Deuces Wild

It's quite disheartening how the full house of the hearts & minds of nearly the entire West has bashed Trump with clubs along with its race cards of aces for simply calling a spade a spade (meanwhile the wild cards, the Moderate Muslims -- those jokers of the not-full deck we're playing with -- laugh up their sleeve).

Mark Bennett, a civilian in the counter-jihad I know who has a counter-jihad (and Christian apologetics) blog called Answering Abraham, recently informed me that he was ostracized by David Wood -- that increasingly well-known Christian counter-jihadist who has been quite active for years in the counter-jihad, debating Muslims and crafting often excellent videos exposing the alarming evil of Islamic texts (his videos have often been featured on Jihad Watch).  Here's what Mark Bennett wrote on his Facebook page on December 8:

David Wood, just removed me as a friend and therefore blocked me from responding on his wall, so I will do so here. He decided to publicly announce he is against Trump's plan to stop Muslim immigration.

This is just one indication that Trump's salvo is causing rifts within the counter-jihad, and those may spidercrack further into a widening division as the future unfolds (which wouldn't be all bad, seeing how it may tend to clarify the distinction between what I call the Counter-Jihad Softies and the Counter-Jihadists who logically extrapolate from what they are countering to mainstream Islam and all Muslims).  One wonders what David Wood's close friend, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, will do about this.  Knowing Spencer, he'll probably just pretend like nothing happened.

At any rate, here is a brief excerpt, just under two minutes, of the now infamous speech by Trump, shows him making entirely reasonable remarks and (uncharacteristically) sounding lucid and concise about this most exigent, and alarmingly metastasizing, issue.  His Man-of-the-People rhetoric is a most welcome splash of clear, cool water to those of us who have been crawling in the bleak Desert of De Nile of our Western Mainstream filled with cruel and silly mirages of Multiculturalist Tolerance for so many years:

"Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States -- until our country's representatives can figure out WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON...!"

And Trump goes on to articulate the bare bones of an argument backing up this most rational stance:

"According to Pew research, among others, there is a great hatred toward Americans by large segments of the Muslim population.  Most recently, a poll from Center Security Policy... showing that 25% of those polled agreed that 'violence against Americans' -- these are people that are HERE, by the way, people HERE; 25 -- not 1% -- by the way, 1% would be unacceptable! 1% is unacceptable!..."

And after that quite necessary interruption of his train of thought to clarify what these alarming figures reflect, he continues:

"...25% of those polled agreed that 'violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as part' -- think of that! -- 'as part of the global jihad'...!"

As my readers know, the meme I advocate pushing goes beyond what Trump is announcing here.  But since I take Trump's announcement to be a meme first, and an actual policy statement second, I welcome it in the deeper, broader context of paradigm-shifting that must occur before we will be able to take salutary actions concerning the problem of Islam.

Aside from the mainstream condemnation of Trump's remarks (which, alas, is wearily unsurprising), many within the vague boundary of the counter-jihad also squirm uncomfortably, thinking that someone in such a prominent position in the mainstream limelight should be more "careful" and tone down any rough edges of rhetoric that might displease the PC MCs.  "Trump has handed the election to Hillary" so goes the logic.  That may or may not be true (and it doesn't necessarily follow), but to me, such an anxious concern reflects a shortsighted perspective of the broader War of Ideas we are engaged in, where a much longer arc of time should figure in our planning than merely the next year leading up to the American election.

While it would of course be horrible if Hillary won, it wouldn't be the end of the world.  Indeed, a Hillary victory and subsequent Presidency, we may reasonably conclude, will devolve so nicely it may well pave the way for a more concerted & informed awakening of the people and among the political establishment (which includes many ordinary people, by the way) -- and a consequent candidate in four (or, shudder, eight) years after that, whose name may not even be household yet, but who will reinvigorate the Conversation about the Problem of Islam in a way that builds upon the Trump Meme, and goes farther.

And, of course, we can count on Muslims in the meantime to continue doing what they do best -- getting worse and worse.

This is all speculation, in case Trump has indeed jeopardized his chances by "going too far".  A more hopeful spin on it would rely on the hope that there exists a sufficiently numerous demographic of American voters out there whose untapped potential needs to be massaged and gently provoked by someone in the public eye brave enough to push the envelope of the overly cautious, prevailing rhetoric on this issue.  My point is that while of course it would be wonderful if the card Trump threw into this volatile poker game the world is playing close to the vest saw what the others bet and boldly, audaciously raised them -- thus taking a gamble and upping the stakes -- "won", ultimately it doesn't matter, since the larger game afoot is the longer War of Ideas which has to proceed on the level of pushing memes because the mainstream environment in which it must play is not yet awake.

Thus, the logic of those in the counter-jihad who object to Trump not because he's wrong but because in political rhetoric he "went too far" is predicated on recommending action in a context that presumes the West is already awake.  But the whole point is that the West is not yet awake; and so our counter-jihad strategy must revolve around the project of waking up the West -- persisting in its long Snooze haunted by nightmares of its own "bigotry" and "racism" -- before anything else can be realistically done.  The Counter-Jihad is thus not really "counter-jihad" in the sense of being an organ capable of actually doing anything against Islam: it is a "West-Awakening" movement first and foremost -- or should be, and could be, once its straggling members get their shit together to figure out what they're trying to do.

_{֍ ֍ ֍ ֍ ֍} 

And on this level, the Trump card that so convulsed the mainstream of the West this week has an effect like a rock thrown into a pond creating ripples, and paving the way for more people in the coming years, even decades, to think the "unthinkable".  As seasoned poker players know, it's not about one hand in one game, it's about the long night ahead where one may lose early on, but build upon daring moves -- when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em -- to win in the end when the sun comes up.