Less Time To Flatten

Emotion – not reason - drives policy. Reason only serves in support. If we are to understand policy, we must first understand emotion. We use a variety of terms to describe emotion. Often such terms are misapplied. It happens quite innocently in the course of common occurrences: The wife asks, “Do you want okra or green beans for dinner?” I say, “Green beans.” She responds by saying, “I know, you hate okra.”“So why did you ask?” I say, and we’re off to the races.

In truth, I’m indifferent to both. Just because I have voiced a preference does not mean I have strong feelings either way. Yet, the word “hate” has been introduced into the conversation.

It’s no secret that Obama does not have a firm grip on the details that define the Middle East. He sees all Muslims as Muslims and all infidels as infidels - black and white. Simple. It is the same view “The Nation of Islam” here in the U.S. holds. Given such scant knowledge would be enough for any average American president to conduct foreign affairs. Unfortunately, Obama is on the wrong side.

Hatred is often mislabeled as ‘fear’. Islamists in the ME fear the West. They see their culture in danger of being diluted by western ways. That’s why they fight. Islam in the West hates the West as an expression of its own self-loathing. There is a difference.

Islam takes fear and envy and wraps them all in the same cloth and sets it on fire. For simplicity’s sake we call it ‘hatred’. They constantly misrepresent the enemy; to make him out worse than he appears. It is for this reason that Islamic nations do not welcome guests – and if they do, these are treated separately – all to maintain the ridiculous notion that all guests are pollutants.

Israel is seen as a pollutant on what Islam perceives as its land. They do not fear Israel (as Israel poses no existential threat); they fear the influence of a modern, successful, western nation in their midst. They fear not being able to maintain close theocratic control over their own, whom they view as chattel – easily distracted from the straight and narrow and apt to chase anything that glitters. They feel their hold slipping. As such, they will go to increasing lengths to see to it that their sheep, goats, camels and women stay in line.

The frustration that mounts within their populations is building to explode. Even that - by careful, systematic manipulation - can be directed to serve the theocratic regime. All the rage is channeled against Israel and the West (for protecting Israel). In this way the Islamic theocracy shields itself from having to answer for its own failures.

On Aaron Klein’s radio show today, not much was made of NABKA Day. It’s a day like any other for a nation under constant siege. What was interesting, however, was Aaron’s exchange in his last segment with Hussein. Hussein finds it inconceivable that anyone would question Obama’s legitimacy. He asks, how it could be possible for every one of America’s official high legal authorities (plus the media) to give Obama a pass without an adequate background check and takes umbrage at Aaron’s suggestions? He went on to accuse Aaron of fueling hate for hate’s sake.

We have seen other hoaxes before. Some have exploded (‘global warming’), some have not and are ongoing. Maybe freedom and liberty; rule of law; capitalism; a nod to representative governance all are hoaxes. But these are our hoaxes - hoaxes that Americans have chosen to live by. Obama’s hoaxes are entirely different. These are unwelcome. These were introduced into the body politic by stealth. They seek to tear down and destroy everything we’ve ever held dear. All we have to do is just look around: economy is in tatters, foreign policy in tatters; education in tatters; Constitution in tatters; government in tatters; etc.

The long knives are out for talk radio as well. Avlon’s article is one of these. Smerconish’s show is another. Both seek to pour oil on troubled waters. Unfortunately, I have heard, there’s not enough oil. (Can’t you just picture us throwing windmills and batteries into the drink?)

Emotion drives policy. If you hate that sandcastle on the beach with the penis shaped towers, you go over and you level it. It’s that elementary (my dear Watson). Chances are that it will take you a lot less time to flatten it than it took to build.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Closets

No doubt someone will do a word search and find how many times our media has mentioned ‘Osama’ and ‘Obama’ since Osama was killed by SEAL team 6. I wonder who would win that particular contest. Since we don’t really have all that much useful to do, we might even try to find out how often reporters and talking heads have used these two names interchangeably. They’re really quite similar – the only difference being, that one is dead and one is still alive. Both have killed, after all. (And don’t let me go into degrees of killing – killing one, or thousands – and get all caught up in an argument to determine at which point killing actually becomes a menace.)

Now you might say that one is on our side while the other one wasn’t. Fair point; but let’s define ‘sides’. Let’s say there are ‘sides’. Our side demands submission; that is to say that we expect their side to refrain from killing us. Their side appears not yet convinced that such submission is to their benefit. In Islam, submission is the ultimate goal. They will kill enough of us to convince the rest to submit. The same is true of us (in a way).

Killing is the ultimate statement anyone can make. In taking a life we become god-like, and thus assert that we exist. After one has done it, there is no walking it back. It is the finality of it that should frighten those who subsist on the illusion of death. Submission, on the other hand, is to bow to one’s fate. One continues to live, but one might as well be dead. When the Palestinian suicide bomber (whose vest failed to detonate) was asked why he did it, he claimed that he was already dead; that the Israelis had rendered him dead long ago. Another example is the phrase, “Give me liberty, or give me death” – the American apple pie version of the same thought.

It’s difficult to work things out and enter into an understanding when one has abandoned all reason; when reason needs at the very least to have a foundation on which both sides can agree, such as life being better than death. Islam doesn’t work that way. Therefore, the default position is power. Islam has discovered that the slow action of water running over a stone will over time reduce that stone. Islam has seen the action of water create great canyons. It is committed to chip away at what it believes to be evil and transient. In fact, Islam demands it.

