ShrinkWrapped

Masochistic Omnipotence Syndrome

Yesterday Larry Derfner penned an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post in which he attacked the credibility and motivation of those involved in illuminating the Al-Durah Affair.  Apparently, even as I was reading the piece, Richard Landes was working on a proper fisking of it. 

MOS meets Al Durah Forgery: Larry Derfner Weighs In

Larry Derfner has an op-ed at the Jerusalem Post on the Al Durah Affair which lays out in a quite striking fashion the aggressive aspect of the mentality of the Masochistic Omnipotence crowd (MOS) crowd. In the Dreyfus Affair the term “intellectual” was coined to describe someone who was capable of looking at the empirical evidence and changing his or her mind. Derfner’s rant suggests that the term could not, by the remotest stretch of the imagination, be applied to him. On the contrary, one has to wonder what could drive him to such heights of irrationality as to assault people who call into question so base a story as that of al Durah.

I strongly urge you to read Richard's piece in its entirety and would like to highlight one passage in particular.

You seem to be an outspoken member of what I call the Jewish hyper-self-critics who show their greatness of soul by beating their breasts in atonement for whatever we have done, might have done, been accused of doing, in the hopes that it will elicit from our Palestinian/Arab/Muslims brothers a corresponding generosity of soul so we can all get on with our lives. In itself, such willingness to take the first step is admirable. But when met consistently with a demonizing assault — “We knew you did everything we accused you of!” — and further assaults — confession is s sign of weakness and an invitation to further aggression — then it’s time to show some sanity.

Nor is this problem just one of Jewish hyper-self-criticism. It’s a larger problem shared by many alleged “progressives” who believe that “we have met the enemy and he is us.” I call this kind of thinking Masochistic Omnipotence Syndrome (MOS): Everything wrong is our fault, and if only we could be better we could fix everything. It’s not only profoundly deluded, but it is a kind of megalomania in which the solution to everything is in our hands. If only we repent enough, concede enough, self-criticize enough… then the rest of the world will love us. It’s a disease that strike many progressives, Jewish and non-Jewish, and represents a pathological turn in an otherwise exceptional and rare quality, the ability to self-criticize. And right now it’s become a danger to the health and resilience of civil society at a time when we need precisely those traits.  [Emphasis mine-SW]

I would like to extend Richard's argument in two important directions, one rather specific, based on a patient I treated a number of years ago, and the other more general, with applicability to the upcoming election and our current political divides.

A number of years ago I saw a 40 year old woman,

Its the Culture, Stupid!

...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (Sherlock Holmes)
British mystery author & physician (1859 - 1930)

When Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992, the campaign famously centered on the slogan, "Its the Economy, Stupid."  It was a clever conceit, aided and abetted by the MSM successfully depicting the slowing economy under George HW Bush as a disastrous recession (only surpassed by the current economic slowdown) and Bush's out of touch appearance of insouciance. 

For the election of 2008, although the economy is likely to be a major focus of the MSM, it might be more accurate to depict our current straits as related to the culture rather than the economy.  First of all, almost all of our current crises reflect the increasingly interconnected nature of the global economic system.  Areas that are achieving tremendous success by virtue of their oil and gas reserves are areas of extreme stress with ripple effects extending throughout their immediate neighborhood and effecting the entire world.

George Friedman at Stratfor, wonders if the Saudi Arabian's extreme wealth can become a force for stability and an ad hoc, and denied, alliance with Israel against the worst of the Islamist radicals. 

The Geopolitics of $130 Oil

Suddenly, the regional dynamics have changed. The Saudi royal family is secure against any threats. They can buy peace on the Peninsula. The high price of oil makes even Iraqis think that it might be time to pump more oil rather than fight. Certainly the Iranians, Saudis and Kuwaitis are thinking of ways of getting into the action, and all have the means and geography to benefit from an Iraqi oil renaissance. The war in Iraq did not begin over oil — a point we have made many times — but it might well be brought under control because of oil.

For the United States, the situation is largely a push. The United States is an oil importer, but its relative vulnerability to high energy prices is nothing like it was in 1973, during the Arab oil embargo. De-industrialization has clearly had its upside. At the same time, the United States is a food exporter, along with Canada, Australia, Argentina and others. Higher grain prices help the United States. The shifts will not change the status of the United States, but they might create a new dynamic in the Gulf region that could change the framework of the Iraqi war.

