Why bloggers love Orwell

The New Neo Posted on by

A lot of people think George Orwell is special. I’m one of them.

I first read Orwell’s books Animal Farm and 1984 when I was about twelve years old. The latter was good for many nightmares–I don’t recommend giving the book to twelve-year-olds, but nobody was paying much attention to my reading matter at the time. 1984 seemed to weave a spell over me–so much that, for a week or so, it seemed more real than what was going on around me, and far more frightening. Winston Smith’s travails seemed so terrifying and, in the end, so utterly devoid of hope, that it took me a while to come back again to my own world.

The most memorable part of the book to me, aside from Room 101 and the rats, was the section (an Appendix, I believe) about Newspeak. That words could be twisted into their opposites and used as propaganda ploys was a new thought to me at the time, but it made intuitive sense.

Later, it was the Orwell of the pithy epigram who appealed. He was an acknowledged master of the form, as evidenced here.

But I confess that I haven’t done any serious reading of Orwell’s other works. But having recently read this piece on Orwell written by Timothy Garton Ash and appearing in the New York Review of Books back in 1998, it seems that I must add Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, at the very least, to my ever-growing “required reading” list.

In his article, Ash poses a question that others have also tried to answer recently: what is it about Orwell that makes him so fascinating and important a writer even today? Ash writes:

The answer is both complicated and simple. It really starts in the Spanish Civil War. Because [Orwell] had joined the heterodox Marxist POUM militia rather than the communist-run International Brigade, he and his wife then got caught up in the violent suppression of the POUM in Barcelona. Friends with whom he had fought at the front were thrown into prison or killed by the Russian-directed communists””supposedly their republican allies. Orwell became a fugitive on the streets. This edition prints a secret report to the Tribunal for Espionage and High Treason in which Eric and Eileen Blair are described as “rabid Trotskyists” and “agents of the POUM.” Had they not slipped out of Spain a few days earlier, they could have found themselves, like Georges Kopp, incarcerated, tortured, and thrown into a coal bin with giant rats. [Note the possible origins of the particularities of Winston Smith’s dread Room 101.]

This direct experience of communist terror, betrayal, and lies is a key to understanding all his subsequent work. Of the Russian agent in Barcelona charged with defaming the POUM as Trotskyist Francoist traitors he writes, in Homage to Catalonia, “It was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies””unless one counts journalists.” The tail sting is typical black humor, but also reflects a further, bitter discovery. On returning to England he found that virtually the whole left-wing press was suppressing or falsifying the facts about the Barcelona events. This was the second part of his Spanish experience, and it shocked him even more because it was happening in his own country. Here begins his fascination with what he describes in Nineteen Eighty-Four as a basic principle of Oceania’s ruling ideology: “the mutability of the past.” Falsification, airbrushing, rewriting history: in short, the memory hole.

There, in a nutshell, is the fascination Orwell holds for me now: his sense of betrayal leading to bitterness and skepticism, and his realization of how easy it is for the press and others to lie about what had happened and how difficult it can be to combat those lies. Although Orwell remained a socialist all the days of his life (in his case, guilt about the British class system seemed to have been part of the reason), he was a socialist who hated—positively hated—Communism. His most basic dedication was to the cause of trying to ferret out the truth, and to describe the ways in which truth can be perverted and twisted. That mission transcended politics.

In my own humble way, I feel a small kinship. In preparation for my next “A mind is a difficult thing to change” essay, I’ve been thinking about my own bitterness, sense of betrayal (particularly by the press), and attempts at finding the truth.

For me, most of this has occurred in a long and complex post-9/11 process which will be the subject of the rest of my essays in the series. For Orwell, it was a bitter and dramatic experience that was directly personal. For me and most others, it is a more cerebral process, mediated mostly by reading, listening, and watching. But it has been a life- and mind-changing process nevertheless.

In Ash’s article, he also makes some points about Orwell that made me suddenly see Orwell in a new light, which is that he bore some resemblance to bloggers—or, at least, to the goals of many bloggers, or to bloggers as they like to imagine themselves to be: truth-seekers who are honest about their own biases, and who are not above admitting and correcting their own mistakes. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons bloggers, as a whole, seem especially attracted to him. Here’s the quote:

[Orwell] writes about [the Spanish Civil War] in the first person, not in the self-indulgent spirit of “look at me, what a brave little Hemingway am I,” but because it really is more honest. That “I” makes explicit the partiality of his view. To rub it in he tells the reader at the end of the book: “Beware of my partisanship, my mistakes of fact, and the distortion inevitably caused by my having seen only one corner of events.”

