Month: February 2007

Putin’s black belt in action:

The Guardian’s latest poll gives the Conservatives – pro-green, pro-gay, anti-torture Tories – a bigger lead over Labour than they have enjoyed since losing power in 1997.

"Tyranny starts as a habit; it has the tendency to, and generally finally does develop into a disease. I believe that habit may coarsen and stultify the very best of men, reducing them to the level of brutes. Blood and power make a man drunk: callous coarseness and depravity develop in him; the most abnormal phenomena become accessible, and in the end pleasurable to the mind and the senses. The human being and the citizen perish forever in the tyrant, and a return to human dignity, to repentance, to regeneration becomes practically impossible for him," – Fëdor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, "Memoirs from the House of the Dead."

(Photo: Tim Sloan/Getty.)

Mark Kleiman wonders what the following paragraph in Mark Steyn’s book, America Alone, can mean:

Why did Bosnia collapse into the worst slaughter in Europe since World War Two? In the thirty years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 percent to 31 percent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 percent to 44 percent. In a democratic age, you can’t buck demography — except through civil war. The Serbs figured that out — as other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you can’t outbreed the enemy, cull ’em. The problem that Europe faces is that Bosnia’s demographic profile is now the model for the entire continent.

Originally, I thought Steyn’s point was not an endorsement of genocide. I thought it was that Europeans need to "breed" more Christians or, at the very least, more non-Muslims. (That’s the current meme on what’s left of the intellectual "right" in America.) But then when I re-read the passage, Steyn seems to be excluding the possibility of "out-breeding" the Muslim enemy. Why? That pesky thing called "democracy." You cannot force people to breed in a free country. But you can "cull" a minority group whose values threaten yours? And still remain in a "democratic age"? That seems to be his point. Is Steyn actually advocating genocide? When you read the full context of the paragraph in the book (pages 4 – 6), there are no exculpatory words around it. At the end of the book (pages 204 – 207), however, Steyn considers wiping out Muslims on a massive scale but clearly rejects it:

Even if you regard Islam as essentially incompatible with free societies, the slaughter required to end it as a force in the world would change America beyond recognition. That doesn’t mean that, a few years down the line, if some kooks with nukes obliterate, say, Marseilles or Lyons that the French wouldn’t give it a go in some fairly spectacular way. But they’re unlikely to accomplish much by it, any more than the Russians have by their scorched earth strategy in Chechnya.

I’ll merely note the manner in which Steyn dismisses the possibility of mass genocide of Muslims in Europe as a final solution to the Islamist problem. It "won’t accomplish much." And America would be "changed beyond recognition." More than it was by dropping nukes on Japan? More than by authorizing torture and indefinitely suspending habeas corpus? Nah – Steyn is fine with all that. But he draws the line at a mass genocide of Muslims. Why? It might hurt us and "won’t accomplish much." Damn.

Is it just me or has American Idol lost what little integrity it once had? I know reality shows and talent shows are now rigged not to find the best singer/chef/designer/slut but to create the best television, and I’m aware that AI has produced some glaring miscalls over the years. But I’ve gotten sucked in this year and have to say it seems to me to be coming close to jumping the shark. The sadism of Cowell’s comments often bears no relationship to the performance he is judging. He has no wit. He has merely the power of cruelty. It makes for good TV, but of a pornographic variety. And then the last round included something so cynical it risks the integrity of the entire franchise. The judges selected two pairs of singers for the final cut for the final 24. In each pair, it was blindingly obvious that one was far better than the other; and yet the judges deliberately selected the weaker candidate. I know it’s a subjective call; but the contrast was so yawning it was out of those bounds. It was clearly done purely to enrage the audience, and juice interest in the show before the final rounds. It was a device to hook you further in, to prevent any anodine uplift before the next batch of viewer-culling. 

American Idol is no longer, it seems to me, primarily a talent contest. It’s a reality show designed to manipulate emotions in near-pornographic and abusive fashion. The mix has always been there. And I’m probably a fool for even hoping for some integrity in the thing. But this season, the tipping point toward complete cynicism has arrived. And that’s a shame. There is something pure about the search for stardom in America that doesn’t have to be tarnished and exploited this cruelly and this crudely, solely for ratings.

(Photo: Dave Hogan/Getty.)

Here’s the president’s revenge fantasy with respect to Osama bin Laden:

Speaking of George Bush, with whom Sharon developed a very close relationship, Uri Dan recalls that Sharon’s delicacy made him reluctant to repeat what the president had told him when they discussed Osama bin Laden. Finally he relented. And here is what the leader of the Western world, valiant warrior in the battle of cultures, promised to do to bin Laden if he caught him: "I will screw him in the ass!"

What a class act this president is.

It’s hard to know what to make of the big NYT story today. Pakistan has long been the biggest shoe to drop in the Islamist terror war. If al Qaeda can use the remote regions of Pakistan for a new base, they don’t need Anbar or Afghanistan. And the beauty of it, from their point of view, is that any Western attempt to coerce Musharraf into wiping al Qaeda out in Waziristan could backfire, and give the Islamist forces within Pakistan, and within its military and intelligence services, an opportunity to challenge the entire regime. So we’re damned if we hang back; and we’re damned if we go on the offensive. Meanwhile, the good news that Sunni Iraq might have more oil than once thought is tempered in my mind by an obvious worry. Will this one day be al Qaeda’s oil-field? How will we guarantee that Anbar province, even under optimal circumstances, couldn’t become a base for Islamist or Sunni terrorists, financed by oil? I guess our best hope is that they would attack Iran before the West. But it’s a close call.

Santa Monica, California, 2 am.

Gays should not expect any bipartisan attempt at progress for gay couples or people from the Human Rights Campaign, Steve Miller argues. He’s right; and anyone who has followed gay politics for a while knows it. HRC is a patronage wing of the Democratic party, designed primarily to get its members jobs in future Democratic administrations or with Democrats on the Hill (even while Howard Dean treats them like the help). The idea that they would even consider endorsing a pro-gay Republican on a national level is absurd.

I’ve watched the military battle and the marriage battle for almost two decades now. HRC has been AWOL on both. For much of the 1990s, they were an active force opposing the fight for marriage equality, because the Clintons gave them their marching orders. The current leadership are Hillary-bots, and if she becomes president, they will go back to their role in the 1990s: as spin-meisters for the Democratic establishment. If you’re for gay rights, do yourself a favor. Give your money to groups that actually care about gay rights. Off the top of my head: Freedom To Marry, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, Immigration Equality. If you want to give to HRC, just give it directly to Hillary. It’s more efficient.