... then please write diaries and comments bearing in mind the ideal of this site, namely to be a reality-based community. Since Tuesday, when news of the protests outside of the U.S. embassy in Cairo broke, followed quickly by news of the tragedy that unfolded outside of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, this site has been littered with some of the most egregious, essentializing, ahistorical and fact-free nonsense about the relevant countries, religions, governments / parties / associations and individual social and political actors that I've seen here in quite a while, really since the flurry of activity here in late December 2010 through February 2011 in the heyday of writings about the diverse developments subsumed to the Arab Spring.
Over-generalized statements about "Arabs," "Muslims," "Copts," "Egyptians," "Libyans" et cetera—and most of all the recurrent imprecise use of "they," "them" and "their"—are unproductive if the point of our collective writings and commentary here is to gain some form of accurate understanding of events and processes in the Middle East and North Africa.
Some of the worst essentializing commentary here has mirrored what I would expect to find at sites like Red State or Free Republic or any of the host of sites asociated with or dependent upon the principal players of "Islamophobia, Inc." and a hefty proportion of that is likely trolling. It's a fact-of-life, particularly in MENA and I/P discussions here, that we're beset by trolls of various stripes. They are irremediable.
Some of the over-generalizing commentary here is well-intended, yet inadequately informed. To those diarists and commenters I make what I hope is a simple request:
1) check your facts
2) vet your sources
3) question your presentiments, and
4) take care with your pronouns
Accurate, reality-based knowledge of the political, social and economic dynamics and difficulties within the broad region of the Middle East and North Africa is our best defense against the predations, both plotted and opportunistic, of the right's political and propagandistic machinations. We owe it to ourselves to improve the level of discourse here, by means of which we can more accurately articulate our opposition to the MENA policies advocated by the cadre of truly dangerous neoconservatives who advise the Romney / Ryan campaign and who provide the paper-thin "intellectual" apparatus for right-wing media.
As Zachary Lockman notes in his excellent book Contending Visions of the Middle East: the History and Politics of Orientalism (2nd Ed.; 2010):
The costs of the historical amnesia, willful ignorance and crude misunderstandings about the rest of the world and our place in it that pervade American society, culture and politics are only likely to rise, and it is the innocent here and abroad who will by and large pay the price.
Here endeth the rant.