Much of George Friedman's reasoning is persuasive but in order for his conjecture to prove out, the Arabs, perhaps especially including the Saudis, must resolve their core ambivalence about the modern world, and that is where questions about culture become prominent.  Although it is tempting, and ultimately quite optimistic, to believe that economics trumps all, in fact, culture and its ideological offspring have managed to derail economies on occasions too numerous to mention, and the Arab internal conflicts, in conjunction with Western irresolution, will keep the risks high for quite some time to come.

One of the men I admire most has written a new book directly addressing the West's fecklessness.

"I Think I'm Going Out of My Head"

After several days trying to reinstall a program (because it had corrupted files) I finally spoke to a very nice young woman in India for tech support.  We spent over an hour trying to straighten things out (thus far without success.)  Needless to say, this has been, and continues to be, a frustrating experience.  However, the Gods of tech support clearly have a sense of humor.  While placed on hold for ten minutes, I was treated to a stirring Muzak rendition of a wonderful old Dusty Springfield tune, "I Think I'm Going Out of My Head."

Sadly it wasn't Dusty, but it did make me laugh.

The Arab Mind: Part XV

[All posts in this series can be found at The Arab Mind archive.]

On the Use of Language: Hyperbole as Defense

Until 9/11 most Americans, and most Europeans, had almost no experience of the Arab use of language.  Arabic spokesmen were adept at using soothing, noninflammatory language when speaking to Westerners.  There were few people with access to the Media who actually spoke Arabic, and there was no MEMRI, Camera, or other translators available to most people to facilitate learning of the actual words used by the Arabs in their native language(s).  Since 9/11 and with the explosive growth of the Internet, it has become much easier to obtain translations of actual speeches meant for and delivered to Arabic speaking audiences, and this now allows for a greater understanding of how such language is used and what the words are meant to convey.

Raphael Patai remarked upon the beauty of the language, the belief among Arabs that Arabic is the most perfect of languages, the use of Arabic as a bond which cements the Umma as one, and the centrality of Arabic for Islam:

(pp. 49-50) Just as the Koran became the holy book of all Muslims, so Arabic became the holy language of all Muslims, including those of the peripheral belt who never adopted Arabic as their colloquial.  They read and recited the Koran by heart in Arabic, they prayed in Arabic, and they adopted the Arabic alphabet (with some variations) as the script for their own languages. ...

If such was the esteem in which Arabic came to be held in the peripheries, where only a very few scholars attained full mastery of it, in the core area Arabicized after the Muslim-Arab conquest the holy language of the Koran attained a position never approximated by any other language in any other culture. ... The best Arab minds considered the Arabic language the greatest treasure possessed by the Arabs and devoted enormous ingenuity to the fullest possible utilization of its potential.  In this they were greatly helped by the rich vocabulary of Arabic, the great variability of Arabic verb structure, the ease with which the language lent itself to rhythmic cadences, and its exceptional suitability to rhetoric and hyperbole.

As with any language, how ideas are expressed and what they convey contains multiple layers beyond the manifest content.  The tendency of Arabic speakers to use rhetoric, hyperbole, and the relation between words, tenses, and action are all important considerations when trying to understand the Arab Mind.

'Samir Kuntar to return to Lebanon soon'

There is news today that progress has been made in negotiations conducted through German intermediaries on a trade of two Israeli soldiers whose kidnapping by Hezbollah triggered the Summer war two years ago. 

'Samir Kuntar to return to Lebanon soon'

Jerusalem had no official word Monday night on the possibility of an imminent prisoner exchange with Hizbullah, after the organization's leader said in a speech broadcast to thousands of supporters in Beirut that he expected Israel to release a number of Lebanese prisoners "very soon."

"Soon Samir Kuntar and his brothers will be among you. Very soon," Hizbullah head Hassan Nasrallah said.

Kuntar has been in prison since 1979, when he led a terrorist attack in Nahariya that led to the death of policeman Eliyahu Shahar, and Danny Haran and his two young daughters.

Israeli security sources confirmed, however, that a deal was taking shape that could include the return of captured soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser in exchange for Kuntar, four Hizbullah prisoners, 10 bodies of Hizbullah men killed in clashes with the IDF, and Nasim Nasser, a Lebanese-born Israeli Jew who converted to Islam and recently finished a six-year prison sentence for spying for Hizbullah.

