Lileks: "an unnerving momentum"
Today's "Bleat."
I am not a gloom & doom person, except when it comes to myself, and I am still optimistic in general, since I learned long ago that depending on a US-USSR thermonuclear exchange eventually disappoints and promotes bad savings habits. Nevertheless, when you wake up and read that the entire Alaska oil supply is OFF LINE for the next nine years or so, you wonder: what next? Texas-sized comet chunks heading for America? Comet-sized Texas chunks heading for Europe? The pace of bad news seems to have picked up an unnerving momentum. Enough with the flow. Some ebbing would be nice.
Mind you, its not the actual news that bothers me as much as the reaction to it; the reactions speak to something amiss in the heart of the West, a failure of nerve, a fatal lack of faith in the civilization were entrusted to defend. But the heart has two ventricles. Theres a large portion of America who well, no. I cant make generalizations like this, because theyre ridiculous, and its not for me to speak for 150 million of my countrymen. But Ive had this suspicion for the last year. People joke about the American street, the basic Joes rising animosity to the Middle East. I dont think theres a rising hatred of the area; I think theres a growing indifference. In the end, thats worse.
In the end, most Americans simply dont care what happens to the Middle East aside from Israel. Theyd like the region to be free; theyre happy when everyone gets to vote. They don't give a fig about Libya but it would be nice if Egypt was safe, what with all those museums and the like. Theyd be perfectly fine if every nation in the Middle East was like France open, free, stable, great vacation destinations, full of politicians and intellectuals who didnt like the US but confined the rhetoric to tart epigrams or unreadable academic polemics. Its the seething sectarian nutwad component that makes people weary. The looped scripts, the Jew-slagging, the misplaced blame, the unslakable aching sense of injustice over things that happened 500 years ago. Okay, well, sorry about the Crusades. Now you Persians apologize for Ionia and the war on the Greeks. Cmon. Cmonnn, ya knuckleheads. I knew Darius, and he was a Party. Animal. But lets send it all to the big Bygone House and hug, for Mr. Planets sake! (Bill Murray for UN Secretary General. Seriously.)
But this isnt going to happen. Mind you, Im not raising this to debate the veracity of the claims or the reactions, just to note what many people think, inasmuch as they think about it at all. (Which they don't, and that's why it seems a spiky shouting ullulating Durkastan, just like America seems like Fat-Ass Burger Whore Town to others. ) So. As I was saying: most people would like the Middle East to be free and happy and prosperous and free of incomprehensible religious differences (Sunni, Shiite, Sufi help us out, guys; do they all have to start with S?) and generally off the radar. Thirty years of hearing Death to the Great Satan, however, hasnt left the average American mad. Its left them bored. It's left them disinterested in the final consequences to the societies in which the chanting mobs appear. They dont care. And as I said, that may have more injurious consequences than Disappointed Engagement or Active Animus. The former leads to withdrawal; the latter leads to rash plans quickly nixed when the anger cools.
A nation that no longer cares about what happens Over There is a nation, I think, that has already made its peace, however subconsciously, with a horrible conclusion.
Just a thought.
Posted by: Mike 2006-08-08 |