We cannot connect. We are far too busy with our own lives to grasp the abstractions on which Islam builds its theology. We see them simply as aggressive and unyielding, without realizing that we are unyielding as well. What we call ‘advanced’, Islam calls ‘evil’. We claim to be non-violent, but it is us they are reacting to. Our money is perceived as poison by them. It threatens the purity of their abstract view. It is we who are the bulls in their china closets. What we think of as our kind-hearted outreach only shatters more of their china. They see us as aggressors. It is we who fail to recognize their purity; who label their purity as dangerous and corrupt and threaten to overwhelm it. It is they who find themselves backed into a corner from which they snarl and fight …and wear away our belief in ourselves like the stone at the edge of the ocean that eventually becomes sand.

We stand at a crossroads. Will we stand up and fight as Krishna demanded of Arjuna during the epic battle of Kurukshetra, or will we continue to appease, knowing that appeasement – like valium - becomes addictive? We too have a right to practice what we believe. In our ever shrinking world, can we really afford to build enough closets for everyone to live separately?
---------------------------------------------
Picture: Arjuna's Penance, Mahabalipuram, India.

'How Do I Know When I'm In Love?'

Do I need a reason to despise Kaddafi? Do I need a reason to despise anyone - or not despise? Reasons can be countered effectively by other reasons; by clever manipulation of words. In the end, reasons never make much of a difference. One still continues to despise or not despise. It’s like love, or not to love.

Love exists outside the realm of reason. That much has been generally acknowledged. In the film “Of Gods and Men” a young girl asks the old monk, “How do I know when I’m in love?” He answers something to effect that she would not ask the question if she knew it was true. She counters that the man whom her father has chosen for her leaves her unmoved. “Then it isn’t serious,” the old man says.

“Have you ever been in love?” the young girl asks.

“Many times,” the old monk replies after a pause. Finally, he proclaims his love for God and the scene ends.

Words are seldom adequate to capture emotion. Those who seek to imprison their emotions in words alone tend to remain stunted. I’ve always liked Kaddafi as much as I've hated certain U.S. presidents. And I’ve never had a reason to change my mind.

It’s no different with Hillary. I’ve always despised her for her elitism, her indifference; for her opportunism, the way she always calculates for best political advantage. She married for it. (There obviously wasn’t much love.) Then she lied. Then she became a carpetbagger (in New York). She promised New York everything and then broke her promise. Now as Secretary of State she thinks she has found an opening to the top floor, never realizing that she is being used (the same as everybody else). Both Hillary and Petraeus have been given more than enough rope to hang themselves with.

Winner: Obama.

Morphic Resonance

Let’s step back for a moment. I’ve written about it before: ‘morphic resonance', a term coined by Rupert Sheldrake to explain some instances of paranormal experience. Sheldrake notes that there are ‘morphic (memory) fields’ that surround organisms; that these can and do bleed what can be termed knowledge stemming from the ‘memory’ of collective experience. He came upon it when he noted that a particular species of birds in one part of England had learned to pry the tops off of milk bottles. Shortly thereafter, a group of the same species in another part of England were doing the same.

There may be other explanations for such phenomenon which have since the publication of Sheldrake’s first book on the subject (1981) been developed and expanded, touching other areas; and argued about - both by Sheldrake and his numerous critics - and may not really represent anything more than a shorthand - ‘a way of talking’, if you wish - about something for which there are as of yet no words. Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating subject and does make sense to some degree.

Linguists too may have something to say in parallel when claiming that the human brain is hard-wired for language - not for any specific language (otherwise there would only be one language) but for the grammatical structure that supports it.

As we look around, the world seems in great upheaval. All of us sense that something is afoot. The optimists among us welcome it, trying hard to fall in stride; while the pessimists fear and resist it. The fatalists are content to absorb whatever buffeting may ensue.

This (what’s coming) seems bigger than just the traditional conflicts that have arisen here and there in the past. The modern explanation for it is that the world has grown smaller (metaphorically speaking) and that what happens in heretofore inaccessible parts is now instantly known to all (via the internet). But this approaching storm seems bigger even than a quarrel between nations. It is like the shadow of the spaceship ‘Armageddon' that all but eclipses reason and civility. And we scurry hither and thither, struggling to explain it. There are conflicts on the brink of breaking out all over the place.

Some might point to the inexplicable, seemingly voluntary withdrawal of the United States from the world stage. Surely, they claim, this would cast ripples across the globe as nations scramble to re-tune their alliances. Others point to the Mayan calendar. But this still falls short of explaining the ubiquitous nature of the thing. It is shallow thinking to finger some individual part as a cause when this part, and every other part, are parts of a whole.

Enter ‘morphic resonance’. The divide appears to be between the privileged - the self-proclaimed (often illegitimate) - leaders and the masses that feel themselves somehow disconnected from their leadership and oppressed. We see it in the Middle East; we see it in Asia; we see it in America itself with the rise of the Tea Parties. There appears to be a universal dissatisfaction with leadership in general.

Leadership, in turn, desperately seeks to preserve the status quo. It cajoles; it threatens; it paints any departure from the norm as ominous. Nevertheless, most of those now in power, know that their days are numbered. Chinese leadership knows. They are preparing, as we speak, to hold back the tide. We watch them prepare and think that they are planning to attack us. Clearly, we both know that neither we nor they are a threat to each other. So, we are puzzled. China knows that the threat comes from within. It is already palpable.

While we are still in the process of finishing off what remains of our individual soma rations, our president concerns himself primarily with staying in power. To this end, he has falsely co-opted the idea of ‘change’, never considering that he himself is its target. The next two (or six) years will bring change alright, but it will not be due to Obama.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/