He uses all his hard-learned writer’s craft, chisels away at clean, vivid prose, deploys metaphor, artifice, and characteristic overstatement; but all the facts are as accurate as he can make them. It is, as he wrote in praise of Henry Miller, “a definite attempt to get at real facts.” For all the question marks about the factual basis of some of Orwell’s earlier work, his public and private writing after 1937 shows him striving for an old-fashioned, empirical truth, light-years removed from the postmodern. This includes, crucially, the unpleasant truths about his own side. These he makes a special point of exposing most bluntly…

His great essays straddle politics and literature. They explore Dickens, Kipling, and Tolstoy, nationalism, anti-Semitism, Gandhi, and boys’ weeklies. In “Politics and the English Language” he shows how the corruption of language is crucial to the making and defending of bad, oppressive politics. But he also shows how we can get back at the abusers of power, because they are using our weapons: words. Freedom depends on writers keeping the word-mirrors clean. In an age of sophisticated media manipulation, this is more vital than ever.

In his best articles and letters, he gives us a gritty, personal example of how to engage as a writer in politics. He takes sides, but remains his own man. He will not put himself at the service of political parties exercising or pursuing power, since that means using half-truths, in a democracy, or whole lies in a dictatorship. He gets things wrong, but then corrects them. Sometimes he joins with others in volunteer brigades or boring committee work, to defend freedom. But if need be, he stands alone, against all the “smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.”

Lobster Lib comes to Maine–and Italy

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday and today, PETA comes to New England with its Lobster Lib campaign. By campaigning in Portland and Bar Harbor Maine, PETA has come to the belly of the beast, as it were.

Apparently, according to today’s NY Times, the lobster catch in the Gulf of Maine has been inexplicably plentiful recently–record-breaking, in fact–while the lobster population in Cape Cod and to the south of Massachusetts south languishes. So PETA must think, what better place to come to in order to discourage people from eating lobster than Maine? But people here are pretty hard-nosed (have a tough shell?) about their lobster. As long as they can’t hear them scream when they die, into the pot they go.

But this doesn’t stop the indefatigable PETA. I can’t say I understand their need to champion the rights of invertebrates, but obviously PETA has a soft heart even for the lobster. Its “lobster lib” site makes it clear that PETA members are extremely unhappy about boiling lobsters alive–that’s no surprise, really. But PETA is even sad about keeping them in tanks.

The site is filled with suggestions for PETA members and their sympathizers to try talk those in charge of lobster tanks into releasing them back to the wild, a plan which seems to have little to no chance of succeeding in New England, where lobster is exceedingly big business and traditional celebratory eating. As far as I can determine, the campaign for tank releases had its origins in an episode of the Ellen De Generes show. I can’t imagine that many of the New Englanders I know will be signing up.

But residents of toney Reggio, Italy, seem to feel differently. They’ve even passed an ordinance banning the practice of boiling lobsters alive. This intrigued me–do the good people of Reggio even have access to lobsters? I looked it up on the map, and Reggio is not a coastal town.

So, what gives with Reggio? Is it the Italian headquarters of PETA? Well, sort of. According to this absolutely riveting article from the Telegraph, it’s the town council, not the inhabitants of Reggio, who are the lobster protectors.

And it’s not just lobster, either. About a year ago, according to the article, the town council passed, almost unanimously, an ordinance that just might qualify as the most PETA-friendly law on earth, and certainly one of the most absurd.

A few excerpts (but read the whole thing, as Glenn would say):

Under the bylaw, “sociable” birds such as budgerigars and parrots must be kept in pairs. Birdcages must be at least five times the bird’s wingspan in width, and three times in height. It also makes it illegal to keep a goldfish in a round glass bowl.

But somehow, this is my favorite part:

Another clause requires owners to ensure that each pet sharing a meal gets an equal portion.

I can envision a certain problem with enforcement. But the councilors of Reggio certainly get the PETA golden leash award for effort.

So, what about it? Do lobsters feel pain in that pot? Unfortunately for the PETA folks (not that they care in the least), the best evidence from scientists indicates that the answer is “no.” The study was done in Norway, but scientists in Maine were in agreeement:

The Norwegian report backs up a study in the early 1990s at the University of Maine and reinforces what people in the lobster industry have always contended, said Bob Bayer, executive director of the Lobster Institute, a research and education organization in Orono. “We’ve maintained all along that the lobster doesn’t have the ability to process pain,” Bayer said.

PETA claims Norwegian bias. What a surprise!

I think the final word on the question is this, from the same article: It’s debatable whether the debate will ever be resolved.

Indeed. Until lobsters manage to speak to us in their death throes (or pet psychics channel them from beyond the grave), scientists will claim one thing and PETA folk the other.

The new Al Qaeda: causes and consequences

The New Neo Posted on by

According to this AP article, terrorism experts have declared that the old Al Qaeda is morphing into a new entity, one that is less centralized and relies on homegrown malcontents:

These experts, who include a pioneer in personality profiling, say al-Qaida, always loosely knit, is mutating into satellites that attract local operatives bound by disenchantment with the Western societies in which they grew up. It is no longer a hierarchy with Osama bin Laden calling the shots, they say.

“Al-Qaida version 1.0 is functionally dead,” said Jerrold Post, a founding director of the CIA’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior. “Al-Qaida version 2.0 is almost more an ideology. … It’s an adaptive organization responding to a crisis.”…

With its founding fathers in hiding, and dozens of key operatives under watch, al-Qaida has changed. No longer considered capable of large transnational attacks, it is taking advantage of people who don’t have to cross borders, receive cash from abroad or engage in other international transactions that might alert authorities, said Brian Jenkins, a senior adviser to the president of the Rand Corp.

