Liberals Who Fear Annihilation More Than We Fear Bush/Cheney
Celia Farber
Greetings all; Nice to be back. The censor monkeys that patrol my mind have kept me from saying what I think I am thinking on certain subjects that Others seem to Know All About, such as the post 9/11 shockathon now perhaps rightly being called the Brink of WW3.
This self-censorship despite the fact that I researched and ghost co-wrote a book on the subject in 2001/2002. During this research, I read, for instance, the fantastically frightening text called the Jihad Manual. This is a document said to be a blueprint for the final destruction of Western Civilization, down to the last ash of the last page of Plato's Reblublic, and said to be from Moussaui's laptop.
Somehow, I lost all nerve. I learned to just shut up, and kept saying I didn't know what to think or say. I even started saying that maybe women don't know how to think or write about War. (I should have said I don't know how to.)
But today I broke my internalized silence, and wrote the following email to a few friends and colleagues, upon reading Sam Harris' piece on Head In The Sand Liberals:
I am not yet certain where this piece was published but I was struck by the clarity and proportionality of it. Perfection. I can't see any earthly way for this not to be correct. In other words it is correct. Unfortunately. As many of us classicists have been arguing ad nauseam, it is very dangerous to depart from evidence based science, and now the craze against reality/evidence has come full circle. We are into the age of post-cognition, where on the one hand that which is NOT THERE is feverishly conjured, (the sex/death retro viral epidemic for example) (Kierk-gd's 'monstrous nothing') whereas what IS there (planes exploding into towers, mass death, be-headings, clearly signaled grand finale Jihad against West Civ) is spectacularly denied. There are days when I wonder whether it might work to just read things upside down, turn the computers, newspapers and TV sets upside down. Everything is inverted. All responses reduced to the psychosis of the Bad Daddy, as this piece illuminates.
History has shown that there is no way to pry people from their convictions with facts, even when said facts occur in real time, and are documented through the best technologies of the Information Age, the paradox of which seems to be that we don't eat information.
I suppose the only thing left is to be kind to one another.
With vertigo and trembling,
Celia
Terrorists are the enemy of civilization. They are the enemies of the enlightenment. And the threat they pose is indeed existential. Not because Osama Bin Laden & Co. can really take over our civilization (because they can't) but because if we can't defend ourselves against murderers and tyrants, then we can't defend ourselves against anything.
This does not mean we have to always align ourselves 100% with those who seek to defend America or Europe or whatever. But we should be able to stand up forthrightly and say, "This will not stand! We will not be bowed by these cowards who blow up buildings and murder in the name of their grievances!"
Scoop Jackson would know what we are talking about.
You wrote and excellent article. I have been thinking about the religious aspects of this war. You put into words an excellent piece and your conclusion brings me an uneasiness. It is true though, it is true.