Psychological defenses protect us from knowing things that would frighten, discomfort, or depress us. All psychological defenses involve compromises of our ability to accurately perceive reality. Most of the time, in reasonably healthy people, our perceptual distortions primarily affect our close relationships and our relationship to ourselves. Our defenses protect our self image and self esteem. Our defenses allow us to remain blissfully unaware of various objectionable aspects of ourselves. Our healthy defenses work well most of the time and minimally impair our ability to function in he world. When we use more primitive defenses, eith er because we are under great duress or have a constitutional predisposition or fixation on primitive defenses (projection or denial, for example) our sense of reality can be significantly impaired.
Political Correctness may have started as a perfectly reasonable prescription for combating intolerance and coarseness in our public discourse but it has evolved to become something much more dangerous. PC is now the equivalent of an intellectualized denial of reality, motivated by the need to preserve the proponent's weltanschauung upon which depends his self regard and self esteem. Unfortunately, when those who blind themselves to reality have the ability to impact on our society's ability to apprehend reality, all of us become endangered by the need for the few to protect their sensitive feelings.
Consider: PC requires that Islam be perceived to be a (the) "religion of peace" and that terrorism is merely the result of a fringe group misusing their religion. This leads to various absurdities, but is also costing lives and threatens to become the nidus of catastrophe:
Steve Hynd is a founding member of Newshoggers.com and one of its guiding voices. Steve is a Scotsman with a family political background in both the Scottish National Party and Scotland’s Labour Party, which puts Steve comfortably to the Left of Ralph Nader. Here’s what Steve had to say:
Report: Pakistani Intelligence (Still) Supporting Taliban
….Shocking! But only if you hadn’t read about a Spanish report in October 2008, the WaPo’s report on what US officials knew in April of this year, just about everything Afghan and Indian intelligence have ever said about the Taliban, NATO reports back in 2006and, in fact, every bit of evidence since well before Richard Armitage threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the stone age if it didn’t play ball with Bush’s adventure in Afghanistan.
….America has painted itself into a corner. Unless it is willing to admit that its Afghanistan attempts are failed, failing and will fail then it needs Pakistan at any price to keep the occupation there going. And the domestic political costs of admitting failure are likely too great. Obama and Democrats have used Afghanistan as a shield against Republican accusations of being “soft on terror” and many within the White House and the Democratic establishment don’t want to remove that shield - no matter how much sense it may make strategically and financially - in the run-up to 2012. Republican support for Pakistan’s military has been loud and long and goes back even further. They’d be just as embarassed by an about-face.
The only folks unable to recognize Pakistan’s enmity are those drawing a paycheck from Uncle Sam. Ok, unfair. Many career officials in the military, foreign service and intelligence community, perhaps most, recognize it but this reality is not something their elected officials wish to expend any political capital to address when going along grudgingly with the status quo will not cause any damage to their careers ( Obama administration officials can’t bring themselves to breath the word “Islamist” in public, which is a worrisome sign of ideological overdrive). This is why the US has difficult constructing strategy - leadership requires assumption of risk and unpopular telling of truths before things get better.
What would I recommend? It’s actually pretty simple. Not easy, just simple. ...
Strategy involves making choices and giving up fantasies of having one’s cake and eating it too. That Pakistan is our ally in any normal sense of the word is one of those fantasies that is past the time for letting go. Pakistan’s ISI is biting us every day with each flag draped coffin that comes home from Bagram. Opposing every US goal in Afghanistan, taking our bribes does not make Pakistani leaders our friend, much less a reliable ally.
Go to Mark Safransky's site for his recommendations, as well as a partial rebuttal to his argument. Then consider Tom Barnett's contention, which he has been pushing for quite some time, that we are backing the wrong horse in the subcontinent. After a lengthy quote from a Reuters wire piece (no link available) Tom Barnett, an Obama supporter and non-neo-con, notes:
The Obama mistake is choosing Pakistan over India
Couldn't agree more with the Heritage Foundation: our long-term bet has to be on India, because it will fuel globalization's advance and consolidation in South Asia--pure and simple. You dance with them that brung ya.
Giving into Pakistan on the Taliban/Pashtun role in/control over Afghanistan is to buy yourself repeat visits. India represents a more dangerous path, no doubt, and a harder one.
But it's a permanent fix because it includes some solution on Kashmir.
We need India going forward. Do not forget that under any circumstances.
[There are new rumors circulating on the internet that President Obama has admitted being a Muslim. It is difficult to take such stories at face value. It is just as likely to be Presidential narcissism fueled ingratiating exaggeration or prevarication as it is to be Israeli and/or Egyptian and/or Saudi disinformation. Whether true or not is immaterial. It does not matter if it is Muslims claiming that Islam is the religion of peace even as they facilitate violence or if it is merely self blinded Westerners declaring the same with the same end. By ignoring reality, we are disarmed.]