“We are now dealing with many little al-Qaidas with the potential of neighborhood al-Qaidas,” Jenkins said. “They may not be able to carry out specialized operations … but they can still operate at a lethal level.”…

Somehow the image of the broomsticks in “Fantasia” comes to mind.

But here is the part that really caught my eye:

The new al-Qaida is finding fertile ground for recruits, particularly among the children of Europe’s immigrants, Post said.

“Diaspora communities are the main resources for this global jihad,” Post told The Associated Press. “(Their families) left for a better life, but they really have not been able to fully integrate with the recipient societies that they have immigrated to.”

Unlike the United States, where immigrants usually come to stay, many of Europe’s Muslims came to make money, then return home, said Olivier Roy, the French author of “Globalized Islam.” Because of this and other factors, it has taken them longer to assimilate ”” adding to their sense of alienation.

“The second generation in America has been taken into the American mainstream, while in Europe there is a tendency to lag behind in social mobility,” Roy said.

So, the US is doing something right compared to Europe? The promise of America is not an empty one, after all? Our relative openness and tolerance may mean that we will reap the benefit in practical ways, too, by having a smaller pool of angry Moslem residents and citizens from which the terrorists can draw their new footsoldiers.

This is not to say that it can’t happen here. Of course it can; that much is obvious. But this news still seems to be a marginally encouraging sign in terms of the US, and an extremely discouraging and troubling one in terms of Europe.

A personal note: I traveled to England for the first time in 1978. I was looking forward to it, and mostly it was a great trip. But over and over while I was there I noticed a level of racial and ethnic anger that was extraordinary.

Up until that time, I had lived almost all of my life in large cities that were racially and ethnically mixed–mostly New York, but with lengthy stints in Los Angeles, Boston, and Chicago. But never in all those years had I seen anything remotely approaching the ethnic strife I noticed almost immediately during my English stay. Almost every day I was there I witnessed some racially charged incident/altercation–on the streets, in shops, and particularly on the underground. A great deal of screaming, carrying on, and just plain rudeness was glimpsed almost every time I went out, and these didn’t seem to be minor incidents, either.

The level of anger felt almost dangerously high. It was a tremendous contrast to the image I had held of England prior to my visit, and I didn’t know what to make of it at the time. But I noted it. In retrospect, I think it was the result of this relative lack of assimilation and opportunity, both in England and elsewhere in Europe (I don’t have any personal experience of what it’s been like there more recently, since I haven’t been back to England since).

So, perhaps (note my caution) this explains at least part of the reason that the US has not experienced a major terror attack since 9/11. If Al Qaeda is no longer a hierarchical global organization intent on spectacular attacks, and Europe is now the place where members are best recruited, and the international cooperation of authorities to curb the free international movement of terrorist suspects has improved to the point where such mobility is impeded–well then, it would stand to reason attacks in Europe would be easier at the moment than attacks here.

Note also that, in the quotes I cited, terrorism expert Jerrold Post mentions that the families of these new recruits left their original countries “for a better life.” That certainly is true economically speaking. But it’s clear from the next paragraph, which states they come to make money and then go home, that part of the assimilation problem is that the immigrants in question are not looking to assimilate, or even to stay for long. They are looking to get what they can, keep their culture and belief system intact, and then leave with their earnings and return to their original countries.

People who emigrate with that sort of attitude assimilate only in spite of themselves, not because they are trying to. Of course, if their children are well integrated into the mainstream of society, it’s the children who usually end up assimilating, whether the parents like it or not. But in this case, sometimes it’s the children who are failing to assimilate and are becoming the new “neighborhood” Al Qaeda members.

One more thing: Post is quoted as saying, “Diaspora communities are the main resources for this global jihad.” An ironic, although common, use of the word “diaspora;” here is the actual derivation and definition of the term.

Why pick on “anon?”

The New Neo Posted on by

It may seem as though I’ve been picking on “anonymous” lately, by featuring his/her comments in a serious of posts, answering them or dealing with some aspect of them. And you might ask why I’m doing this.

I don’t usually respond to trolls, since I think they thrive on the attention and I have no desire to give them what they crave. Besides, it’s a waste of time to answer a troll, since trolls aren’t interested in the exchange of ideas, they are interested in annoying people and getting them to waste their time posting long exhaustive answers filled with points that can never convince the troll, no matter how persuasive they might be.

But a poster such as “anonymous” is not a troll. I’m not sure what his/her motivation is in posting (or even if it’s always the same person, since he/she is anonymous). But “anonymous” often raises some interesting questions, and whether or not he/she (boy, that formulation gets tiring!) is interested in my answers, I am interested in many of his/her questions or points. They can be used as a springboard to do some research and to air some ideas of my own.

