THE DAY EVERYONE REVEALED THEIR AGENDAS
by Dave Munger
CO-COLUMN OF THE DAY!!
"The Hand of Munger"
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The
9/11 air raid has universally been perceived as an unprecedented windfall of
ideological ammo for everyone with an ax to grind. Even those vocally disinterested,
"non-ideological" Americans have seized the opportunity to self-righteously
denounce their pet peeves. However, the net result of this cacophony is close
to zero. The sundry ubiquitously opportunistic bleatings cancel each other out
for the most part, leaving the bulk of the country pretty much where it was
on the tenth of September. There is little reason to hope that a single American
has changed his mind about anything at all.
Before proceeding, I suppose it would behoove me to reveal my own agenda, Teleological Zionism, which is somewhat more pertinent than most. The teleological outlook presumes that all things exist in order to fulfill a purpose that was intentionally laid out for them, and is implicit in Theism. Zionism can follow from a belief in the Bible or in the rule of law, take your pick (the current Israeli State was founded on land that was purchased lawfully). The Teleological Zionist position is basically that rather than Israel owing it's existence to us, the United States exists because of Israel. The existence of Israel is a primary necessity to the satisfactory culmination of history, while our nation is only secondarily necessary, as one of the particular means through which God preserves His own nation. If God were to withdraw His favor from us, He would not be violating any promises. Presumably, if we were to cease to exist or to discharge our necessary historical function, He would act through some other means.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, all of us were filled with hope. People who prefer mature, thoughtful, over-lit, quality films in which nothing happens hoped that Hollywood would finally wake up and stop making entertaining movies. Those (like Glenn Reynolds and myself) who have been exasperated by the efforts of the media and the previous administration to promote a mideast policy of either neutrality or outright hostility to our allies hoped that we would realize who our enemies are and get off Israel's back. People with clearly made-up religions hoped that the spirit of national unity would keep anyone from calling them on the self-serving lies they tell about God anymore. Those who call the Rush Limbaugh Show and the Drudge Report "Hate Radio" hoped that the ensuing fad of conspicuous shallow patriotism would cause the masses of simple, ordinarily apathetic folks who've been draping flags over all of their possessions (backwards) would rise up and silence all who concur with Ronald Reagan's anarchistic statement that "government is not the solution, government is the problem". The Christophobic lobby hoped that the distinctions between theistically informed political dissent and mass murder would be overlooked. My comrades and I on the right side of the kulturkampf hoped that the value of human life would receive greater recognition, and that patriotic fervor would bury the PC beast of a thousand names, the latest of which is "cultural relativism", in an unmarked grave, never to be mourned. People who don't find political discourse entertaining hoped that nationalistic loyalty would quash it by compelling us all to rush to consensus by concurring with authority. People who have problems with authority as a concept as well as all symbols of authority hoped that organized religion, capitalism, and the fuzz would share the blame with al-Qaeda. People who overindulge in nostalgia hoped we could have WWII again. People who habitually assert that everything is without precedent (in order to excuse their ignorance of history or justify unprecedentedly irrational or wicked responses to everything) hoped that the international nature of al-Qaeda would confound all analogies with the conflict in which we and our allies fought the Axis, another international fascist organization. People who consider our government's policy of allowing corporations to commit such interventionist atrocities as purchasing raw materials (oil) and cheap labor from the countries that need the money most and in turn try to sell them some Pepsi to be as viscous an incarnation of imperialism as has ever manifested hoped that the profit motive would be abolished and we would convert to a domestic flatus based energy policy. The eternal Jew blamers hoped the Jews would be blamed by all. Those who found our recognition of Israel's right to exist as a nation to be somehow a violation of the sovereignty of an imaginary nation hoped that our government would attempt to appear impartial by caving to the demands of the excess Jordanians who demand that an ethnically pure state be created on the land now occupied by Israel. As long as our dominant entertainment medium is called "movies" and they are expected to turn a profit overseas, action will take priority over dialog; It translates better, and we really don't need to see peoples' faces when they're just talking. As long as some of us believe that God has objective existence and a right to be worshipped on His own terms, everyone's religion is subject to criticism. Those who don't bother to vote will never silence those who do. As long as NPR is on the air, the attitude that it is somehow wrong that Americans consume (purchase) 90% of the world's resources will be flagrantly presented as self-evident. This attitude can only be changed by demanding that it justify itself, and confronting it with the truth, that commerce is one of the ways that the U.S. helps, and is superior to, other countries.
The use that our flag saw during the week of September the 11th is illustrative of the true nature of the new spirit of national unity. It was flown in the rain, hung as a banner with the stars facing right, thrown over shoulders as a stole, plastered over with peace signs, and used as a background for fart joke websites. The vast majority of those displaying it never had before, won't be doing so next September, and don't know how it is meant to be flown. American patriotism, as opposed to the infantile narcissistic love of soil (I love this land because I was born here) that passes for patriotism in many countries, requires that those who profess to love their country know something about it, and express the gratitude appropriate to that knowledge. For most of those who don't know more about history than about whether it's appropriate to tie a flag onto their dog like one of those bandannas the cool dogs wear with sunglasses, the recent outburst of fervor is as temporary and shallow as most of the flag displays.
There is a time for hope, as the Puritans knew when they hoped to purify the Anglican Church, and a time for despair, as they admitted when they gave up and left. If they had clung to their false hope, the true hope that is our country would not exist. Whether your hopes were dealt with above or I left you out, give up hope that all of the things we've lost and all of the futures we've aspired to can be gained through shock and visceral horror instead of the arduous struggle, self-reproach, and mass executions that will actually be required of us. ***
© 2002 Dave Munger
COPYRIGHT © 2002 BY THE AMERICAN PARTISAN. All writers retain rights to their work.
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