In the comments section of the recent diary
Michael Moore vs Karl Rove I encountered a number of posters who expressed sentiments regarding 9/11 that were of the general "Who could
POSSIBLY hate us that much?" genre. I countered with a few well chosen words about economic imperialism, the rape of the Third World by the so-called "Developed World" from about the 15th century (at LEAST then) on into the present, etc., expressions of a desire to exact revenge on Osama bin Laden and his evil cohorts, etc.
The usual media-hypnotized, middle class blather and regurgitation of half-digested memes that have been served up in running hot and cold streams by the half-listened to propaganda machine that blares into so many Americans' ears almost 24/7 of every waking day.
Finally I got THIS particular answer.
---
So it's because we're white and rich and they're poor and jealous?
It doesn't have anything to do with actual events in the Middle East?
---
And I had listened to enough.
Read on for my responses, combined and edited somewhat:
No.
It is because we are rich, they are poor, and we have stolen from them in order to GAIN those riches.
And that IS "the actual events in the Middle East" and in the rest of the Third World as well.
Bet on it.
"They" are not "jealous".
"They" are angry at having been ripped off.
PLUS...you say "WE are white""
Who "WE", white man?
(Tonto's answer to the Lone Ranger when asked the question "What are we going to DO???" as hundreds of hostile Indians swooped down on their sheltered position behind a couple of rocks.)
A typical supposition of the middle class.
The inevitable "they", as in "They stole my car."
And "WE" are white.
Nice.
And accurate too, in a sense.
This BLOG is "white". A MUCH higher percentage of people of primarily European ancestry post here than the percentage of those same people in the general population of the U.S., I am willing to bet.
Sure sounds and smells that way.
And the Democratic Party is "white", as well.
Howard Dean recognizes this.
So does John Conyers, and so do a number of others. And they are trying to do something about it. Something other than "inclusion" when vote crunch time arrives.
Something other than platform tokenism.
Something other then the hustle that ghetto people smell every time some middle-classer from the suburbs tries to sign up voters three weeks before the election.
And while "we" are at it..."we" are middle class, too. No more are the Democrats the party of the white working class. Doubt it? Go to any white working class bar on a good Saturday night and just listen. Or, if you are good with your fists and you have a few buddies, start talking about how heavy John Kerry is and what a stupid wimp we have for a President now.
And here YOU are.
"So it's because we're white and rich and they're poor and jealous?"
Nice.
Like I asked..
Where have YOU been?
So then he wrote:
--
To answer your question: all over the world .
To answer it more succinctly: Palestine-Israel.
Without our Middle East policy in Israel, bin Laden is playing tiddly winks in the Saudi desert. His recruits are a product of one thing, and it's not because they reject modernity. It's because they can't stand the injustice heaped on their Arab brothers in the occupied territories.
That is the root cause.
Granted, it's developed way beyond that now. But if one wants to "understand" that's where you start.
By the way, you're the one that first mentioned skin tone.
---
And I continued:
ANOTHER non-reader heard from.
This place is FULL of them.
My "question", if indeed you could bundle up the statements here into a single question, is this.
"How can so many of us be so blind?"
i assume from your post that you are answering my last question.
"Where have YOU been?"
And i guess that your answer is "...all over the world. To answer it more succinctly: Palestine-Israel." I will play literalist here, and take your statement at face value. That you travel "all over the world", and that you have spent some time in what you refer to here as "Palestine-Israel".
OK...first a quick word about the "Third World".
You do not have to leave upstate NY or wherever else you live in the U.S. to enter the Third World...it is as near to you as your local ghetto or penitentiary, as near as your closest failing rural small town or industrial/market-center city. Plus, you can travel the world over and unless you are in places where there is an ongoing insurrection as there is in Iraq, you can live safely under the umbrella of Imperial America and not see a goddamned thing except the quaint favelas and colorful natives playing drums and guitars and singing while you sip your margaritas on the veranda of your HIlton America.
Nicky Hilton America.
Paris Hilton America.
Depraved.
Truly disgusting.
You say quite accurately ; "Without our Middle East policy in Israel, bin Laden is playing tiddly winks in the Saudi desert."
But then you veer right off into Nevernever land.
"His recruits are a product of one thing, and it's not because they reject modernity."
And you STAY there.
"It's because they can't stand the injustice heaped on their Arab brothers in the occupied territories. That is the root cause."
And then stay some more.
"By the way, you're the one that first mentioned skin tone."
Point by point.
1- Our Middle Eastern policy in Israel and everywhere ELSE in that region is simply part of a worldwide policy of economic imperialism that is backed up by the implicit (and occasionally explicit) threat of massive overt and covert military force. It is an oil specific policy, in the Middle East among many other places.
To see the small picture and not see its part in the larger one is inconceivable to me. This is NOT an "Israeli" or "Palestinian" or even Arab or Islamic problem. It is an ECONOMIC problem. A minority of the population of the earth are gobbling up 5 times their share of the resources of that earth at the point of a gun and only paying the other 4/5ths of the population enough so that they can keep producing the product. Survival wages, nothing more. Slave wages. The entire planet as Auschwitz. Keep `em just healthy enough to work and let the weak ones die. OR...kill `em outright. We have set up and/or supported satrapies from the Shah of Iran right on through Noriega, Batista, Saddam Hussein, the Saudi royal family, the Marcos family and the other U.S. puppets that have been propped up by U.S. firepower over the past 60+ years.