But it occurred to me that part of the reason I’m interested in some of what “anonymous” has to say is that he/she sometimes speaks for my liberal self. Now, my liberal self was never rude or abrasive, as “anonymous” sometimes is (or, as one of them sometimes is?). I was a kinder, gentler version of “anonymous.” Nor was I ever a leftist, so I would never ascribe to some of the more extreme opinions some of the “anonymi” (I’m having trouble finding the plural of the word–help, anyone?) might proffer.

But a question such as the one anonymous posed about why the US didn’t drop the atom bomb in some unpopulated area as a demonstration of its power to see whether Japan would surrender is the sort of question I myself might easily have asked, in all seriousness and with good intentions, just a few short years ago. The difference between then and now is that now I have more information with which to answer it, and more tools such as the internet to research it–and probably, because of 9/11 and its aftermath, more interest in the question itself.

Alternatives to Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

The New Neo Posted on by

In this thread about the decision to drop the atomic bomb, anonymous asks:

Why didn’t they drop a nuke on an unpopulated area and say, ‘See that goddamn horror? We’ll drop another one on your heads in two days if you don’t surrender.’

My post had ended with this quote from Fussell’s article about the atomic bomb, which I think is especially relevant to anonymous’ question:

The past, which as always did not know the future, acted in ways that ask to be imagined before they are condemned. Or even simplified.

Many of those who are critical of the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs seem to lack the capacity to understand that those who made the decision were given a certain set of circumstances with which to work. One of those circumstances was a fairly basic one: the US only had two atomic bombs at the time.

Somewhere along the line I had come across this fact, and I wanted to check to see whether my memory was correct. The second article that came up when I Googled “Hiroshima only 2 bombs available” was written by Jamie Glazov, and appeared on August 7, 2001 here, at frontpagemag.com. It contains the answer to anonymous’ question, and more. The article sheds much light on the complex dilemmas facing those who were actually making the decision in real time, and what the obstacles were to alternatives such as the one suggested by anonymous.

I am taking the liberty of printing some longish excerpts from this important article by Glazov:

Many critics, however, have insisted that the U.S. could have devised a way to “demonstrate” the awesome power of the bomb to make the Japanese surrender. For instance, it has been argued that the Americans could have dropped the bomb on some built-up area, after giving notice to the inhabitants to evacuate.

No.

A failure under those crucial circumstances could have done enormous, if not fatal, damage to American credibility. There were only two bombs available at the time, and the actual bomb devices were new and scarcely tested. Americans could not ignore the psychological effect on Japanese leaders if the bomb did not work.

To broadcast a “warning” was to risk the operation in other ways. It would have been child’s play for the Japanese to intercept an incoming airplane, especially if they knew where and when it was expected.

Truman and his officials agonized over the fact that the Japanese could end such an endeavor altogether by placing American POWs into the “announced” target area. The Japanese had, after all, given the order to kill all POWs once an invasion of the islands began.

In pursuit of their anti-American odyssey, critics have also alleged that a “tactical strike” could have been carried through. In other words, the bomb could have been dropped on a purely military target, an arsenal or a harbor, and without advance notice. They have also theorized that the bomb could have been dropped, without advance warning, over a relatively uninhabited stretch of Japanese territory where the Japanese high command could witness it first hand, and would, therefore, finally accept the futility of their struggle.

There were, even at that time, many suggestions that advocated an explosion at night over Tokyo Bay, which might have served as a satisfactory example. Still another alternative proposed that the bomb could be detonated not on Japan but in some remote corner of the world, and that this would have been enough to scare the Japanese.

First, all of these scenarios imply that the Americans were dealing with a sane Japanese leadership. That was not the case.

Second, no known military target had a wide enough compass to contain the total destructive capacity of the bomb ”“ and to allow it to show what it was capable of doing.

No one could suggest, or even be sure, of a way in which the bomb could be used in so convincing a manner that it would frighten a leadership that worshiped “death before dishonor.” The very idea of “demonstrating” the bomb ran counter to its very purpose: to shock the Japanese out of their faith that dying in war was a noble enterprise.

Not even the scientists who made the atomic bombs were fully certain about the destructive potential of the bomb and its radioactive fall-outs. A test in a remote area, therefore, even if successful, could prove useless. It would be done on neutral soil and the Japanese could think it was a fake, accomplished with a massive amount of ordinary TNT. In addition, the Truman administration feared that advance notice of this kind of demonstration would simply give the Japanese too much useful information.

In May 1945, four distinguished physicists who served as advisers to the interim committee met in Los Alamos to consider the proposed “demonstration” theories. They were Arthur H. Compton, Enrico Fermi, Ernest Lawrence and Robert Oppenheimer. After the meeting they concluded: “We can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use.”

Terrorists and their Western apologists–therapists hatch some theories

The New Neo Posted on by

Roger Simon recently linked to this essay by Dr. Robert Harman, which attempts to analyze terrorists and our reaction to them, and in particular the symbiotic psychological connection between terrorists and their Western apologists.

Dr Harman is an orgonomist. Huh, you say? What’s an orgonomist? “Orgonomist,” as in Reich’s “orgone box,” one of those branches of psychoanalysis that seems to have made a sharp turn and plunged into extreme eccentricity quite some time ago.

