is self evident. Such high-mindedness must be correct.

        Thus the Horsefeathers summer 2003 award for reasoned discourse will be shared by Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma, professor at King Faysal University, Saudi Prince Amr Muhammad Al-Faysal, and Maureen Dowd of the NYTimes. All three are conspiracy theorists convinced that those crafty Jews, in thrall to Ariel Sharon, are conspiring to rule the Arab world and have staged coups against America. Here is a sampling of their ideas:

Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalama King Faysal University Professor: Jews Consider Iraq Part of Greater Israel 'Awaken… Before We Discover That Dirty Hands Have Already Strangled Us'

"…Yes, they strive to purchase Iraqi land from its owners, and they intend to deepen the roots of Jewish settlement in Iraqi soil, under the American flag. I fear that they will actually realize this goal by freely giving money to the impoverished, destitute people of Iraq, who cannot find a way to end the days of famine, the days of misery and poverty, which have consumed everything…."

Prince Amr Muhammad Al-Faysal: "President Bush and his Strangelovian colleagues of the neoconservative movement are the culmination of a long process whereby the American far right is attempting the hijack of the United States . This can only be done by subverting the democratic process and perverting the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, some members of the Jewish community have supported this attempt in the belief that the state of Israel will be better served by a U.S. firmly in the grip of the far right…”

And Maureen Dowd explaining the devious conspiracy by the all powerful neocons to impose their Israel first policies on the world: “…Make sure it's good for Ariel Sharon. Just as the neocons made their move on Mr. Powell, pro-Israel hawks scorned the secretary for not being on their team in the peace process. Israel's supporters scoffed at the new threat to cut loan guarantees as a State Department policy, not a White House policy…”

         Horsefeathers expects that as we continue to defend ourselves in World War IV, conspiracy theories will exfoliate, and alliances will solidify between utopians of the left and America hating Islamo-Nazis eager to scapegoat Jews.