It ain't ABOUT "Palestinians", you yutz. It's about the price of gas in Binghamton, NY and all those SUVs and air conditioners and over-heated, inefficiently insulated homes and wasteful, nasty supermarkets filled with poisonous products.
2-You say "His recruits are a product of one thing, and it's not because they reject modernity."
Where on EARTH did you get THAT one? "Non-reader" plus!!!
That "modernity" meme is straight out of the mass media. I certainly didn't bring it up.
"Oh, those primitive natives. They reject modernity if favor of their ignorant tribal customs and idolatrous religions!!!"
Are we having a communication here? Then please confine your statements to what has been said.
You knee jerk, Sunday morning talk show/NY Times "liberal".
3-"It's because they can't stand the injustice heaped on their Arab brothers in the occupied territories. That is the root cause."
Bullshit.
Utter bullshit.
MORE mass media smoke and mirrors.
Bin Laden's "recruits" (ignoring the plain fact that they are NOT "bin Laden's" if indeed he is even alive anymore...) are fighting in Iraq and elsewhere not because of "their Arab brothers in the occupied territories." They are fighting for their OWN families in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia, in Afghanistan, in Egypt and wherever the hell ELSE they have come from. For their own families and for the future possibility of self-determination for the region unencumbered by massive meddling from the U.S. and Great Britain.
Believe me. You do NOT drive an explosive laden truck into a building somewhere because of some abstract idea about your Palestinian brothers thousands of miles away. You do it...over and over and over and over again...because you are simply out of ideas and desperately trying to protect your own flesh and blood from the depredations of truly TERRIFYING predators.
Would you?
Seriously.
Up there in northern NY State?
If someone forcibly removed YOUR "brothers" from say southeastern Alabama and in NO way touched or even THREATENED to touch your OWN happy life...would YOU volunteer for certain death because it was simply unfair for them to have done that to a bunch of southern peasants?
I don' THEENK so, esé...
4- "By the way, you're the one that first mentioned skin tone."
Whadda you, KIDDIN' me or what!!!???
If I DIDN'T "mention skin tone", would that CHANGE things any? I'm not playing any race card, here, just stating the facts of the matter.
White supremacists (ARYAN supremacists...didn't much like Celts, Jews and the Slavic peoples, either)...IDENTIFIED BY THEIR PERFECTLY CONSISTENT ACTIONS OVER AT LEAST 500 YEARS...have robbed, murdered and raped their way through the rest of the world.
Quite successfully, so far.
They started out with a technological edge...better weapons, better transportation...and have parlayed that (with the help of a few extremely well paid "native" allies...ALWAYS with the native allies, from the Arab slavers right on through Noriega, Saddam Hussein and modern-day Japan and Israel) to total world dominance.
Only thing is...that technological edge is about to wither and die in the face of relatively easily manufactured and acquired automatic weapons and guerrilla-useful portable artillery plus WMDs that can INDEED fit in a suitcase and be driven right from say the Canadian border (In a rowboat if necessary) to whatever part of upstate NY in which you so safely and happily (Temporarily safely and happily, if about 4/5ths of the world have anything whatsoever to say about it) live.
"WHOA, podna!!! Them injuns got REPEATIN' RIFLES, now!!! Goddamned @&%$%$#@$^& trading post fellas!!! They screwed us AGAIN!!!"
Yup.
So settle right down there this lovely Sunday morning, my friend.
Turn on the TV and watch the jowly middle aged white men pontificate about the state of the world. Pick up ALL their memes over a leisurely breakfast.
"Skin tone."
"Reject modernity."
"Their Arab brothers."
Maybe watch some golf later on, in the comforting knowledge that a non-white player or two can succeed in that heretofore almost exclusively white man's game, so "skin tone" MUST have no bearing on the matters at hand.
Right?
And when you hear that big "BaROOOOM" in the distance, repress that little thought that maybe it ISN'T thunder this time.
Of COURSE it is.
BUT...
Any day now.
Aaaany day now...
The fire NEXT time.
Your Time Magazine platitudes are going to blow right up in your face.
BET on it.
Unless...you
WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!
Sorry to yell...but you obviously ain't listening when people say it quietly, so...
WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!
And...have a nice brunch.
Unbelievable.
AG
P.S. And THEN this person countgers with that great dKos meme.
No, not the "You ##@*&^%$%$#ing asshole!!! FUCK you!!!" one.
the OTHER one.
"Seek psychotherapy. Immediately."
Like I must be CRAZY to disagree with him.
And use logic to do so.
Gotta love this blog.
On the evidence of what I see and read here from a pretty good sized minority on this website....we do not have a snowball's chance in heel of changing the conceptual, strategic ideas that have painted us into this corner in the first place.
Too many media-hypnotized fools on board.
So it goes.
Change now, or get ready for that "fire next time."
Because it is coming just as sure as Karl Rove made little green spinmeisters.
It's already on the way.
Iraq, Afghanistan and 9/11 were just kindling.
BET on it.
Later...
AG