But orgonomy is apparently alive and well and living in Princeton, New Jersey. I can’t quite figure out what orgonomists really do at this point, or whether they’ve jettisoned the orgone box (as far as I can decipher from the website, they have, thankfully). I’d never even heard of the American College of Orgonomy before, but its members appear to be bona fide psychiatrists who attempt to integrate some aspects of body dynamics into their practice of psychotherapy. For some reason, part of orgonomic theory seems to be to delve rather deeply into the political, which is extremely unusual for a psychotherapeutic discipline. (See, for example, this article analyzing the phenomenon of liberalism, written almost half a century ago by a leading orgonomist.)

In light of this history of a political focus on the part of orgonomists, it’s not so strange after all that Dr. Harman was able to write his article only a month and a half after the events of 9/11. Apparently he’d already been thinking about these sorts of questions for quite a while.

Harman doesn’t really pick up steam until the second half of the essay, the part that is subtitled “Who Are They?” and the sections that follow it. He sees the relationship between terrorists and their liberal apologists as an almost-perfect sadomasochistic symbiosis. The following excerpt contains the heart of his message on the subject:

…when his nation is attacked, the normally decent, true liberal is at risk for having the following masochistic reaction, particularly under the influence of vocal pseudo-liberals who occupy opinion-making positions (academia, the clergy, the media, etc.):
He will criticize and may even blame his own nation.
He will develop a guilt-ridden or anxious desire to “solve” the problem by being nicer to those who might hate or dislike his country.
He will elaborate various disaster scenarios which he fears will occur if force is used aggressively. Usually the imagined disaster is a variation of “it will only make them hate us even more” or a feared dramatic escalation of violence which we will not have the will or the strength (so the liberal believes) to handle.
He fears that his nation and its leaders (especially if they are not liberals) are stupid and clumsy, and he may insist on replacing a directly aggressive defense with half-hearted responses which actually would be clumsy and ineffective.

This type of masochistic reaction only increases the sadism of the terrorist, leading to new attacks which further increase the masochistic response, and so on in a vicious cycle. The September 11th attacks were the culmination of a decade of such a cycle of sadomasochistic interaction.

I think the most remarkable thing about this passage (other than the fact that it was written by an orgonomist), is that it was delivered at a conference on Oct. 21, 2001. At that relatively early date, Harman seems to have understood exactly what would be the ensuing liberal/leftist reaction, although it really hadn’t developed yet.

Another fascinating observation by Harman is his discussion of the linkage between fanatics on the far left and those on the far right (what he refers to as “red” and “black” fascists, respectively):

…there is often a synergistic relationship between black and red fascism…The red fascist is incapable of expressing his aggression in a gut level way and of communicating a high, sustained emotional charge, thus he admires the black fascist’s ability to do these things…the black fascist expresses himself emotionally, sometimes in a nearly incoherent way. This can be seen in some of Osama Bin Ladin’s speeches and in Hitler’s diplomatic communiqués, which are emotionally charged, but don’t hold together logically. Thus the black fascist benefits from the red fascist’s ability to use logical arguments to persuade liberals into immobilizing any nation’s effort to forcefully oppose the black fascist’s aggression. Eventually the red fascist and the black fascist will turn on each other and one or the other will prevail, but they are temporarily united as one in their hatred of life. This is seen today in the synergistic action of the covert hatred of America on the part of the pseudo-liberal and the overt hatred of America on the part of the Islamic fanatic…

Since this was written in October of 2001, I would say that Harman ought to get some sort award for prescience, although of course his prescience is based on the study of history. This cooperation between far right and far left is precisely what has come to pass; the two work as a sort of tag team. The Islamofascists provide the emotionally aggressive “juice” and the leftist apologists supply the “logical” arguments designed to lead Western nations to appeasement, attempting to cause effective action against the Islamofascists to be blocked and immobilized.

The fact that Islamofascists stand for everything the far left is ostensibly against–persecution of women and gays, just to take two obvious examples–has been a puzzlement in endeavoring to understand why it is that leftists seem nevertheless to ally with them. But Harman doesn’t look at this alliance in political terms, so he sees no contradiction in it. Instead, he sees the politics as a sort of nearly-irrelevant screen, an excuse for the deeper emotional interactions that drive the whole engine. The sadist and the masochist are pulled together by ties stronger than logic or politics, and the wimpy intellectual worships the angry thug who acts as his/her bold and rageful surrogate.

To find a good example, one can see this dynamic working most clearly and nakedly in the writings of British leftist journalist Robert Fisk. In his famous Afghan beating article, (dating from December, 2001, months after Harman’s observations) Fisk writes:

They started by shaking hands. We said “Salaam aleikum” ”“ peace be upon you ”“ then the first pebbles flew past my face. A small boy tried to grab my bag. Then another. Then someone punched me in the back. Then young men broke my glasses, began smashing stones into my face and head. I couldn’t see for the blood pouring down my forehead and swamping my eyes. And even then, I understood. I couldn’t blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find.

