Searching for Alice

Perhaps you know the work of one of my favorite authors, Calvin Trillin.  He is often described as a journalist.  But I think of him as a master essayist.

He frequently included his wife, Alice, in his work.  He wrote about their adventures big and small, and about their life together.  Alice and I this, and Alice and I that.  He not only writes about their adventures, but delights in writing about Alice’s reactions and opinions and responses.  As one reads Trillin, a careful observer comes to discover that, in fact, she is the central character.  It’s all about Alice.  All of it.  He is either writing about her or not, but he is always writing for Alice.

He admits this in one of his later books on the dedication page.  I cannot quote it verbatim, but it was something like:
I wrote this for Alice.  In fact, I write everything for Alice.

Personally, I like to believe this is true.  He wrote everything for Alice.  And, if anyone else was interested in what he had to say, well, that was a bonus.

Anyway, a few years ago, Alice died.  You can imagine the response from his loyal readers.  He quoted from some of their condolence letters in a subsequent book, called About Alice.  I found one comment particularly memorable.  A woman wrote to Trillin and said that she asks herself:  Does my boyfriend love me?  And, will he love me like Calvin loves Alice?

A high bar indeed.

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What Happened to my Newspaper?

I woke up this morning, put the coffee on, and like every morning for the last 20 years, went outside to get the newspaper.  Alas, there was no paper to be found.  Of course it might have something to do with the unpaid renewal bill still sitting here on my desk.  For $183.  For another year of the Raleigh News & Observer.  Let me look at it again; yes, my subscription expired a week ago.  No doubt my carrier was hoping I’d get around to paying it and gave me a week’s grace.

But I am not going to pay it.  In fact, I decided not to renew it months ago.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the ritual of sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the paper.  Tangible news.  Well tangible newsprint anyway.  It’s a comfortable ritual and it used to be the very first thing I did in the morning.  But in recent years, its become the second.  These days, the first thing I do is, well, read the news…on the internet.  Okay I confess, email first, then news.

Sure, reading news articles on the internet takes a little getting used to.  But just like the printed newspaper, most articles are not very long.  I used to print out long articles from the internet and read them on paper.  And, I still do that occasionally – a recent New York Times Magazine cover story comes to mind.  But over time, I have come to read longer and longer articles online.

Now, we all know newspapers are in trouble.  Their problems are real:  An outdated business model, diminished advertising, and falling subscriber base.  But, I have long resented paying for the newspaper.  For me, it is a quality issue.  They just do not do a very good job.  Simple as that.  And objective journalism is an oxymoron.  The only people in the world who do not recognize this fact seem to be the so-called journalists themselves.  But I paid anyway.  I wanted to know what the heck was going on, and regardless of what I thought about their competence or fairness, they were able to inform me who won the election yesterday.

But I no longer need them for that.  Consequently, I no longer feel compelled to give money to the undeserving.

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Andrew McCarthy: The Grand Jihad

I have just started reading Andrew McCarthy's The Grand Jihad.  I was almost immediately disappointed:

So is it wrong, then, to shrink from the conclusion that the real problem is Islam?...Hair-splitting between "Islamism" and "Islam" runs the risk of doing exactly what we must avoid doing:  minimizing the challenge confronting us and suggesting that there is a vibrant, preponderant "Islam," markedly different from purportedly aberrant "Islamism," that somehow does not see sharia-imposition as obligatory.  In my heart of hearts, I don't believe this is true.

Yet, that is exactly what McCarthy immediately goes on to do:

The stubborn fact remains that there are hundreds of millions of Muslims who either do not wish to live under the tyranny of sharia or are so indifferent that, even if they would abide by sharia in a Muslim country where it applies, they do not support converting non-Muslim societies into sharia enclaves.  What are we to do about them?  Are we to tell them they are wrong, that their only alternative is to renounce Islam--even those who live in fundamentalist societies where the penalty for apostasy is death?  Are we to give those people no place to go?

McCarthy acknowledges that what he labels Islamists, "may substantially outnumber our potential allies in the umma."  And he goes on:

We should reserve the designation "Islam" in the hope that tolerant voices can redeem it, but our defense must never be hostage to that hope, which may, after all, be futile.

As he seems to acknowledge, this is purely wishful thinking.  So why does he insist on making the distinction?  Well, I think to incentivize or encourage or allow for some type of Islamic reformation.  Which perhaps, he views as more likely if the adherents can continue to think of themselves as Muslims.