Our government is consistent in its denial of reality:
...Obama said:
"We agree that Israelis have the right to prevent arms from entering into Gaza that can be used to launch attacks into Israeli territory. But we also think that it is important for us to explore new mechanisms so that we can have goods and services, and economic development, and the ability of people to start their own businesses, and to grow the economy and provide opportunity within Gaza."
He and his advisors have no comprehension of what makes Hamas and its leaders tick. So he wants a prosperous Gaza Strip under Hamas leadership? Money will be pouring in, jobs will be created. Of course, only until Hamas decides to start the next war. What does he envision is going to happen under his strategy? That the lean and hungry leaders of Hamas will sell out to the infidels and open a chain of fast-food restaurants?
Nor does he have the slightest clue about Palestinian politics. Just as he misstates Israeli thinking, Obama has no conception that Fatah is full of radicals and is in competition with Hamas to prove itself more militant. He keeps repeating the idea that the Palestinians are suffering so much that they are eager for a deal, the same error made--with more justification to be sure--by the Clinton Administration in 2000.
Remember the policy up until now has been to help the Palestinian Authority to become more stable and prosperous so that Gazans would contrast their situation with it and say, "Moderation is certainly better than extremism!" Now they and many others will say, "Extremism is certainly better than moderation! You still get Western support, they protect you from being overthrown, and you don't have to moderte or sell out at all!"
Who's really making the Middle East unsustainable? Barack Obama is with a policy of weaken your friends and help your enemies get stronger.
Note that Obama did not mention the conditions for easing the blockade--that Hamas abandon terrorism and accept Israel's existence--nor did he say that anything the Palestinian Authority or Hamas is doing is "unsustainable." Only Western and Israeli policy are said to be unsustainable. In effect, Obama is saying that the policies of Hamas, Iran, Hizballah, and Syria, among others, are infinitely sustainable, especially because of his reluctance to do things to make them unsustainable.
When your policies enable outcomes opposite to your conscious intentions, either you are lieing about your intentions or you are mis-perceiving reality.
Finally, from the New York Times "deja vu all over again" file:
NYTs “Walter Duranty” Bureau Chief In Istanbul
The New York Times’headline could have been “Turkey’s Islamist Government Is Just Doing the U.S. A Favor, Wink, Wink” instead of “For Turkey, an Embrace of Iran Is a Matter of Building Bridges,” by Sabrina Tavernise. With the imprimatur “News Analysis”, the NYTs bureau chief in Istanbul, Sabrina Tavernise, with a 1993 B.A. from in Russian Studies, tells us that "Top leaders of Mr. Erdogan’s party believe that only a that is independent from the United States will be an asset for Washington in the long run.” Tavernise adds, “Turkey is not lost, they say, but simply disagrees with the United States over how to approach the problems in the Middle East.”
Although mildly disagreed with by some sources in her article, her “news analysis” is an apologia for Turkey’s Islamist government siding with Iran, Syria, Hamas against the US, Israel, and the West. Oh, and now Hizbullah.
Erdogan has invited the head of Hizbullah, on the recommendation of Hamas, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may attend also, to attend a rally in Turkey honoring Erdogan.
Tavernise is mostly carrying water for the Erdogan government, akin to the NYT’s Walter Duranty for Stalin’s. Her Russian Studies might have prepared her better, but one wonders whether the Walter Duranty articles in the NYTs were even covered in her undergraduate schooling, Duranty being the NYT’s bureau chief in Moscow from 1922-1934. As Roger Kimball reminded us, “With peasants dropping like flies everywhere around him, Duranty cheerfully cabled back to New York that although there were some occasional food shortages, there was ‘no actual starvation.’ " (A commenter sent this film of some of what Duranty ignored.)
Tavernise doesn’t speak Turkish. The Turkey expert, Gerald Robbins, does speak Turkish, whom I intervieweda few days ago. Robbins’ informed view of whither Turkey – Islamist, increasingly dictatorial, opponents largely neutralized within, with aspirations of wider power in the Middle East, and not friendly toward the US or the West -- stands in stark contrast to Tavernise.
By insisting that all of Islam, even those forms descended from or allied with the Muslim Brotherhood version of Sharia Islam or apocalyptic Shia Millenarianism, is a "religion of peace" the Obama administration and their water carriers in the media have willfully blinded themselves to the nature of our enemies. This leads them to strategic errors and blind alleys. If we cannot allow ourselves to see what is going on before our eyes we will not be able to adequately prepare for events. For those who cling to PC Thought, the world is full of unpleasant surprises.
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