Friday, August 31, 2007

The Enemy At Home

D'Souza on Countdown:
You might remember when Dinesh D'Souza's book The Enemy at Home ("This book uncovers the links between the spread of American pop culture, leftist ideas, and secular values, and the rise of anti-Americanism throughout the world") came out. Yes, the book in which he says he has more in common w/ the Grand Mufti of Egypt than w/ Michael Moore, at least as far as "family values" & repression. Now, from the backwaters of AOL.com, he comes out in favor of democracy in Turkey. (Well, "Islamic democracy.") His last paragraph, appropriately, sums up his take on the matter:

No. Turkey, like Iraq, offers a better model. This is the model of traditional Muslims who support modernization and free markets and free elections. These traditional Muslims are willing to work with America and they are fiercely opposed to Al Qaeda and to the radical Muslims. Yet at the same time they believe that traditional Muslim values that enjoy majority support sometimes should become the basis of law. I'm not Muslim and most of the readers of this blog surely aren't either. We don't support all these laws, but then Turkey is not our country. Why should America or the West dictate how the Turkish people govern themselves? Why is secular thuggery preferable to Muslim democracy?
He could be given credit for not wetting his pants at the very mention of Muslims, but considering that secularism gives him the same piss-puddle Islam does to most of his conservative compatriots, we're not cutting him any slack here. Not to mention statements like this: Turkey, like Iraq, offers a better model. Oooh-wee!! That Iraq! No thuggery going on there. Indeed, shouldn't Iraq be offered to all the world as the very best model of a nation ever? Speaking of Iraq: Why should America or the West dictate how the Turkish people govern themselves? Indeed. Why should America or the West dictate how the Iraqi people govern themselves, either? Sounds like D'Souza can't wait for that ol' Sharia law to be imposed. We expect Mr. D'Souza's call for total withdrawal of American forces any day now.

And if you dirty leftists w/ your pop culture & secular values don't just stop it right now, it may be necessary to impose a little "religious democracy" here in the U.S. as well. After all, September 11th was your fault.

He's certainly setting out in some interesting directions here. As an immigrant from India who's managed to attach himself to the teat of the Wingnut Welfare Machine, he of course has the zealotry of the convert to inspire him, and as a Catholic (imagine how marginalized he was as a Catholic w/ Portugese colonialist ancestry in India) he is wide open to the fascism of religion, whether Christian or Islamic. Deeply rooted psychological (& logical) problems is our conclusion. Proof, from Wikipedia:

Prior to his marriage, D'Souza had relationships with two well-known female conservatives, Laura Ingraham, a nationally-syndicated radio commentator to whom he was engaged but never married, and best-selling conservative author and commentator Ann Coulter.

Pointless side note: While looking for a shot of Mr. D., the editor came across this Sound Politics (one of Washington State's leading wingnut sites) story concerning the editor's alma mater (is it one's alma mater if one didn't graduate?) deciding not to have D'Souza speak there. When the editor was there, way back in the last century, it was chock-full of the male children of the old money right wing buttwads who ran Seattle. And the editor suspects it hasn't changed that much (other than having gone co-ed) though of course now the parents are the editor's age, or younger, and they may have learned something their parents didn't. Damned liberal education.

7 comments:

Larry Harmon said...

Dirty left-wing politically correct nazis (Lakeside). No wonder you turned out to be the miscreant you did, going to such a Stalinist school. Actually, If I had had the education that you did, I would probably be a misanthrope too. But I went to schools designed to make sure that the lower middle class reproduces its drones from one generation to the next, thus I was filled with dreams of social mobility. Little did I realize that such mobility would be straight down.
P.

M. Bouffant said...

From The Editor:
What, you're not a misanthrope? (And proud of it?)
The Editor had plenty of other troubles besides Lakeside. We just wish Paul Allen hadn't been such a different kind of geek than we were, so we would have been his good friend, &...well...Or if we hadn't been dragged off to Paris @ the end of tenth grade, we might have known Bill Gates (segregated from us in the Lower School during our two mutual yrs. there) &...but I just wasn't a computer geek, then or now.
We will admit our seventh to tenth grade education there was probably equivalent to four years @ any state/land-grant "university," at least in the fly-over states. Our modern history teacher assigned us The Autobiography of Malcolm X, for one thing. (Maybe there was some Stalinism going on.)
And hell, The Editor was of a fairly middle-middle class background, & figured he would do alright. Just never realized we had to be an ass-kissing, back-slapping, glad-handing, "networking" piece of shit to get anywhere besides pink-collar wage-slavery @ The Fascist Insect Bank.

Larry Harmon said...

Soooooo.... that pink collar wage slavery looks GOOD now, doesn't it? At least money-wise? Just like every shitty computer job I ever had (which enabled me to afford the prevailing rent on a 1BR apartment on my own, with NO G-Man stylee roommate), the money looks unattainable now......
P.

Larry Harmon said...

P.S. Actually, during my last stint of gainful employment @ Cigna, I paid off my student loans and credit cards and thought of buying a new car to replace my 1968 Bug. I mean, I could afford to do it. But I looked around at new cars and saw nothing but plastic computer chip-controlled pieces of shit and decided to keep my Bug, 1930s automotive technology at its best. After all, it was good enough for Der Fuhrer.....
P.

M. Bouffant said...

Der Editor Sprech:
(Or is that Spiel?)
Jawohl, Der Fuhrer made the Autobahn run on time, didn't he? Especially in his three-axle Mercedes.
Your Fugsvütten will probably be running in another forty yrs., though neither of us will even be walking unaided.
Sieg Heil, baby!!

Anonymous said...

teat of the Wingnut Welfare Machine

Aren't you mixing your metaphors a tiny bit here? I would have used the word nozzle or spout or something.

Dinesh D'Souza is a complete cobag, there's no question about that, but he is right about Turkey: democratic islamist modernists is preferable to reactonary nationalists however secular.

M. Bouffant said...

The Editor Replies:
In that he obtains his sustenance from an endowed fellowship @ the Hoover Institution, mass purchases of his books by RW foundations, etc., we think "teat" is just the right word. Do you mean that he gets his ideas from the Wingnut Wurlitzer? (Are all these "Wingnut" phrases cutesy enough?) We're not really sure D'Souza's ideas are in line w/ the RW talking points as much as they used to be, considering the reviews even his pals gave The Enemy at Home.
It's pretty much a toss-up as to which group of power-mad idiots is running Turkey, & of course what happens remains to be seen, one way or the other. How long will they remain democratic or modernist, especially if "our" gov't. decides to destroy Iran's military & anything else in the way? Pressure from a radicalized populace could impact either kind of Turkish gov't., though.
Either way, we're worried about these ninnies who insist on myths & fairy tales as the founding ethos of any culture.