ShrinkWrapped

The Watcher's Council

I spent a year on the Watcher's Council and it was a very rewarding experience.  It was a fair amount of work but each week I was certain to run into surprises.  Membership involved reading a great many posts by some excellent Bloggers, many of whom were new to me, and offering up one of my own and one non-Council post for perusal and vote by the other members.  There is now an opening on the Council and I highly recommend that any Blogger who would like wider dissemination of his or her work and would like to be introduced to the work of other superb Bloggers, take a look at the Watcher's post, Up for Grabs, and join the experience.

Jewish Leftism: An Unconscious Courtship With Death (Part II)

Part I: The Suicidal Pursuit of Perfection

Self Criticism and its Pathologies

One of the prime divides between democratic societies and totalitarian societies is their relationship to self-criticism.  Successful democracies institutionalize self-criticism.  The American two party system thrives on the tension between the two parties, with significantly differing approaches to governing (at least in theory) in usually peaceful conflict over power.  There is a built-in governor to the process since the party out of power is always only two years away from potentially sharing power, and only four years away from attempting to monopolize power.  This offers powerful incentives to the "outs" to criticize and for the "ins" to accurately evaluate the rational basis of the criticism.  If either side miscalculates too egregiously, they are likely to lose, or remain out of, power.

Historically, and into the present, Jews have been famous for self-criticism.  The old joke that if you have three Jews in a room, you will inevitably have four opinions has more than a grain of truth.  Jews have always been noted for their tendency to argue among themselves.  This is often laudable and such self-criticism, even when over the top, has been of great benefit to the Jewish people.  No one can learn if they cannot tolerate criticism.

Unfortunately, self-criticism can degenerate into what Richard Landes has referred to as MASOCHISTIC OMNIPOTENCE SYNDROME:

In the most extreme cases, we encounter Masochistic Omnipotence Syndrome (MOS): “it is all our fault; and if we can only be better, we can fix anything/everything.” This hyper-critical attitude can be seen with particular clarity in the response of some progressives and radicals to both the 9-11 attack in 2001 in the US, and the 7-7 attack in 2005 in London. For many, “What did we do to make them hate us?” trumped “What are they telling themselves that makes them hate us so?” In a sense, the very preference for the former question underlines our desire to be in control. Maybe we can fix what it is that we do to them, so they’ll not hate us so. Maybe even, they’ll like us.

Jewish Leftism: An Unconscious Courtship With Death

Part I: The Suicidal Pursuit of Perfection

[Parts of this post were originally published in December, 2005.]

Many years ago a young woman entered Psychoanalysis for chronic problems she was having in maintaining her relationships.   She announced at the start that she was an ardent feminist and that her feelings about this were not subjects for analytic review.  Early in her treatment, her primary interest seemed to be to initiate arguments with me over male perfidy and oppression of women.  It was not easy to maintain my neutral position in the face of near constant attack.  (Her attacks felt like assaults, usually couched in terms of the patriarchal form and design of the analytic situation where I sat back like a typical male authority figure and made her suffer from my inane and stupid comments.)  After several months of this I began to wonder if I would ever be able to actually start the process of exploring, as therapeutic allies, how her mind works, rather than remaining stuck in the "inherently oppressive" analysis, which was the only way she could experience my efforts.  The breakthrough came when she casually mentioned toward the end of one session that her ankle was bothering her and she was annoyed (she was almost always annoyed about something, I might add) that she wouldn't be able to jog that night.  Since I knew that she was living in a marginal area of Manhattan and this was at a time when crime was at high levels and much in the news, I had concerns that her jogging might be putting her at risk.  When I asked her where she jogged, she confirmed that she jogged in a relatively dangerous area.   Her response to my comment to that effect was that women should be allowed to jog wherever and whenever they wished without fear of predatory men and that nothing and nobody, including me, was going to stop her from doing what she wanted.

I was greatly relieved that it did not take long for her to recognize that her angry feminism (which had roots in long term feelings of disgust with her mother and envy of her brother's exalted position in her family) was inadvertently providing her with a rationalization for dangerous and self destructive behavior.  I should point out that both of us agreed that she and every other woman should be free to jog wherever and whenever they wished, but reality required that until such time as this Utopian ideal could be arranged, prudence dictated that she jog at a different time and place as was her wont.  When, as often was reported in the news in those days, a woman was assaulted and badly injured near the area she had been jogging, she responded with an anxiety attack; she was stricken with the thought that it could have been her and that there was an unconscious part of her mind that had been inviting just such an outcome.  This was the true beginning of a very successful analytic treatment.

