By Jonah Goldberg
Saturday, June 18, 2016
The AP published a dismaying story this morning:
WASHINGTON — While there has been
ample and justifiable coverage of the Orlando massacre at a gay nightclub this
week, the most remarkably un-reported news is that the shooter also used a
dirty bomb. The device carried an odorless, colorless, cloud of stupidity that
has since drifted up the East Coast and parked itself over Washington and New
York. The “Fog of Idiocy” as some experts call it, is already being blamed for
what some political scientists and national-security experts are calling the
most daft “national conversation” in response to a terror attack in modern
memory.
No one knows how much worse things
will get. Concerns heightened this week when Vice President Joe Biden was
reportedly found using his car keys to get a piece of toast out of the toaster.
The incident turned out to be a false alarm, when his chief of staff told the New York Times, “Oh, he’s been doing
that for years. That’s why we gave him those Fisher-Price plastic car keys. I
mean it’s not like we’d let that guy behind the wheel.” The chief of staff then
drifted off for a moment, as if staring at some horrible alternative universe.
“Oh, God, we’d never do that.”
A follow-up report from the Associated Press revealed
that the toast in question was actually the vice president’s wallet.
Let’s Get Stoopid
No, that’s not real. I know you know that, but I think I
have to say so for the lawyers. But in writing today’s column on the stupid
reaction(s) to the Orlando shooting, I found that — like a review of Lena
Dunham’s collected speeches — there was too much idiocy to be adequately
captured in a single column.
Where to begin?
Well, how about the idea that if you oppose gay marriage
or transgender bathrooms, you cannot be outraged by a terror attack on American
citizens. This is apparently the position of the New York Times, Anderson Cooper, and countless others.
I have walked around and around this idea like a Hertz
sales associate trying to find all the dents in a car returned by a University
of Texas fraternity brother. I’ve studied it the way my dog tries to figure out
what a turtle is all about. I’ve scrutinized it like Bill Clinton when the new
Victoria’s Secret catalogue hits his doorstep. And as a matter of reason and
logic I just cannot get my head around it.
Let’s flip it around. Imagine if an Islamist nutter went
to the convent of the Little Sisters of the Poor and murdered a bunch of nuns
(alas, hardly an unimaginable hypothetical). Would I be right to say that the New York Times and its allied Brain
Trusts have no right to be outraged? After all, liberals have heaped scorn and
contempt on those nuns for their effrontery in not wanting to be forced to pay
for birth control. Or what if an Islamist shot up a Baptist Church or Koch headquarters
or the Washington office of AIPAC?
To borrow a phrase from the New York Times, hatred for Christians, libertarians, Zionists, and
other political minorities doesn’t “occur in a vacuum.” The Times has been fanning the flames of
such demonization for decades; surely they would share some of the blame when
an emotionally unstable Muslim, inspired by ISIS, took it upon himself to
slaughter innocent people.
No, the analogy isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t need to be
because there’s a lot of margin for error when comparing competing idiocies.
It’s incredibly stupid to use a hair dryer in a bathtub. It’s also incredibly
stupid to try to take a selfie with a grizzly bear nursing its cubs. The two
things are hard to compare on the basic fact patterns, but what they share
equally is a fatal idiocy.
I’m against polygamy. But I’m also against people in
polygamous marriages being slaughtered by terrorists. And I will not budge one
fraction of a fraction of a millimeter off of that position if a terrorist
slaughters a whole bunch of people in polygamous marriages, even if some of the
victims — or all of them — thought the laws against polygamy should change.
Clash of Phobias
What’s even dumber is the notion that conservatives are
trying to scapegoat Islam to avoid blame for perpetuating anti-LGBT violence.
Lest you think I’m creating a strawman, see this piece by Zack Ford at Think Progress titled “Conservatives Try
To Scapegoat Islam To Avoid Responsibility For Perpetuating Anti-LGBT
Violence.”
Ford writes:
The Orlando shooting is not an
opportunity to absolve conservatives who have railed against LGBT equality for
years. If they truly care about the fate of LGBT people, they have a
responsibility to account for their own contributions to discrimination and
stigma. Scapegoating Islam is nothing more than a distraction from having a
real conversation about the actual experience of LGBT people when they aren’t
being massacred in the sanctuary of a nightclub.