While I think I understand his rational, I find it unrealistically optimistic and even counterproductive.  We will never defeat that which we are afraid to name.  Let's be clear, while there may well be moderate Muslims, there is certainly no moderate Islam.  We cannot wish it into existence.  So to answer McCarthy's question:  Are we to give those people no place to go?

Well, word games will not suffice.  The problem is not Islamism.  The problem is Islam.  Of course those people should renounce Islam.

By not rejecting Islam, so-called moderate Muslims give tacit approval to Islamic doctrine and to their co-religionists who are less reticent to follow it.  With his semantic construct, McCarthy lets them off the hook for this.  It is a mistake.  If we do not imbue Islam with the negative connotation it so richly deserves, Muslims will have no incentive to decamp.  The problem, of course, is that there are 1.4 billion Muslims of varying stripes and the overwhelming majority of them will never abandon their ideology.  It is a problem without a recognized solution.  (I advocate containment a la George Kennan)  But in any case, it does us no good whatsoever to sweep it under Orwell's rug.

For much more sober views on moderate Islam, see Bruce Bawer, Hugh Fitzgerald, and Sam Harris.

I'm eleven chapters into The Grand Jihad, and other than the semantic confusion, I have found it quite illuminating.  But I would be far more sympathetic to his above premise if McCarthy drew distinctions between his two degrees of Islam.  So far, he does not.  He talks exclusively about Islamism and Islamists.  But to my ear, it sure sounds like just plain Islam.  So every time McCarthy uses the terms Islamism or Islamist, I have to replace them with Islam or Muslim.  It's annoying.

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Finally, at the end of chapter twelve, on page 212, McCarthy, for the first time, does make a distinction between the views of (moderate) Muslims and Islamists.  He contrasts their attitudes on Obama's Muslim heritage:  Moderates "figure being born a Muslim should be irrelevant if one never makes an adult choice to embrace the religion."  As opposed to Islamists who "believe that all humans, regardless of parentage, are called to Islam at birth."  While statistics or polling on the prevailing Muslim attitude on this question would be appreciated, I will welcome more such distinctions reading forward.

At the end of chapter fifteen, McCarthy finally addresses what is to my mind the real problem, mainstream Islam:

First, while Obama is living proof that it is possible to ignore Islamic doctrine's causative connection to terrorism, it is not possible credibly to deny that connection.  Therefore, the need to deal with Islam is unavoidable--not because it is an asset, but because it's a liability that can't be written off.

Second, there can be no peace unless Islam reforms.  For there to be peace, Islam must purge its savage elements...and it must compellingly condemn the violence committed in its name.  This cannot be done, as Obama and others would like to do it, by telling Muslims everything is fine, that their religion is just peachy as is....This approach does nothing to discredit Islamists and Islamist terrorists in the eyes of other Muslims.  In fact, it enhances their credibility because it ignores their doctrinal justifications of terror rather than offering a credible counter-construction.

Worse, as we've observed, it may well be that there is no credible counter-construction of Islam.  In that case, there is a gargantuan amount of reform to be done by Muslims.  They are the ones who believe that there is something in Islam so worth preserving that it's better to fight than switch.  We cannot rouse them to the task by telling them, as American presidents have been wont to tell them, that we think Islam, as it currently exists, is promoting peace.

But the question is:  Do vast majorities of Muslims have the will, or even the inclination, to accept such "counter-constructions" or reform?  Again, this is ignoring reality.  This is holding ourselves hostage to hope.
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Videoconferencing

It's time to get serious about videoconferencing

Let's see,

Parking
Surly, incompetent, or un-empowered airline staff
Ridiculous, inept, and totally ineffective airport security
The airlines' inability to maintain a schedule
Fellow passengers
Those seats
That food
Lost baggage
The overall time and expense and hassle
A whole day of travel for a two-hour meeting
Government bureaucrats lurking behind every facet of the biz
And now, a volcano

It is finally time to get serious about videoconferencing.  Unless you have highly confidential material, Skype works just fine.  It includes messaging, audio, and/or video.  And, it's free!

