The Maelstrom of Madness

Reading through the news today (Monday), I came across an article [link] from CBS about the "terrorist" in Norway. I noticed a few days ago that the media quickly jumped on the "terrorist" label, something they shied away from in the Ft. Hood shooting. Which, sadly, adds some substance to the rantings of Mr Breivik.

One of the worries of some people is that fighting against Islamic terrorism (and acknowledging it as such) is that naming it and fighting it will just create more terrorists. If that is so then will labeling Breivik just create more Right Wing terrorists?

Like most madmen (see Ted Kaczynski [link]), there are bits and pieces of truth in Breivik's "manifesto."[link] Madness is rarely total, I think. It is usually a distortion of the reality surrounding the madman. There is enough substance to the madman's delusions to provide a kind of foundation.

Let me provide a sample:

"Multi-culturalism (cultural Marxism/political correctness), as you might know, is the root cause of the ongoing Islamisation of Europe which has resulted in the ongoing Islamic colonisation of Europe through demographic warfare (facilitated by our own leaders)."

He sees the changing religious face of Europe and the increase in the Muslim population, ties these together with Radical Islam and his (and many others') frustration with the media's and certain political parties' downplaying both and sees a sinister plot to destroy what he clings to (an idealized view of his world, the one he grew up in, or thinks he did).

Kaczynski did something similar, only from the Left. But I suspect you will only see and hear comparisons of Breivik with Timothy McVeigh [link]. Quite understandable. Of course, that will only reinforce the beliefs of Breivik and those who agree with him.

There are times when I, myself, feel like the world is caught up in a whirlpool that is gaining strength and will someday be a maelstrom (a Scandinavian term, oddly enough) into which we will all be dragged. And it will be mostly the madmen who do the dragging.

And isn't it always?

Update: "Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik has caused potential embarrassment for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin" [link]

It's about much more than a book

There are many things going on in the world; amazing things, dangerous things, senseless things. Where once our worlds were small and everything was right around us, our community has grown so we can see and hear things that happen on the other side of the planet. When we were children, our world was first our parents, the house we were brought home to, the family that surrounded us and protected us. We learned many things inside that home. We learned how to get along with the others who lived there. We learned something we call "give and take", we learned to share our toys, we learned that others could be mean and that they could be kind.

When it came time to venture out of that house and we learned about neighbors and boundaries, our world expanded. We learned to be polite so as not to offend someone. But we also learned that being polite did not always prevent that. We learned that not everyone would be our friend. We learned that, sometimes, no matter what we did, some people would not be our friend but would rather be our enemy. We learned there were people who would take advantage of our desire to be friends.

The world got bigger and more complex.

At a time when we are worried about bullies in school causing kids to feel so tormented that only suicide seemed the way out, we are being told we must tolerate the bullies of the world. We are told we must walk softly and eschew the "big stick" so as not to rouse the bullies' anger.

When I was growing up, venturing out into the world, the biggest bully was called the Soviet Union. And this bully was clever. And strong. And we had to be careful not to offend him. So we sort of stood up to him but not so much that he might throw a punch at us. We let that bully intimidate others. Just so we didn't have to get into a fight with him.

And whenever our leader, our protector, tried to stand up to that bully, many of us became more afraid of our protector, our leader, than the bully.

That's still going on today. Even though that bully of my youth turned out to be not that tough. Even though that bully was shown to be what he was and his world came apart. And that happened because we finally stood up to him. Finally refused to ignore his nature. You see, that bully was replaced by another one. And we are making the same mistakes we made with the earlier bully.

A little known preacher near Gainesville, FL, announces he will burn copies of the Holy Book of a large rival religion. Members of that religion protest against this affront. Some of these protests are peaceful. Some of them are rife with threats. And some are violent and people die. Many people counsel this preacher to not burn those books. They say it will only anger the bully; that it will create violence in reaction; that just announcing it has made the world a more dangerous place. And the preacher acquiesces. He calls it off.