Look, I have no problem with advocates for LGBT equality
arguing for LGBT equality. But this is the mother of all strawmen. I don’t know
any conservatives — for or against LGBT equality — who are seizing the Orlando
shooting as an opportunity for “absolution.” I honestly don’t even know how
that argument would work. Conservatives are no more looking for absolution
amidst the bloodshed than they are looking for Game of Thrones spoilers.
(I do have a problem with the widespread article of faith
that gays and transgender people have been losing the culture war at the hands
of barbaric “Christianists.” Sexual minorities have been on a winning streak
that any serious-minded person must concede is remarkable. But denying this is
the central tactic and mindset of the Left. They are the aggressors in the
culture war and have been for 40 years. Yet whenever they encounter the
slightest resistance they don the mantle of victimhood.)
Christianity Is
Always to Blame
I’ll give you a small example from the intellectual
latrine that we call Twitter. This guy didn’t like my column today.What is
truly baffling, however, is the way the secular Left talks about the evil and
pernicious role of organized religion when it comes to Christianity but
suddenly abandons that cudgel-like standard when it comes to Islam.
Mateen was connected to Isis by the
most gossamer of filaments. He was connected to his homophobia by his dad.
#nicetrytho
To which I replied:
LOL you make it sound like that's some
major distinction. Where do you think pro-Taliban Dad's view came from?
And here is his rejoinder:
Your attempt at asserting Islam as
reason for a homophobic attack is weak. If you had said "organized
religion" then we could talk.
I almost broke my nose with my face-palm.
Later, when this gentleman was swarmed with responses, he
tweeted:
And please stop sending vids/proof
of Muslim homophobia. They are no more common than Christian ones. You make no
point.
Distinctions
Matter
I wouldn’t single this guy out if he wasn’t so typical.
The essence of serious thinking is the capacity to
distinguish s*** from shinola, by which I mean that intelligence boils down to
the ability to make meaningful distinctions. There’s a reason Barack Obama had
to go back to the Crusades to compare the West to Islam in his notorious effort
to talk Christians down from their “high horse”: Because in the world we
actually live in right now, and by
the standards of not just modernity but also of the secular Left, the West is
simply better. That’s right, better,
by which I mean superior.
The notion that American Christians, even the most ardent
Christian conservatives, are indistinguishable from Islamists — or even the
typical “moderate Muslims” of Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia etc. — in their
attitudes and practices with regard to homosexuality is not just stupid and
ignorant; it is almost literally insane. If you doubt that, read Andy
McCarthy’s piece from earlier this week. Or look at global
surveys of public opinion on homosexuality. Or look at the list of ten
countries where homosexuality is punishable
by death.
I understand why gays can’t stand it when some American
Christians talk about “curing” homosexuality. But (a) that is not the law in
America and (b) no matter how you slice it, wanting to “save” gays from
perceived sin is just plain different from wanting to kill them. No seriously,
you could look it up. Wanting to maintain the traditional definition of
marriage is different from throwing gay people off buildings or crushing them
with stones. Does anyone doubt that a gay Afghan would rather move to the U.S.
than take his chance on being outed in Kabul?
Moreover, it simply will not do to hide behind the
euphemism of “organized religion” because not all organized religions are equal
in beliefs or actions. I have yet to read a sentence that began, “Another Amish
suicide bomber killed . . .” or “Lutheran militants claimed responsibility for
an attack on . . .”
Israel is a country with organized religion. Gays have
parades there. Iran is a country with organized religion. Gays do not have
parades there. If you can’t see this, you are destined to spend your life
stepping in s*** and thinking it’s shinola.
The Triumph of the
Narcissi
Serious people, straight and gay, left and right,
recognize and acknowledge such
meaningful distinctions. Idiots, knaves, fools, liars, activists, and a wide
variety of narcissists ignore or deny such distinctions.
Let’s focus on the narcissists. It is a trademark
tendency of a narcissist to think every significant event is about him in some
important way. If he can’t be the center of attention, then the event must be
spun as a personal validation. Hence Donald Trump’s first reaction to the
Orlando attack was to backdoor-brag about how he was being congratulated for
his Carnak-like prediction that there would be another terrorist attack.
For obvious reasons we tend to think of narcissism as a
phenomenon of personal psychology. It sounds like an oxymoron to talk about
“group solipsism” or “mass narcissism.” But the truth is that nearly all
populist movements are forms of collective narcissism. What is nationalism
other than a kind of pluralization of self-absorption? It’s like the crowd in Life of Brian shouting, “We’re all
individuals!”
