Well, so far as I've been penning these installments in this multi-part series, I've been more concerned than usual to try to be brief and avoid indulging in analytical complexity as I am perhaps too often guilty of doing on this blog; after all, each post thus far has been about a page or less if it were printed out. Surely, that's not asking too much of my reader. However, I may well break that unspoken rule with this particular installment, as I begin to delve into aspects of this problem that may be too complex to do justice to with artificially terse and pithy posts.
First off, the short answer to the question I broached in the last two installments -- can I imagine a workable compromise with the Counter-Jihad Softies? -- is Yes.
But there's a Big But (bigger than the mile-wide butts of the houris of Islamic Paradise). The compromise I would agree to would pertain to what is already underway now anyway: a de facto collaboration in the general direction away from the Mainstream toward the paradigm shift the West is by painstakingly glacial increments turning its U.S.S. Titanic toward as it nevertheless continues to barrel merrily toward the iceberg of Islamic Jihad whose masses of tips & icicles it continues to ignore. Were the Counter-Jihad an actual Anti-Islam Movement with cachet and organization, and with a more substantive toehold (let alone foothold) in the Mainstream -- which means it would perforce have to have developed an actual platform -- then the dissonance between the Softies and the Holistics would magnify and likely force some kind of a confrontation.
I.e., it is precisely the state of relative lack of organization (and its corollary clout) which facilitates a sort of false sense of unity now; a sort of "we have to set our differences aside and work together" philosophy. This is all well and good as things stand, but once the rubber is getting closer to meeting the tarmac, we're going to have to start getting serious (i.e., less abstract and more concretely pragmatic). The day of reckoning -- crystallized by the question, "What do we do about the problem?" -- cannot be put off forever. I only fear that if the Softies continue to hold sway (and their sway is held by virtue of the relative passivity of the likely Majority of Comfortably Incoherent, Passive-Aggressively Don't-Rock-the-Boat Counter-Jihadists), they will continue to steer the Movement (and, as time goes along, to steer a West more and more coming around to rousing itself from its ridiculous Rip Van Winkle Nap as, in the interest of its Fukuyamishly airhead beauty sleep and rose-colored dreams thereof, it continues hitting the snooze alarm on its 90s digital alarm clock flashing 9:11) on a course inexorably dependent on letting Muslims dictate the direction of our response.
On one level, this would be fine, since that has been my position all along -- viz., that it is our intelligent attention to the Mohammedan data that should define our policy, not some hypothetical abstract model of what Must Be the Case tangential to, if not blithely irrespective of, the data on the ground. I.e., we need to err on the side of a casuistic approach, while we judiciously veer away from an inductively speculative template (and I unpacked this perspective in an essay here from about two years ago, Is Islam an "existential threat"?).
However, if the Softies continue to hold sway, what is likely to unfold & devolve from there is an incoherent combination of casuism (responding to the data) and paradigm-driven reaction (forcing the data to conform to the abstract model). The likely result of this kind of approach would be to reinforce the West's neurotically immature De Nile -- much like the person who keeps putting off the medical exam that may reveal he has cancer, hoping that by pretending there's no problem, it'll just go away on its own. And what this will likely entail is to ensure that the inevitable -- Deportation of Muslims from the West -- will be costlier, messier, and bloodier than it needs to be.
Given this, would I continue to compromise and work with the Counter-Jihad Softies as the protracted, metastasizing Train Wreck of our near future continues to unravel?
Do I have a choice? (And the answer to that is in your hands, dear reader, not mine...)
I wouldn't.
ReplyDeleteThe softies aren't good for squat. You just end up compromising yourself to fit in. They would also know you caved in.
Look, it's been 13 years since Islam rung our bell. The softies haven't done squat, can't organize worth a hill of beans, are afraid to even be blunt in the blogs they run.
Human waffles we don't need.
By now we should have a national organization with state chapters that is the equivalent of the NRA - replete with dues, for the anti-jihad movement.
In short a pressure group that has the clout to have representation on capitol hill like the NRA does.
Right now the opposition is 10 steps ahead of us. They're organized and funded.
While we can't even agree what day it is. Let alone a strategy for containment.
I agree for the most part; however, my part 8 installment was looking more at the situation we are in as it stands now (integrating also the fact that any better organization the Counter-Jihad could build in the future would likely have to use, at least in part, the raw materials of what is around in our present situation). In the free and imperfect real world (as opposed to fantasy speculation and unrealistic expectations), more often than not what seems deleterious is simply the bad side of the human process of change. Probably most sociopolitical movements for good in history have involved a slow, messy process of people changing their minds over time. I.e., we have to keep plugging away; and while I agree with the bleak assessment you articulate, I see it's only one side of the predicament, the other side being hopeful potential. The vector of the former is necessary to light a fire under those who lean way to far in the opposite direction; but it shouldn't be so bleak as to be nihilistic or about the possibility of change.
ReplyDeleteThe MAIN problem is that even the 'softies' face REAL death threats that have the intended result to stop the organization of groups with membership lists that can be sold, stolen, or subpoenaed (just a form of legalized stealing by hostile Western governments).
ReplyDeleteI know for a fact that Pamela Gellar has been receiving death threats for years. And, Geller is less 'soft' than many people in that Geller understands and firmly states (at least in face to face conversations) that 100% 'nice' Muslims are simply practicing taqiyya when Muslims are 'nice' to dhimmis in the West.
Indeed, the Charlie Hebdo group was about as 'soft' as its gets when illustrating Mohammed, and yet Western Muslims still threatened and murdered the entire editorial staff.
https://www.google.com/#q=taqiyya