As a psychiatrist, Harman thinks in terms of individual psychology. As a family therapist, I don’t ordinarily think that way, although I do understand such terms and believe his analysis to be a good one. But if I had to come up with a simple explanation for the behavior of so many liberals or leftists who make excuses for terrorists, I would describe it differently.

I think there is a similarity to the attitude of many abused children who blame themselves for the abusive actions of their parents. Children believe in an ordered and just world. It may seem paradoxical, but for most abused children it is less threatening and terrifying to see themselves as the guilty ones, and to believe that their abusive parents are punishing them for a good reason, than to know that the world is a place in which parents can be irrationally abusive towards their own innocent children. Part of the work of therapy with such children (even after they’ve grown up) is to convince them that they themselves were/are not evil and deserving of the abuse.

I think that, in a similar way, most liberals and even some leftists like to believe that the world is a just and sane place, and that people are rational actors–particularly people in third-world countries (the actions of the “evil” US and Israel are often excluded from this benign formulation). If such people are out to get us, it’s merely because we have done something to them that has made us deserve it. The reasoning is similar to that of the aforementioned abused child.

There is a tremendous power inherent in such a formulation, although it is a hidden sort of power. For the child, it means that he/she is in some sort of control, rather than at the mercy of a powerful, irrational, and cruel person–his abusing parent. After all, if the child’s behavior is the reason for the abuse, than the child can stop the abuse, if only he/she can identify that key behavior and change it. It resets the locus of control and puts it back in the child–although only theoretically (in fact, it is an impossible dream of the child, and cannot be accomplished).

A similar dynamic is true of many of the liberals and leftists who blame our actions for the behavior of terrorists. Terrorists are frightening, cruel, violent, unpredictable. Anyone could be a target at any time. But if we say that they are only reacting to things that we ourselves are doing, things we could easily change if we wanted to, then the locus of control goes back to us, and the world is a far less scary and far more ordered place.

(ADDENDUM 8/8/05, 9:15 PM: Welcome, Instapundit and Roger Simon readers! If you’re a glutton for punishment and interested in reading a few more of my long-winded tomes, go to the heart of this blog–its raison d’etre, as it were. Scroll down on the right sidebar to find the links under the title, “A mind is a difficult thing to change.” It’s a series about the formation of a political identity, and the process of changing one’s mind politically.)

A question for techies (not that I’ll necessarily understand the answer)

The New Neo Posted on by

I have a computer question for all you techies out there: my sitecounter has unaccountably disappeared from my blog. Actually, it’s not disappeared–it still works when I log onto it–but it seems to be invisible to others.

I originally set it up so that the details would be private, but the main number of visitors used to show on an icon on the main page of my blog, and visitors could see my traffic count. It was working fine and then, about a month or two ago it suddenly disappeared, apropos of nothing I can think of.

Any suggestions on how to restore it? I’ve tried reinstalling the code on my template, but no dice. Thanks! And remember, keep all answers as simple as possible for the technically challenged author of this blog.

Update on my mother

The New Neo Posted on by

I want to thank everyone whose good wishes and prayers have gone out to my mother in her illness.

I haven’t been over there yet today, but the update on my mother is that there’s been some improvement, although there’s still a long way to go. By “improvement” I mean in body mostly, but a little bit in mind and spirit, also. My mother is still so far from where she wants to be that it’s hard for her to credit that she has made progress, but she is starting to acknowledge that every now and then, too. If one wants to walk under one’s own steam (and who doesn’t?) it’s awfully hard to be happy that one has managed to move a leg a few inches more than one could a week ago. But, of such moves are steps ultimately made.

I myself had arm surgery six years ago–I think six years ago today, although I no longer remember the exact date. It was an ulnar nerve transfer, a peculiar and nasty sort of surgery that is most commonly undergone by baseball players, of which I most decidedly am not one. Afterwards, my elbow unaccountably froze, and stayed there for some time.

Even the physical therapists (in this case, occupational therapists, because they’re in charge of the lower arm) were perplexed. This sort of freezing doesn’t usually happen, or rather, if it does, it usually responds to exercises. Mine did not.

My personal opinion, in retrospect, is that this happened to me because, according to the surgeons, they had to do a more extensive surgery than usual and were forced to sever a lot of other nerves that had become tangled up in the first one. At any rate, I could see the puzzlement on the face of the therapists–something you don’t ever want to see–and then their frustration with me, the patient who was unaccountably not getting better. Certainly wasn’t their fault, so it had to be mine.

The main therapist I had was quite cold and dismissive. She kept telling me to do more and more stretching and pulling at that arm–the regimen she ultimately had me on would have taken about five hours a day, had I actually been able to do it. But I couldn’t; my arm and body would not cooperate. I did what I could, which was quite a bit, and still, nothing was happening. The arm wasn’t budging, and it felt worse and worse.

Finally, I changed locations and therapists. The new one was just as puzzled, but not as frustrated. She conveyed a sense of calm, telling me that if this didn’t work, she’d try that, and then that, and then still another thing, till she found something that did work.