The story in the Jerusalem Post mentions that part of the price for Regev and Goldwasser includes Samir Kuntar, about whom the Jerusalem Post merely reports that Kuntar "led a terrorist attack in Nahariya that led to the death of policeman Eliyahu Shahar, and Danny Haran and his two young daughters".  Such a description does not do justice to Kuntar's "triumph" nor does it explain why he is the only one mentioned by name in Hassan Nasrallah's speech commemorating the "eighth anniversary of the Resistance and Liberation Day" (according to Al-Manar TV.)

You should know who Samir Kuntar is and what he did and why he is celebrated as a hero to the Palestinian "resistance".  In short, Samir Kuntar is a monster.

Memorial Day

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

George Orwell

We all should take some time out of our busy lives to thank the Veterans who risked all, and the young men and women who continue to risk all, to preserve the freedoms we have today.

The Suicidal Compromise

All behavior is the result of compromises between drives, wishes, fears, inhibitions, and rational evaluations of risks and rewards.  This is true for the individual as well as the nation.  It is not at all uncommon to find that an individual's manifest behavior often leads to unintended consequences primarily because saboteurs from the unconscious find ways to effect behavior without conscious awareness. 

An example or two:

Mr. A, a 51 year old account executive for a major corporation, was an angry, supercilious, and dismissive man.  He had a narcissistic characters, was extremely sensitive to slights and extremely insensitive to his affect on others.  Because he was successful, his anger was typically directed at his employees; further, his need for always increasing aggrandizement, led him to demand special treatment and adoration from others.  At the same time, and unrecognized by Mr. A, his self-esteem was quite fragile and he considered himself, in his rare moments of deeper reflection, a bit of a fraud, who had achieved his success by virtue of his parental connections and luck.  He continually feared being found out and losing all he had, in effect, unfairly acquired.  In the middle of a major project for a new, and very demanding, boss, Mr. A accidentally downloaded a virus onto his computer while perusing a porn site.  The resulting disaster cost him his job.

Mr. A knew that downloading porn onto his work computer was risky.  He consciously thought he would never get caught, yet his unconscious need to take dangerous risks and to punish himself for his undeserved success was also a part of his decision to down load porn at work.  He "gratified" his need to harm himself and suffered terribly as a result.  The impossible problem for Mr. A was that in order to maintain his self-esteem, he had to believe he was smarter and cleverer than everyone else.  Further, his sexual interests and intolerance of his wife's imperfections pressed him to prefer porn to reality.  For him to stop downloading porn was an admission that he could be victimized by something as mundane as cause and effect.  He would have to give up a powerful gratification and tolerate terrible frustration.  For him, this would be psychologically deadly; his self-esteem could not survive such an admission of failure.

Are the Post-Modernists Right?

Post-Modernism and its offspring, Political Correctness and Multiculturalism, hold that there is no such thing as objective reality.  In their view all reality is constructed, imposed by the dominant narrative upon the victims of that narrative.  There is a superficial plausibility to such a view, supported by fields as disparate as Philosophy, Psychiatry, and the burgeoning neurosciences (where the constructed nature of our perceptions is unmistakable.)  However, the Post-Modernists have taken their theory to an absurd degree in which reality itself, rather than simply our experience of reality and our interpretation of reality, is brought into question.  One of the effects of Post-Modernism that I have long been struggling with is the degree to which their conception is operationally true, although not at all in the sense that the Post-Modernists imagine.

There are many issues in which this question arises.  Today, there is a great deal of discussion in the blogosphere about the significance of the resolution of the Al-Durah Affair.  Richard Landes, who has been involved with this from early on, documents a great victory for the truth against an edifice built on lies:

Karsenty Strikes Blow for Freedom in Al-Durah Case

The French court of appeals, presided over by the redoubtable Madame Laurence Trébucq, has reversed the decision of a lower court — the (in)famous “Chambre 17″ that specializes in verbal crimes had found Philippe Karsenty guilty of defaming France2 after Karsenty, in a 2004 article, claimed (as have many familiar with the dossier), that the scene was staged. The unexpected reversal by the court of appeals represents the first major European breach of the blanket of silence that has greeted any effort of critics to call into question France2’s presentation of the Al Dura footage as actual news.

The Muhammad al Durah affair represents one of the most revealing and distressing cases in the mainstream media’s coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict. On September 30, 2000, France2’s Middle East correspondent, Charles Enderlin, ran footage of what looked like a boy and his father, together hiding behind a barrel, “the target of fire coming from the Israeli position.” According to this report, the boy was killed and the father badly wounded. The footage went around the world instantly, provoking outrage and violence against both Israel and Jewish communities in the Arab world and in Europe.

