The Dynamic of Cool

 

Jihad Watch recently reported a HuffPoll which found that:

Overall, 55 percent of Americans had either a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Islam, while one in four said they were not sure how they viewed the faith. Just 7 percent said they had a very favorable view of the religion, and 14 percent said they saw it somewhat favorably.

Assuming that breakdown accurately reflects America at large, the more important concern for the Counter-Jihad is to clarify with more precision where these various groups so imprecisely described are situated. For instance, what does it mean to have a "somewhat" unfavorable view of Islam?  How was that measured?  And how many among the overall unfavorables did they represent?  And can we be sure there do not exist further gradations or granularization along a spectrum among the unfavorables?  And to begin to do that, one would likely need to re-interview / re-question the respondents with more precise questions. Those more precise questions, in turn, need to be crafted by people who themselves have a sure sense of the various ways and degrees by which people can range on a spectrum from one extreme to the other.

Perhaps more importantly in the long run for the war-of-ideas theater of the Counter-Jihad—which continues to be the most important theater if only because awakening the West from its PC MC somnambulance would most effectively begin the process of taking the wind out of the sails of the Jihad Armada swelling in its global revival—this latest HuffPoll indicates that young people in America are more warmly disposed to Islam.  One of their findings stated:

Younger Americans are the most likely to have positive views on Islam, be interested in learning about the religion and have Muslim friends.

If this accurately reflects the orientation of the younger demographic on this issue, it would indicate what I have been arguing for years: namely, that the biggest war-of-ideas problem the Counter-Jihad has is the “cool factor”—which in turn bifurcates into two closely related trends:

a) for a certain apparently significant demographic, it remains “cool” to be favorably disposed to Islam (as a non-Western, perceptually “ethnic” culture) and to Muslims (as non-Western, perceptually “ethnic” and therefore culturally “diverse” peoples)—largely out of the irrational Reverse Racism meme of PC MC

b) more subtly, it remains “cool” to be not anti-Islam—which is not necessarily directly to be pro-Islam—because, apropos of (a) above, it remains “cool” to be not bigoted, and one overwhelming meme of the dominant and mainstream PC MC continues to paint the Counter-Jihad as “bigoted”.

And, as many observers and analysts of our post-modern culture have noted (though one doesn't need to be an expert analyst with lofty degrees and think-tank metrics to see this), in many ways our society has become more youth-oriented than ever before, where people who should be leaving adolescence behind and growing up seem to be cultivating a kind of arrested development (Diana West, for example, discussed this in her book, provocatively and incisively titled, The Death of the Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western Civilization).  This, needless to say, would be a major factor in the West's continuing myopia to the problem of Islam, insofar, as I argue here, being anti-Islam has been decided by pop cultural fiat to have the worst possible thing:  the Cooties of Uncool.

Certainly, the cool dynamic is a flimsy phenomenon intellectually speaking; but, unfortunately, it’s enormously influential socioculturally and therefore sociopolitically, Sure, it would be nice if our societies behaved as superlatively as Plato envisioned the ideal Republic in his dialogue of the same name; but unfortunately, various degrees of mediocrity are an unavoidable—and sometimes influential—part of the life of the public.

As I pointed out in an older essay on my blog, in recent history, America (and perhaps parts of the rest of the West) went through the amazing sociocultural (and hence sociopolitical) process of smoking becoming uncool. Smoking had been cool for so long, nobody could have predicted such a major change in smoking habits in society without totalitarian measures. As George Will noted in the 90s, when signs of the remarkable change were visible enough (if not dominant by then) to be noticed, the cultural reversal was really amazing. Certainly, there are pockets in culture that continue to promote an alterative cool aspect of cigarette smoking (e.g., a few Hollywood actors and rock stars), but those are the exceptions that prove the rule.

The point is that the definitive critical mass of the sociological reversal on smoking habits didn’t seem to have happened because people became reasonably persuaded by the facts through patient arguments reiterated in various media over the decades—but mainly through the phenomenon of smoking becoming “uncool”.

Now if only Islam would lose its “cool”...

It would really help if just a few ostensibly “cool” celebrities—actors and musicians—began to break ranks and slowly, glacially got the snowball rolling.  One Bill Maher isn't enough, I'm afraid.