My thoughts in 2010, on a 2009 poll indicating that a lot of Americans seem to harbor a vague antipathy to Islam:
"A Washington Post poll released last year found that
nearly half of Americans -- 48 percent -- have an unfavorable view of
Islam."
I'm not as readily pleased as the rest of the Jihad Watchers who take
this datum uncritically to signify that "the people" (i.e., the
non-"Elites") are sufficiently waking up to the danger of Islam.
1) What does "unfavorable view" mean? I would like to know if this
particular poll elicited further specifics on that. I mean, I could
find a poll that shows that 73% of Americans have an "unfavorable view"
of the new Dell laptop; or, more pertinently, an "unfavorable view" of
Jehovah's Witnesses, or Scientology, or the Catholic Church. But these
could very well only be a vague misgiving or aesthetic distaste, just as
this Washington Post poll could be with regard to Islam.
2) Even if it could be shown that the Washington Post poll's 48% (or
at least a majority of that 48%) had a sufficient awareness of the
problem of Islam informing their "unfavorable view", I guess I am more
impatient than other Jihad Watchers, but 48% ten years after 911 -- and
sitting as we are on a veritable mountain (nay, a volcano) of
grotesquely ghoulish data about Muslims, a volcano whose evil lava is
only growing, not diminishing -- is unacceptably, outrageously low. In a
sane world, the numbers would be over 90%.
And this is precisely why I continue to maintain that PC MC is not merely a matter of those dastardly "Elites" -- but also of the hearts and minds of the majority of ordinary people throughout the West.
Note:
My misgivings back in 2010, when I wrote the above in a Jihad Watch comments field, unfortunately remain approximately the same now, three years later, notwithstanding that yes, there has been a sub-microscopic glacial increment of an advance, as a frozen slug might make inching imperceptibly along the same rain-stained walkway it has been traveling for years and years, with the garage door still seemingly as far away as ever.
Under these circumstances, I maintain that if there is nobody around pushing impatiently for more, then inertia and a kind of asymptotic relaxation, lapsing back into the PC MC status quo (with plenty of no-nonsense Counter-Jihad slogans and mantras to keep repeating in order to keep the fantasy stoked that progress is happening), will be even more likely to persist and solidify -- for which the only antidote left, it seems, will be the cement-busting trauma of more and more, and worse and worse, Islamic terror attacks in the coming decades.
Most sociopolitical and sociocultural change in the modern West has resulted, in part, because of impatient gadflies who weren't satisfied with waiting around for change to evolve as conservatively as it took for land reptiles to evolve from amphibians (assuming that they ever did, that is).
