In yesterday's post I described a small part of the early phase of an analysis in which the patient and I were able to determine that a car accident was an over-determined, unintended culmination of various unconscious processes; from this discovery, a great deal of very fruitful work flowed. I suggested that we can see evidence of unintended consequences, and the shadow of unconscious processes, in much of our public life.
This past week we saw a particularly stunning example of denial in an article from the Toronto Sun about the recent arrests of 17 men for planning terror attacks in Canada:
The ties that bind 17 suspects?
ANALYSIS | `They represent the broad strata of our community,' the RCMP says.
While the RCMP sound mystified as to what might distinguish the terror suspects, Sweetness and Light helps out by reprinting the article with appropriate emphasis and asks the question:
Now what on Earth could be the common denominator?
Anybody with any clues, please contact the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in English or en Français.
Although I often take the MSM to task for their bias and poor reporting, I think the Toronto Sun article [Commenter DW helpfully pointed out that the article and link are to "The Toronto Star", not "The Toronto Sun"] is merely one example of an ubiquitous kind of well intentioned behavior that has unintended consequences. The problem extends from the top of the Bush Administration to the Halls of Congress (both parties) throughout the Media and pundocracy. It is, in fact, a problem shared by this, and many other blogs, as well.
It emerges from our fears in conjunction with a failure of language.
The fear is easier to explain than the failure of our language, though the two are related. Almost everyone now recognizes that the 1990s were an interregnum, an unreal time when we could imagine the "end of history" was at hand. 9/11 was a watershed event because it represented a paradigm shift. As such, it brought us out of our fantasy world back to reality in the most jarring terms possible. To some on the left, 9/11 became the trigger for their worst fears of anti-liberal, even fascist, governmental power. To many on the right, 9/11 signaled the advent of an existential struggle between civilization and barbarism. To a great many, perhaps most people, 9/11 embodied their inchoate fears of a rapidly changing world. In all cases, the fears were reflections of the sense that the fundamental order and certainty of the universe had been upended and replaced by chaotic times and events.
In this sense, both sides of the political divide had common ground. Everyone was frightened, though there were, and remain, significant disagreement on the proximate cause(s) of the danger. Both the left and the right (unconsciously) agreed that the optimal response should be to deny anything had really changed. The Bush administration declared war on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and made some attempts to effect the course of political life throughout the most illiberal part of the world, all the while insisting Americans should carry on as if nothing really had changed at home. The left declared war on the Bush administration, seeing their efforts to "change the world" as more destabilizing than the terrorists. (And they may well be correct in this; whether or not that is a good thing or a bad thing is another question altogether.)
Here is where it gets most interesting. For reasons which are completely in opposition, both left and right have made the conscious decision to avoid naming the enemy. As a result, much of our political discourse takes on the character of shadow dancing, where we see the outlines of discourse without the details.
The article from the Toronto Sun is simply one of the more obvious examples of the problem. They write an entire story and only refer to Islam twice, both times as peripheral to the news. The version as perfected by politicians is only slightly more subtle. Whenever a politician, including the President, discusses Islamic terror, they make the obligatory obeisance to Islam as the "religion of peace." To paraphrase the Bard, in their repetition, "methinks they protest too much." I think both behaviors spring from the same fears.
A recent Scientific American article discussed The Implicit Prejudice, our unconscious preferences and prejudices. The scientists involved have expanded their Implicit Association Test to include attitudes toward Arab Muslims, which they explain on their results page:
This new test was prompted by the events of September 11, 2001. Suicide pilots, identified as Arab Muslims, crashed airplanes into the World Trade Centers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. killing about 4,000 people. That attack, and the military response by the United States and other countries in Afghanistan have surely influenced conscious and unconscious beliefs and attitudes.
We constructed this test of attitude toward Arab Muslims relative to a category consisting of 'Other People' from around the world. Unfortunately, we do not have data on implicit attitudes toward Arab Muslims prior to September 11, with which the attitudes since can be compared. Nevertheless, we introduce this test because we expect that the events of September 11 and its aftermath open a new chapter in the history of the relations among world communities that differ in religious, political, and social ideology. As with other tests at this site, this one may provide insight into implicit attitudes that may not be in line with conscious attitudes or desired attitudes.
It is unfortunate that there are no results from prior to 9/11; I suspect that had people in the West been given the test in the 1980s or 90s, their "implicit attitude" toward Arab Muslims would have been neutral or somewhat positive. I doubt such attitudes are prominent now in most of the Western world. This illustrates one set of unintended consequences arising from our diffidence in discussing who the enemy is.
It seems that left, right, and center shy away from identifying the enemy as Islam. This may be wise. It may or may not be accurate. We have very little ability to determine from this distance if the majority of Muslims in the world agree or disagree with the various ideologies expressed by the Islamic terrorists. If most Muslims agree that a strict application of Shariah is mandated by their religion, then we would have to conclude that the current war is, in fact, Islam against the world; the only distinctions would then be between the methods suggested by al Qaeda versus groups like CAIR or media outlets like al Jazeera. Furthermore whether because they do not exist in any sizable numbers or the media eschews involvement with them, there seems to be a dearth of moderate Muslims clamoring to stop the promulgating of radical Islam. (Strategy page does offer a very positive example of one way in which American Muslims have made their presence felt in the war against terror.)
Unfortunately, even if for the best of reasons, the (unconscious) collusion between various Western elites to avoid referring to Islam as a source of Islamic terror, combined with our inability to adequately parse the distinctions between peaceful Islam and violent Shariah Islam, leaves us with an unintended outcome: Islam is depicted as a religion of terror which is dangerous to criticize, even if the criticism is implicit. When members of the MSM write a story about Islamic terrorists and neglect to mention their religious justifications, they leave the impression that they are frightened, rather than practicing high ethical, journalistic standards; when George Bush intones the mantra that Islam is the "religion of peace" the conclusion one draws is that he is either afraid to upset our Saudi "friends" who are fueling so much of the terror or that he is naive and ignorant (which I do not buy.) I suspect he is so careful in his language to avoid increasing the likelihood of the current GWOT becoming a true, violent clash of civilizations (though diffidence in language is unlikely to change the outcome) but in any case, such care in language no matter the source carries with it serious risks.
The primary danger of our current ineptitude on the language front is that the world's Muslims will conclude that the West is afraid of the terrorist Jihadis. At the same time, they can rightly conclude that nothing is expected or demanded of them. They are mere bystanders to this war that is raging in their midst. By default, the center is the seized by the most powerful and most radical.
The war against terror will end in one of two ways:
1) An overwhelming majority of Muslims reject Jihadi violence and determine that they are ready, willing, and able to join the modern world. At the moment, they have very little incentive for doing so.
2) An overwhelming majority of Muslims realize that the cost of supporting Jihad, even if it is passive support, comes at such a high price in lives lost and destroyed, that they are effectively ready to sue for peace with the West. (If the example of the Palestinians is any indicator, they are willing to absorb an extremely high price in order to avoid the shame of losing, so this option is not one to be encouraged.)
By avoiding calling Muslims to task for the atrocities being committed in their name, the worst case scenarios become more likely and the end result is increased violence and bloodshed.
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