France2 compounded these violations of journalistic ethics by attempting to block any criticism. Ridiculing the proponents of the “staged hypothesis” as conspiracy theorists on the order of 9-11 truthers or holocaust deniers, France2 sued independent French citizens who had the nerve to criticize them for their journalistic incompetence.

Richard has a round up of blogger reactions at Karsenty Wins Court Decision!! and it is hard not to share in his jubilation.  The Al-Durah blood libel has caused untold grief for so many people and has given a major push to the rampant anti-Semitism that has once again emerged from the shadows.  Yet there is reason for concern.  Phyllis Chesler, in her cri de couer last night, begins to get at the problem, of which the Al-Durah affair was just a small part:

The Arab Mind: Part XIV

[All posts in this series can be found at The Arab Mind archive.]

Digression and Refinement

The more time I spend on this series, the more I recognize how inadequate the title is.  When I began the series, inspired by my reading of Raphael Patai's seminal book, The Arab Mind, I was content to use his definition of an Arab, ie someone who speaks Arabic and identifies himself as an Arab.  Patai spent a great deal of time traveling throughout the Middle East, primarily within Arab nations and Israel, and had little to say about Iran or Pakistan, two current examples of Muslim nations struggling with the implementation and interpretation of Islam and Sharia.   From the vantage point of 2008, however, it is clear that despite the very great differences between such nations as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan, and stateless Islamist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda, and all its off shoots of Sunni Islamism, there are certain fundamental similarities between the way the minds of the fundamentalists work.   Further, there are also similarities with secular authoritarian and totalitarian nations (Syria) and non-state actors (Fatah) which are shared with the fundamentalists.

This creates very difficult problems when trying to describe exactly who is culturally a part of what I have been calling The Arab Mind.

Perhaps it would be closer to say that what is being explored is the Muslim mind, yet this is clearly incorrect and inadequate as well.  According to Michael Totten, Kosovar Muslims have rather specifically rejected Saudi funded attempts to radicalize them and have lived peacefully as Muslims among their European brethren for a very long time.  Further, although there are continuing attempts being made to radicalize Indonesian Muslims, by and large Indonesia remains a moderate nation uninterested in conducting Jihad against their neighbors.

In an attempt to better address this conundrum, I would propose that what Raphael Patai has called The Arab Mind is a descriptive term for those people raised and nurtured in a particle cultural milieu in which the Koran and Sharia have been given primacy.  The stricter the cultural adherence to a fundamentalist reading of the Koran and Sharia, the more closely do the individuals resemble the distillation referred to as The Arab Mind. 

s The "Wrong Direction" and a One Term Presidency

Most commentators believe that the high percentage who answer that the country is heading in the wrong direction on the right direction/wrong direction question in polls portend a Democratic rout in November.  It is almost certain that the Democrats will expand their margin in the House and Senate and at the moment, the Presidential race is a toss-up.  I would argue that the reason for the "wrong direction" answer is largely a result of a combination of events over which a President has little effect and includes the bursting of the housing bubble along with the rapid rise in gas and food prices and that the inflation in energy and food prices will not be addressed during the next President's term.  As a result, the next President will likely be a single term President who will leave under a cloud and with the fundamental dislocations responsible for our current state of inflating energy prices (and to a much lesser extent, our food prices) unaddressed.

The Iraq War certainly contributed to the feeling of "wrong direction" but it has faded as a constant news irritant and is overshadowed by the loss of perceived wealth felt by so many who have seen their houses lose value and lose their utility as ever increasing ATM machines.  In response, the dollar has weakened and along with other causes is fueling an inflation in energy and food prices.

There are many moving parts in the equation, some of which are beyond the abilities of any President, and some which could be made immeasurably worse.

Consider first some of the factors involved in the rapid inflation in oil prices and the secondary inflation in gas prices.  Most of these factors are well known:

The rapidly expanding middle classes and developing economies in China and India, especially, has driven demand for energy to every increasing highs.

Problems in totalitarian and authoritarian oil producing countries have limited their ability to expand production fast enough to keep pace with demand.  (The problems range from confiscatory government polices in countries like Iran and Venezuela, which have diminished foreign investment needed to upgrade their capacity; Russia is either past their peak or unable to invest enough due to their past history of confiscating other's property; the Saudis are either unable or unwilling to pump much more than they already do; the list goes on.)

As well, instability in the neighborhoods where these states live add a significant threat premium that is likely to get worse before it gets better.