Mythology and Civilization

Victor Davis Hanson is one of the Blogosphere's treasures. He, more than anyone else, connects us to our roots in the formative days of Western Civilization. Last week, in the midst of a long post that dealt with the Scooter Libby imbroglio, he discussed the recently released "300." Hansen pointed to a moral bedrock upon which "300" rests:

Why-beside the blood-spattering violence and often one-dimensional characterizations-will some critics not like this, despite the above caveats?

Ultimately the film takes a moral stance, Herodotean in nature: there is a difference, an unapologetic difference between free citizens who fight for eleutheria and imperial subjects who give obeisance. We are not left with the usual postmodern quandary ‘who are the good guys’ in a battle in which the lust for violence plagues both sides. In the end, the defending Spartans are better, not perfect, just better than the invading Persians, and that proves good enough in the end. And to suggest that unambiguously these days has perhaps become a revolutionary thing in itself.

To anyone with even a cursory awareness of humanity's struggle to emerge from barbarism into civilization, his conclusion would be unexceptional. Yet reviewers and commenters on the movie have gone to great lengths to obfuscate and decry the message.

Ben is a member of a news group of liberal hawks. He has not seen the movie "300" (neither have I) but offered his critical take on the reviewing of the movie. His comments are worth repeating here and make some important points; with his permission, I am quoting extensively frm his note:

AL Qaeda and The Oslo Syndrome

If you listened to this week's Sanity Squad Podcast, you had the opportunity to learn about what Dr. Kenneth Levin has termed The Oslo Syndrome.  His take-off on the Stockholm Syndrome referred to the leaders of the state of Israel convincing themselves that Yasser Arafat, by mouthing peaceful words for Western approval, was a worthy "partner for peace" even as he continued to spew hateful and genocidal rhetoric for the delectation of his Arab audiences.   Since Oslo's degeneration into the murderous intifada and the ongoing Palestinian infatuation with suicide/murder, the vast majority of Israelis have become convinced that their only option for even a modicum of peace is to fully separate from the bulk of the Arabs who surround them. 

Considering the skewed press coverage by the international media, as documented by sites such as MEMRI, Camera, and the Augean Stables, it takes a great deal of desperation and courage for the Israelis to accept that they have few friends and no choices but to do whatever necessary to protect themselves.   Learning that there is nothing you can do to satisfy, or appease, your enemies is a hard lesson to learn. 

Many Americans are having profound difficulty grasping the lesson.  Today, the MSM is filled with reports of the confessions of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.  I spent quite a bit of time today listening to commentary on NPR, much of it pertaining to KSM.  It was enlightening and disturbing.

As an aside, I would mention that I spend a lot of time listening to NPR.  Their coverage of events is conventionally quite left of center.

Saying Whatever Comes to Mind XXX

This week the Sanity Squad had a special guest, Dr. Kenneth Levin, author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege.  We discussed the processes by which seemingly intelligent and sophisticated people can convince themselves that people who habitually spew hatred toward them really don't mean it.  Dr. Levin's book is an exploration of an intellectualized "identification with the aggressor" on a monumental scale. 

Listen in, or down load, The Sanity Squad: Negotiating With the Enemy and allow Dr. Levin, Neo-neocon, Dr. Sanity, Siggy, and me to enlighten you.

[Nothing after the break]

Filling the Emptiness

On Monday, The Washington Post published a troubling and important article about the changing face of terror. The article, Terrorists Proving Harder to Profile, reports on the ability of Islamic terrorists to recruit unconventional agents:

European Officials Say Traits of Suspected Islamic Extremists Are Constantly Shifting

ZUTPHEN, Netherlands -- On the surface, the young Dutch Moroccan mother looked like an immigrant success story: She studied business in college, hung out at the pub with her friends and was known for her fashionable taste in clothes.

So residents of this 900-year-old river town were thrown for a loop last year when Bouchra El-Hor, now 24, appeared in a British courtroom wearing handcuffs under an all-encompassing black veil. Prosecutors said she had covered up plans for a terrorist attack and wrote a letter offering to sacrifice herself and her infant son as martyrs.

We were flabbergasted to learn that she had become a fanatic," said Renee Haantjes, a college instructor who recalled her as "a normal Dutch girl."

People in Zutphen may have been surprised, but terrorism suspects from atypical backgrounds are becoming increasingly common in Western Europe. With new plots surfacing every month, police across Europe are arresting significant numbers of women, teenagers, white-skinned suspects and people baptized as Christians -- groups that in the past were considered among the least likely to embrace Islamic radicalism.

The demographics of those being arrested are so diverse that many European counterterrorism officials and analysts say they have given up trying to predict what sorts of people are most likely to become terrorists. Age, sex, ethnicity, education and economic status have become more and more irrelevant.