I’ve long argued that identity politics is a variant of
this sort of thing. In Orwell’s brilliant essay “Notes on Nationalism,” he
writes:
By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of
all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and
that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently
labeled ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But secondly — and this is much more important — I
mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit,
placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of
advancing its interests.
The mad rush to bend this tragedy to the pre-existing
narrative of gay liberation and anti-Christian bigotry is a perfect example of
mass narcissism. On the secular left today, conservative Christians (and
Zionist Jews) are the enemy. They are the other. The oppressor. The villains in
the stories the Left tells itself.
Because of the internal fantasy-logic of this story,
Muslims must be considered equal partners in the Coalition of the Oppressed.
This is why the “pinkwashing” of Israel makes so many leftists angry; it
arouses the agony of cognitive dissonance.
The Orlando shooter’s ties to Islam, my Twitter
interlocutor insists, are at best “gossamer filaments.” Mateen’s ties to
“homophobia,” however, are the real issue. And in the argot of the Left today,
“homophobia” is a crude euphemism for the Christian conservative threat.
That is the clear meaning of the New York Times’ staggeringly moronic and craptacular editorial.
Never mind that this registered Democrat no doubt got his homophobia not from
Ralph Reed but from his Taliban-praising father and from the suicide-bomber-breeding
mosque he attended. Mateen celebrated 9/11 in high school and lied about being
Osama bin Laden’s nephew. He talked so much about being an Islamic terrorist
the FBI had to investigate him twice.
He took time out from killing people at Pulse to call 911 and claim allegiance
to ISIS. As Jim Geraghty chronicles, Mateen was an Islamist red flag made
flesh. And yet, the narcissists claim, the heart of this story is that “our”
virtue and rightness is under attack and the domestic enemies from whom we draw
our righteousness are truly to blame.
Gay Uber Alles?
The truly gossamer evidence for this comes entirely from the fact that Mateen was
probably gay himself (reminding me of this classic, not-safe-for-work Onion piece). As I tried to note in a bit
of a rant on Special Report the other
night, this is an “argument” built on a swamp, in a cloud, with shoddy
materials.
You know who else was fabulously gay? Ernest Röhm. He was
also one of the founding fathers of the Nazi Party. The leadership of the Sturmabteilung was so chock-a-block with
gays they could have swapped out their drab brown shirts for rainbow tank tops.
Hitler didn’t care until Röhm became a rival for leadership of the Nazi party.
How does this change the moral calculus of Nazism? I’ll
save you the time: It doesn’t change it at all.
It certainly doesn’t change the fact that the Nazis
killed thousands of homosexuals. It doesn’t change the fact that Nazism was an
evil ideology nor the fact that the Nazi regime posed a threat to America and
to civilization itself. But let’s take it further: The fact that the American
government was no doubt full of what we would today call “homophobes” doesn’t
change the moral of the story at all either (FDR as assistant secretary of the
Navy, by the way, led a notorious crackdown
on homosexual behavior).
In short, my liberal friends, homophobia just wasn’t that
important — which is not to say it can’t be interesting. Sure, if it turns out
that Mateen was a self-hating gay guy, that’s interesting, even illuminating.
But it’s just not that important. To listen to some media reports, you’d think
that having Islam-defying sexual desires means you can’t be an Islamist. Never
mind that the 9/11 hijackers hung out at strip clubs or that Mohammed Atta
might have been gay and was certainly terrified that a woman might touch his
man-panties after he died. By definition, “lone wolves” will have “issues” —
that’s why they’re lone wolves. But let’s not make tails into dogs.
The same goes for the War on Terror. Just because you’ve
narcissistically decided that your passion to fight anti-gay bigotry has become
an integral part of your self-esteem and self-conception doesn’t mean that you
can cram the enormous square of Islamic terrorism into the round hole of the domestic
gay-rights agenda and your often bigoted desire to demonize Christians who
disagree with you.
Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean your cause isn’t important
or worthwhile. You should feel free to fight that fight. But, please, don’t try
to bend all of reality to that cause. The same goes for climate change, guns,
or any of the other causes you wear like so many pieces of flare. Sometimes
there are very important things that don’t provide ammunition in your battle to
prove you, and you alone, are the Righteous Ones.
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