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Walking on Eggs: Bigfoot and Trans-Atlantic Paralysis

Nicholas M. Guariglia - 8/16/2007

Can a keen political advisor or at least a loving God help Canadian MP Mike Lake for his probable derangement? The youthful parliamentarian has been working closely with his Edmonton constituents to make it Canadian law, as in passed by the House of Commons, to “establish immediate, comprehensive legislation to affect immediate protection of Bigfoot.” You are not reading that decree incorrectly, nor would it be inaccurate to say former French presidential candidate Segolene Royal –– of the socialist league –– enjoyed playing to the most conspiratorial neo-Marxist hooey base of French politics during her losing bid.

Her victorious opponent, Nicolas Sarkozy, wants a U.S. withdrawal deadline from Iraq and aims to tax Americans until we abide by Kyoto. But this non-servile attitude did not stop Ms. Royal from equating Sarkozy with the “neocons” and the bogey-manned “free trade.” She predicted mass violence –– “civil war” was her preferred terminology –– if she did not win the election; violence, as the upshot implies, by Islamists and her very supporters. While talking to reporters before the election she spoke of an impending “system of brutality” if her opponent came to power, before pausing, noting a helicopter passing overhead, and muttering “They’re watching us.” Clarification for the “they” was not given, but it is safe to assume Royal was either speaking about capitalists, Paul Wolfowitz, the Men in Black, Bigfoot’s national security advisor… Who knows?

There is a clear pattern of Western dementia here, where Europeans and Canadians egg on the most tasteless of postmodernisms: the peculiar duo of absurd positions over unimportant topics and apathetic caught-in-the-headlight stiffness over world-impacting problems. Liberal American academics and intellectuals like to harp on our current state of unpopularity, and even partake in that trans-Atlantic pastime of mockery for everything caricaturized as Western, but it is still odd that they would give up defending the liberal values of the West so easily. We have reached an impasse, a state of self-esteem paralysis…

The British, for instance, are no longer calling the war against international terrorism a “war on terror,” for fear of implying the struggle may be more violent than preferred. Our own Central Command –– just as it changed the original title of the Afghan war to appease the “Muslim street” –– now says the “Long War” is no longer a term that will be used by top military brass in reference to our campaign against extremism. The change “is a product of our ongoing effort to use language that describes the conflict for our Western audience while understanding the cultural implications of how that language is construed in the Middle East… We didn’t feel that the term ‘Long War’ captured this nuance,” spokesmen Lt. Col. Matthew McLaughlin said.

When our British allies lose their stiff upper lip, their maritime sailors suffering from Stockholm syndrome, laughing it up with their Iranian captors, we are in trouble and in a state of paralysis.

When they teach British-Muslim students an alternative version of the Holocaust, we are in trouble and in a state of paralysis.

When they declare partiality for a less bloody war, and therefore refrain from using the term “war” itself, we are in trouble and in a state of paralysis.

When our own military brass changes nomenclature to moderate the “cultural implications” of acknowledging the longevity of Islamist fanaticism, we are in trouble, and yes, paralyzed. (Lieutenants, spokesmen or not, ought to defer worries over “misconstrued nuances” to their civilian administrators.)

We remember the furor over Bush’s “axis of evil,” his “crusade” against “evil-doers,” and his invoking Texan lingo into the national discourse. But never would I have envisioned Central Command recommending an end to calling a Salafist Muslim a “Salafist” –– as if Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal, in 1947, would have publicly asked us all to avoid labeling Marxists as “Marxists” for fear of misconstrued nuances. Would President Truman have implored his staff to assuage the pains of “cultural insensitivity” for Russian genocide-artists? The fact is these are self-imposed muzzles, absurdities of the highest sort, which relativists promote and adversaries welcome.

We all cringed (for what reason, we’re mostly still unsure) at Pope Benedict’s recent accurate account of Islamic history; yet we do not question why a director like Phil Alden Robinson remakes a Tom Clancy thriller where the perpetrators of nuclear terrorism are sinister Caucasians, not Muslim militants.

The unhinged U.N. Secretary General blames the genocide in Darfur on climate change and the thirsty and malnourished needing water, not crazed theocrats in Khartoum.

Sunnis blow up Shi’ite mosques and Shi’ites attack Sunni mosques in Iraq, Palestinians kill each other in Gaza, Islamists kill fellow Muslims in Lebanon, and the world doesn’t give a hoot (the killing, after all, is not directed by Israelis).

Cheap Bush-hate does not see the forest for the trees. If John Edwards is not calling the war on terror a “bumper sticker” slogan, he’s demanding to Wolf Blitzer that “he must be stopped” (Bush, not Sadr, Khamenei, Jong Il, Zawahiri, bin Laden, or Assad).

Hillary Clinton pontificates that this is “George Bush’s war,” just as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad begs to differ, beginning his own personal “countdown” to the demise of Israel.