The first thing she did was to evaluate the exercises I was already doing. “The problem is,” she said immediately on seeing me go through my paces, “that you’re stretching everything in the same plane. You need to vary it more.” And then she gave me fewer stretches to do, so I wouldn’t be so exhausted and it would be less traumatic to the arm, but ones that were varied in terms of direction.

Within a day or two the frozen elbow began to thaw. Not quickly, but slowly, in tiny increments. But it was progress I could see. I was delighted. Within a couple of months the thing was moving–if not freely, then well enough.

It took about three years for the nerve to heal. It’s not perfect, but it’s okay. And the moral of the story? Don’t give up, but don’t keep stubbornly going on when something is clearly counterproductive. Sometimes less is more, and new approaches to the same problem can solve what had heretofore seemed insurmountable.

It’s about time: common sense prevails in Britain

The New Neo Posted on by

Too bad it took the death of 52 people to do it, but this announcement seems to be nothing more than simple common sense. As Tony Blair put it, without his usual eloquence:

“They come here and they play by our rules and our way of life,” Blair said at his monthly news conference. “If they don’t, they are going to have to go.”

So, foreigners who preach hated or sponsor violence can be deported after a hearing. As usual, those who would be affected by such a ruling are planning to fight back, using the justice system of their host country the better to allow themselves to feed off that system and perhaps to destroy it:

A spokesman for Hizb ut Tahrir Britain, Imran Waheed, said Blair’s comments were “most unjust,” and the group would fight any ban through the courts.

Somehow, I don’t think they will succeed this time in getting the courts to assist the government in committing suicide. As the old saying goes: the Constitution is not a suicide pact. In Britain, the same could be said of the legal system and its human rights protections.

(NOTE: Is my spellcheck psychic? It wanted me to replace the name “Tahrir” with the word “terror.”)

Choices among crazinesses

The New Neo Posted on by

Both Austin Bay and Clive Davis recently cited
this famous essay by literary critic Paul Fussell in their posts on the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb.

I had read Fussell’s 1988 essay, provocatively titled “God Bless the Atomic Bomb,” years ago. But this recommendation by two bloggers I admire and respect made me go back and read it again. And, as with so many things I’ve read post-9/11, I find it seems to have more depth and relevance than ever.

Fussell is a WWII combat veteran himself, which gives his work a perspective not often found among literary critics, especially literary critics today. Or course, in WWII, even literary critics (or literary critics-to-be) were not immune from serving. Read the whole thing–it’s not only thoughtful, but extremely well-written. Fussell is not one to pull his punches.

I’m not familiar with most of Fussell’s work, but I did read his masterpiece The Great War and Modern Memory when it first came out in the mid-70s. It’s about World War I as seen through the prism of the literature of the times. Apparently, even long before I became a neocon, I must have been interested in the topic of war–particularly World War I, the neglected war as far as my history courses were concerned.

We had always spent a great deal of study on the early history of the US up to the Civil War, and then somehow ran out of time when we got to the twentieth century. So WWI was reduced to a couple of battles and then the Armistice, and memorizing “In Flanders Fields.” I had no real indication of the extent of the destruction wrought during that war, not only to human life, but to the way of life and thinking that preceded the war. Many, in fact, judge that the modern era really dates from that war.

I came to this interest in WWI obliquely, through the mechanism of literature. Somewhere along the way I had encountered a quote from author Henry James that grabbed my attention and seemed to contain a mystery (I no longer have the quote, unfortunately). It was, as best I can recall, from his diary, and it expressed the idea that WWI had caused him to totally revise his notion of what the previous decades had actually been about. The idea of history as a progression forward and upwards, of things leading slowly but inexorably to a better and more civilized world, was one he had apparently held until the utter shock of WWI changed everything for him and plunged him into despair.

James took ill not long after the war began, and he died in 1916, before the war was concluded. Post-WWI, though, it seems that James had suffered a profound disillusionment and reorganization of his worldview not unlike that which began with the events of 9/11 for many of us today.

James’s reaction was shared by many people who witnessed WWI, one of the main themes of Fussell’s excellent book. It was the James quote that had introduced me to that phenomenon, and Fussell’s book was my first exposure to the watershed nature of WWI. Through the device of looking at the literature of the years immediately preceding the War and comparing it to that during the war (particularly the marvelous poetry–by which I don’t mean the ubiquitous “In Flanders Fields”), Fussell draws a picture of how–especially for the generation coming of age at that time–“everything changed” during that war.

One of the writers Fussell features is Wilfred Owen, a brilliant young poet who was an officer in WWI and was killed, ironically, just a week before the Armistice. If you’re not familiar with the poetry of Wilfred Owen, nearly all of it set in WWI, please take a look. He focuses on the pain and horror of the human suffering of war, much as John Hershey did in Hiroshima, without going into the context of that suffering. So, Owen doesn’t discuss politics at all–the “brutal calculus” of war is not his topic. The human costs are, and he is one who knows them all too well, and paid them himself in full measure.