Can videoconferencing replace a face-to-face?  No.  Is it often good enough?  Yes.
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Wafa Sultan on Islam

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How to Produce a Television News Report

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Tim Hawkins

On Chick-fil-A

The Government Can

Update, January 2024

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Wafa Sultan: A God Who Hates

Wafa Sultan writing in her new book, A God Who Hates:

For me, understanding the truth about the thought and behavior of Muslims can only be achieved though an in-depth understanding of [the] philosophy of raiding that has rooted itself firmly in the Muslim mind.  Bedouins feared raiding on the one hand, and relied on it as a means of livelihood on the other.  Then Islam came along and canonized it.  Muslims in the twenty-first century still fear they may be raided by others and live every second of their lives preparing to raid someone else.  The philosophy of raiding rules their lives, the way they behave, their relationships, and their decisions.
Page 66

The status of women in Muslim countries is a human catastrophe that the world has ignored for centuries and for which it is now paying a high price for ignoring.  An oppressed and subjugated woman cannot give birth to an emotionally and mentally well-balanced man.  The invisible Muslim woman has been and continues to be the hen who incubates the eggs of terrorism and provides them with the necessary warmth to hatch the terrorists.
Page 135

Whatever has been said in the past and will be said in the future about the role of television in shaping a person's convictions, I do not believe that it has played or ever will play as important a role as books do.  And this is even truer when the book in question is a religious one, and when it is the sole source of knowledge for people who are bedazzled by reading it.
Page 165

It is difficult, if not impossible, to have a healthy relationship with another person if you are suspicious of his or her intentions.  No Muslim, no matter how well educated, no matter how outwardly accepting of others he may be, can free himself completely of his suspicions when circumstances bring him into contact with [Christians and Jews].  He is quite convinced that he cannot have a real friendship with anyone who does not accept Muhammad as a divinely inspried prophet.
Page 194

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The Job of the Intellectual

Christopher Hitchens discusses George Orwell with Russ Roberts.  Best part, near the end:

The job of the intellectual, the so-called public intellectual, as we are now for some reason doomed to call it, is or ought to be, to say something along the following lines:  It's more complicated than that.  You mustn't simplify this; there's more complexity to this subject.  That's what an intellectual should be doing for public discourse.  One thinks.

But then there are occasions when, it seems to me, that the reverse is the case.  That actually, what the really thoughtful person should be saying is, It's simple; do not make complexity here, where none is required.  I was trying to imagine what Barack Obama would say if he was asked about Salman Rushdie.  Would he say, Of course, I'm for free expression over religious sensibilities, every time?  He wouldn't be able to do this, I suddenly realized.  He's never been asked.  But in his campaign to remake our relationship with the Muslim world, no one's ever asked him the fatwa question.  Could he just give a straight reply?  And no dancing around.  I bet you he could not.  Whereas the most boring thing I've ever said about Salman Rushdie was the only thing I wanted to say.  Which was, you have to be on his side; there's no other side you can possibly be on.

I understand what complexities that people want to introduce, but I'm here to repudiate them and say no-no, keep it simple.  Orwell is very good in that way.  It's very hard to tell what the truth is and some people even say that you can't quite do that; that there may not even be such a thing as objective truth.  That doesn't mean you shouldn't try for it.

Recorded on 17 August 2009.
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On Moderate Muslims

If Nidal Malik Hasan had been a white supremacist, who, say, walked into an African-American church and started shooting, we would easily identify him for what he is.  However, if a muslim walks on to a military base and starts shooting, what do we call him?

Well evidently, anything except:  An islamic supremacist.

Islam is a supremacist ideology.  It is very much akin to Hitler's nazism.  One did not have to man the death camps to subscribe to the ideology.  Plenty of Germans stood by approvingly or turned a blind eye.  I suppose we could say that those people were "moderate nazis."

Hasan's rationale comes straight from the teachings of islam.  The fact that most muslims don't run around killing infidels says nothing whatsoever about their beliefs or the teachings of islam.

Islam reveres muhammad and teaches that he led the "perfect life."  A life that all good muslims should emulate.  And yet, he was a warlord, a rapist, a pedophile, a misogynist, and a polygamist.  One could go on and on.  But, in short, he was an evil man.  So islam reveres evil.  If one subscribes to islam, one subscribes to evil.

So, so-called "moderate muslims" are like those "moderate nazis."  Do not let them off the hook for their vile beliefs just because they did not pull the trigger.

Now, the politically correct crowd argues that we should be tolerant of islam.  But this is like saying we should be tolerant of racist white supremacists.  I mean they don't all run around lynching people right?  To paraphrase Bruce Bawer, tolerance of intolerance is not tolerance at all.  It's suicide.

Hugh Fitzgerald asks:

There is no way that those so-called...moderate Muslims can suggest that no, it is the extremists who are untrue to Islam.  They aren't untrue.  They are perfectly loyal Muslims, good and righteous followers of that exemplar Muhammad....  If one really knew what Islam contained, as not all Muslims born or raised in the West may quite realize, then how could any decent person remain a Muslim? 

So, before you brand me a simple-minded bigot, I urge you to go do a little research on the basic tenets of islam.  After that, you can call me whatever you like.
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