The unanimously confirmed General Petraeus swears eight-tenths of suicide bombings in Iraq occur due to Syrian culpability, just as Speaker Pelosi insists the road to peace rests through Damascus.

Talking-heads on CNN characterize Iranian tyrant Rafsanjani as a “moderate,” just as Argentina indicts the cleric for the destruction of one of its largest office buildings.

Why challenge the belligerent when criticizing in-house is so much easier? The newswire wonders if Bush –– “Russia is not our enemy,” “The Cold War is over” –– might be “inflaming” Russian wrath by referencing Moscow’s recent Gotti-like rhetoric and behavior, while Putin’s overt threats against Europe are placated by disinterested, or frankly rather scared, Europeans. (Better to protest the missile defense system aimed at protecting you than the autocrat threatening you with nuclear weapons, apparently.)

Harry Reid tongue-lashes widely respected Chairmen Peter Pace and General David Petraeus, and then goes out of his way to defend Iranian commanders who cannot possibly be directing Iranian Revolutionary Guard killers in Iraq.

Movies are cancelled, operas censored, newspapers and cartoons taken off circulation –– all because some Islamist fascist somewhere postures, burning the very same literature that dares to label his behavior for what it is: fascistic.

Just why is there this apathy? Why are we so nonchalant about those who are obstinate about our death? Why are we turning our head away from Sheikh Ahmad Bahr, the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, when he preaches to his spellbound audience that they, as Muslims, “are the masters of the world” which are thankfully “eager for death,” before ordering his entranced listeners to “count their numbers (their American and Israeli targets), and kill them all, down to the very last one”? Quite a different approach from our speaker, no? And this is the cartel Jimmy Carter insists we must subsidize for peace with the “apartheid” Israelis?

Do we not care that Hamas now employs a rip-off Mickey Mouse to do Tony Montana impressions and instruct Palestinian kids to kill?

Did I really just witness John Kerry lambaste the United States a “pariah” sitting next to Iran’s Khatami at a global conference –– and Al Gore mollify Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia?

Were the sane and sober actually unnerved that Saddam faced some taunts moments before the gallows (in the manner they were enraged over showing his dental examination to the world, or the photos of him writing effeminate poetry in his trousers, or the images of his charred sons)?

But the lunacy is not just confined to the Middle East. Has anyone taken to task the Chinese on their connivance in Darfur? Will anyone challenge Kim on his kidnappings of attractive Japanese girls (or at least his verbal threats to Japan at the very same moment his long-stated precondition for disarmament is met by all)?

Thugocracies in Belarus and Cuba are romanticized. Zimbabwe’s dictator receives honorary degrees just as he beats his opponents mercilessly and throws them behind bars (and the pathetic extent of Western punishment usually ends at rescinding those degrees).

Putin poisons his critics. Assad just blows them up. Who has said a word?

Chavez shuts down T.V. stations. The Islamic Republic does too, but in the interim bans women’s soccer teams (they’re women, after all) and outlaws men from grooming their eyebrows (it’s unibrow or fatwa from here on out, boys).

Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem is thrown in jail for writing a thesis deemed apostasy. His college deans turned him in, his father wants him dead.

Ugur Yuksel, Necati Aydin, and Tilmann Geske are killed by Turkish Muslims for the sin of being Christian.

Samir Huseinov and Rafiq Tagi of Azerbaijan are imprisoned for journalism considered neutral to, and not proactively in support of, Islam.

A 12-year-old baby-faced child of the Taliban is encouraged to slice off a “disloyal” man’s head on camera –– a violation of human rights on both accounts.

Nobody says much of anything. We are silent and afraid to offend “the other,” to speak out against suppression of free speech and free thought –– lest one of us ends up like a dead Dutch filmmaker or a threatened cartoonist.

Where is our nerve? Where is our sense of ethical consistency? Never before have we been so leisured and affluent, and never before are we as unsure about our own moral standing and our own material capacity. We care very little about what others say and do. Others care very much what we say and do, and are unafraid to threaten us because of it.

When admirers of Western classical liberalism seek our moral and political support in their struggles, we must have the fortitude to back them. But we rarely do. We are either walking on eggs around a crazier-type who profess pleasure in killing, or we play to the worst of postmodernisms by pooh-poohing anti-democratic militancy and the pandemic it poses to our culture.

There is little hope for Old Europe and the Canadian House of Commons (note Mike Lake, or recall prominent director Adam “there is no al Qaida” Curtis and his “brilliance” of critical acclaim). And there is little hope for the American academia, intelligentsia, and even the once-fine institutions of the federal and local polity which have been engulfed by political correctness and cultural cowardice.

Someone get serious, please. Let’s start by calling Salafists “Salafists” and this war a “war.” And this has nothing to do with ensuring Bigfoot’s wellbeing.