Westhawk discussed the article and considered how the changing demographics are complicating the job of Western security forces, who are increasingly being forced to play defense:

Nihilism and Oral Rage

Many people have commented on the apparent incongruity of the de facto alliance between the left and radical Islam. On the surface, there appears to be little point of agreement between leftist atheists who are strongly feminist and favor homosexual rights and those who adhere to a fundamentalist Islam which advocates death to immodest women and gays, yet in the deeper structure of both ideologies, there are significant similarities which do much to explain their alliance.

[Digression:

First, a short digression concerning infantile development. Freud was the first who posited an oral stage of development in the infant. Pre-natally, an infant was imagined to be in a state of complete fulfillment; the infant in the womb would not experience hunger or thirst, feel too cold or too hot, or have any experience of deprivation or privation. Once born, the new-born infant, having been torn from the paradisaical sanctuary of the womb, was seen as a nascent individual who lacked an awareness of the distinction between the self and others; he was thought to be at the mercy of his inner drives and completely dependent on the ministrations of his mother to re-create the experience of satiety that was all he knew for the womb; the nursing experience was the paradigm for the infant, first suffering form the pain of hunger, only to be picked up, cuddled, and offered the breast to relieve the pain. As the infant grew older he slowly developed a sense of separateness and began to recognize that his discomforts could only be relieved by his mother (initially related to as a breast.) Those Psychoanalysts of the British school who followed and developed Melanie Klein's theories, suggested that the youngest child divided the world into the good breast, which gratified all needs, and the bad breast, which frustrated all needs. The bad breast became an object of hate and rage for frustrating the infantile wishes to return to the sate of bliss that was once his lot.

Soul Murder: Nurtured on Hate

The New York Times has what is clearly meant to be a sympathetic article about the plight of the young in Palestine.  The article is sad, deeply pessimistic, and incomplete in ways which reveal a surprising lack of curiosity:

Years of Strife and Lost Hope Scar Young Palestinians

NABLUS, West Bank — Their worried parents call them the lost generation of Palestine: its most radical, most accepting of violence and most despairing.

They are the children of the second intifada that began in 2000, growing up in a territory riven by infighting, seared by violence, occupied by Israel, largely cut off from the world and segmented by barriers and checkpoints.

To hear these young people talk is to listen in on budding nihilism and a loss of hope.

"Ever since we were little, we see guns and tanks, and little kids wanting little guns to fight against Israel," said Raed Debie, 24, a student at An Najah University here.

The article is filled with stories of unhappy, despairing youngsters in Palestine. The reporter assumes the typical point of view, that the cause of the Palestinians despair is the lack of a state of their own and the onerous Israeli occupation.

Israeli checkpoints, barriers and closures, installed to protect Israelis from Palestinian suicide bombers, have lowered these young people’s horizons, shrunk their notion of Palestine and taken away virtually any informal interaction with outsiders, let alone with ordinary Israelis. The security measures have become even tighter since the election to power a year ago of the Islamist group Hamas, which preaches eternal "resistance" to Israeli occupation and rejects Israel’s right to permanent existence on this land.

There is only one brief mention of how the Palestinians have been educating their young; Ayman is a 16 year old:

Guilt & Repetition

The Democrats in Congress have come up with yet another way to register their displeasure with the war in Iraq. 

Democrats Rally Behind a Pullout From Iraq in ’08

Those if us who take note of the positive news coming from Iraq, despite its conspicuous absence from the MSM, with the surge barely underway (significantly decreased violence in Baghdad, downward slope in sectarian killing, increasing agreement on the distribution of oil revenues, a revitalized political process, the disappearance of Muqtada al-Sadr, etc) must question the behavioral underpinnings of the Democratic party's manifest behavior. A few facts are irrefutable:

• The Senate will never vote to defund the troops.

• The President will veto any bills that do pass that threaten his ability to conduct the war.

• The Senate, including most Democrats, voted for General Petraeus, the architect of the surge which they have been trying to undermine since, without a dissenting vote.

I could continue delineating the overt contradictions in the Democrats' behavior but I am more interested in what it might say about their less conscious motivations. Certainly politicians are rarely able to withstand the temptation to grandstand with symbolic votes but why should the Democrats be so committed to depicting themselves as the party of defeat; with the early reports that the surge is having a positive effect, their smartest move would be to lay low and allow events to play out; the surge works they can claim they were supportive of the troops carp about why we didn't do it sooner, and continue pressing the meme that Bush has been an incompetent steward. If the surge fails, which is still a good possibility, they could simply say "I told you so" and stroll into the White House and full control of Congress in 2008. The absolutely worst approach would be to loudly proclaim their opposition to the war, do everything they can to undermine it, fully attach the label of defeat to themselves and leave themselves exposed whether we win or lose in Iraq. Yet that is precisely what they are doing!