But sometime later, when many (most) have forgotten about that preacher, he pops up again and this time burns that book. Just one copy. A symbolic gesture of condemnation of a religion he sees as instigating fear, violence, and anger in the world. And the bully reacts predictably. He reacts just as he did when other acts which offended him occurred. He protests, loudly, and then violently. He lashes out. He encourages his followers, his associates, to lash out violently. People die. People who do not even know the preacher in that small Florida town. People who do not even come from the same country that small town is in. People who were just easy to access.

The bully responds by intimidating those around him. Just as bullies have always done when they feel their control, their power, is threatened. Bullies gain strength by not being confronted. They grow stronger. They become harder to keep in check. And they must be confronted, they must be kept in check. Throughout history, that lesson has been repeated again and again.

And we always seem to learn it (again) when it is almost too late.

Whither America?

When I was a young boy, first going to school, one of the first things we learned to do was to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. When I first learned it, it did not have "under God" in it. That was added in 1954 but had been used since 1951 by a couple of national organizations but predominantly by the Knights of Columbus. It came from a Lincoln speech, the one at Gettysburg... you may recall that speech, quite famous.

The last sentence (a rather long and convoluted one, we might call it a "run on sentence") goes like this:

"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the
great task remaining before us…that from these honored
dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which
they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain;
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom; and that government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
[emphasis added]

No one seemed to think it was a bad idea to add that phrase back then. But that was before the onslaught of lawsuits over separation of Church and State began. It could never had been added in 1964, just ten years later.

That's how quickly this nation seems to change. We have changed many times over my meager lifetime. We have now become as fragmented as were were in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Only the lines are not so easily drawn today. The lines are philosophical, ideological, and seem to have no physical demarcation. Now our divisions have no "Mason-Dixon Line". We are divided internally between Progressive and Conservative ideologies. At the same time, we are under assault from the outside by other ideologies.

I am used to the external assault. Being born in the year after the end of World War II, I grew up with the Cold War. I did the "Duck and Cover" drills... as if hiding under a little school desk would protect us against a nuclear attack... like all the other kids. The Soviet Union seemed a real threat. It took about 10 years for that to change. By the mid-60's, most of the youth pretty much felt the Soviets were not likely to invade or to start a war that would, essentially, destroy all civilization.

I had figured out that it would make no sense to achieve a victory that would be entirely Pyrrhic. I might have been a bright child at age 12 (when I first recall thinking much about it) but I figured the people running nations were at least as smart and knew it also. The logic was called "Mutual Assured Destruction" (aka "MAD"). It was working. Because we understood that even the Godless Soviets didn't want to return to the Stone Age. And I think the Soviets didn't really fear an attack from us, they just promoted that as a way to unify their people... much as Castro has done for 50+ years in Cuba and Chavez does in Venezuela. And Iran has done since 1979. As Qaddafi is doing now.

I used to wonder why the Soviets thought we would attack them. But what really bothered me was that there were people who lived here, in the U.S., that seemed to think we would. In the second half of the 60's, a lot of the youth seemed to entertain that thought. I suppose that is understandable. We were embroiled in a pointless war halfway around the world. There were terrible stories coming out of that and no one seemed to understand why we were there. No one saw little Vietnam as any threat to the big old USA. And few under the age of 30 were buying into the Domino Theory.

We have a new Domino Theory developing. Let's call it the "Islamic Dominoes Theory." A bit of chaos morphs into a popular revolt, the revolt topples a long standing dicator or monarch, and out of the resulting power vacuum, the Islamist movement grabs control. You can see it in action in the Middle East and North Africa. You will see it in more and more areas in the next few years. It started in Iran in 1978-1979. That was the model for what is happening now.

Instead of presenting a united front against this, the US is fractured. We are fighting more against each other and ignoring the greater threat.

There are times, I wish someone deeply respected by all sides would stand up and say "Enough! Start behaving like adults! There are worse things in this world than having a Democrat or Republican in charge." But there is no such person today. Ironically, I would probably fear that person as much as I feared Stalin and Khrushchev and Mao in those early Cold War years.