Here is an especially telling excerpt from Fussell’s atom bomb essay, about the brutal calculus of WWII as opposed to WWI, and particularly the decision to drop the bomb. But it applies to all decisions in all wars:

Lord Louis Mountbatten, trying to say something sensible about the dropping of the A-bomb, came up only with “War is crazy.” Or rather, it requires choices among crazinesses. “It would seem even more crazy,” he went on, “if we were to have more casualties on our side to save the Japanese…”

“Choices among crazinesses”–exactly. And not all crazinesses are equal. Some, although awful and crazy, are better than others, more awful and more crazy still.

The final words of Fussell’s fine essay are particularly memorable. They are a general guide to judging history itself, and those who make the weighty and difficult decisions that help determine its course:

The past, which as always did not know the future, acted in ways that ask to be imagined before they are condemned. Or even simplified.”

Who are the Israelis opposing the security fence?

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, it seems that another anonymous comment has piqued my interest. I don’t know whether it’s the same “anonymous” or a different one than before, or whether there’s just something inherently special about those anonymous commenters.

Here it is, on this thread:

At 3:40 PM, Anonymous said…

Just out of curiosity, if it is anti-semitic or anti-Israel to ask Israel to get rid of the fence/wall, what does that make the millions of Israelis who want the same?

(By the way, I was asserting that it was not necessarily anti-Semitic to be against the wall; there were other commenters claiming that it was.)

Here’s my attempt at an answer to the question “what does that make the millions [sic] of Israelis who want the same?”:

The short version

Try any of the following:

1) Ultra-orthodox ultra-religious Jews

2) Leftists

3) Arabs

4) self-hating anti-Semitic Jews

5) suicidal

The long version

I’m not sure where you got the idea that there are millions of Israelis who want to get rid of the security fence. First, take a look at these population figures, from 2003. The entire population of Israel is 6.7 million, but 1.3 million of them are Arab Israelis. The Jewish population of Israel is 5.4 million.

Now, take a look at the results of polls conducted in March of 2004 on the security fence, as reported in the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz . You will note that there is an almost-unheard-of degree of near-unanimity in the opinions of Jewish Israelis on the security fence: 84% support it and 13% oppose it.

The thirteen percent of the Jewish population of Israel (5.4 million) opposing the fence would therefore number about 700,000. This is not the “millions” of which you speak, but it is indeed a sizeable number (the only way you could get a figure of over a million is to include the Arab Israelis, but I’m assuming that’s not what you had in mind, or you wouldn’t have asked the question).

Who are these Jewish Israelis who oppose the fence? As far as we can tell from the article, they appear to be mainly members of the following Israeli parties: National Union, the National Religious Party (NRP), Shas, and Meretz. Although the majority of the members of these parties still support the fence, the percentages of supporters are much smaller than in the rest of the population.

Who are these parties? All but Meretz would fit answer (1), ultra-Orthodox ultra-religious Jews. As such, they support the settlements. Several of these parties are against the establishment of a Palestinian state and are for the transfer of Palestinians out of much of the occupied (or, more rightly, the disputed) territories. Therefore, they are for the expansion of Israel’s borders beyond those of the present fence. This may be a key to what is behind the opposition to the fence of a sizeable percentage of the membership of these parties. The parties officially support the fence, but my guess is that those individuals in these parties who are against the fence are probably against it because it doesn’t go far enough, not because it goes too far, and because it is being combined with the dismantling of most of the settlements.

Meretz is a different case, and would fit answer (2), leftists. It is a left-wing party that supports the “peace process” and even accepts a divided Jerusalem, and considers the settlements the main obstacles to peace. My guess is that they feel the wall upsets the Palestinian economy too much, and is a setback to the fabled peace process.

As for answer (3), Arabs, see this:

In the Arab sector, in contrast to the Jewish population, there is wide opposition to the separation fence, the prevalent view being that it will not help reduce terror. Similarly, most believe that in determining the route, great weight should be given to the suffering caused to the Palestinian population and not to security considerations of the government.

So, although exact figures are not given, it appears that the majority of Israeli Arabs are opposed to the fence.

Answers (4) and (5) are difficult to quantify, but my guess is that they represent some unknown but not insignificant portion of Israelis opposed to the fence.

During my research for this post, I found a passage that explains the security fence and the philosophy behind it in a novel way, suggesting that it could more rightly be called a “peace wall.” (Perhaps the new nomenclature would make it more attractive to leftists: “All we are saying, is give the peace wall a chance?”):

According to Matti Golan, however, writing in Tel Aviv’s financial Globes (Sept. 10, 2003), the security-, separation-, anti-terror fence, however one wants to refer to it, is actually a peace wall. “The fence would be better named the ‘security and peace fence.’ It should already be obvious that the only chance for a peace agreement with the Palestinians, if there is any chance at all, lies in them being unable to hurt us. So long as they can hurt us, there will be those among them who will try. The harder it becomes for them to kill us, the weaker will be their resistance to an agreement. In other words, the fence will not only enhance security, it will improve the chance for peace….To the Palestinians who claim the fence will harm the peace process, we must tell the truth: The opposite is the case. The fence will only help the Palestinians who truly want peace, by thwarting those who do not want peace.”

Hope that answers your question, anonymous.