Democracy and the Neo-Semite Mind™

April 23, 2009 Money From Abroad Floods Into Lebanon to Buy Votes By Robert F. Worth BEIRUT, Lebanon — It is election season in Lebanon, and Hussein H., a jobless 24-year-old from south Beirut, is looking forward to selling his vote to the highest bidder. “Whoever pays the most will get my vote,” he said. “I won’t accept less than $800.” He may get more. The parliamentary elections here in June are shaping up to be among the most expensive ever held anywhere, with hundreds of millions of dollars streaming into this small country from around the globe.

O God, O Montreal!

O urbem venalem et mature perituram, si emptorem invenerit!

Happy pays.

The Pronoun Watch

"WE seem to have given up any pretense that WE take the interrogation process seriously or comprehend the value of keeping OUR options open."

Princess Neoterica will no doubt have thought of Themselves in the plural all Their life, for factional and hierocratic reasons that concern few less loftily exalted.

In the quoted sentence, however, one does not encounter the comparatively commonplace Imperial first person plural, but rather this pedant’s own personal favourite, that mysterious set of ‘we ‘ and ‘us’ and ‘our’ that includes neither the speaker nor the person or persons addressed. [1]

The seriousness with which Their Highness and the Commentariat and the Weekly Standardisers take "the interrogation process" is impeccable. So impeccable as to be positively terrorizin’ -- which is pretty much the whole point, nicht wahr? Palæocomrade T. de Torquemada might take lessons from these gentry.

Thus of the first two instances. The third is not so easy to classify. The ‘options’ are formally those of Uncle Sam, just as the supposed abandonment of ‘seriousness’ was formally Sam’s. The difficulty arises that the Commentariat, bein’ a private-sector conspiracy (once again: formally), is not in a position to possess ‘options’ the same way it possesses ‘seriousness’. [2] A fortiori the neocomradely community is not in a position to "give up" the two on identical terms.

However, Their Highness speaks only of a pretence of abandonment -- and therein lies a pretty puzzle for the schoolmen: Can a legal agent pretend to abandon X, which she actually possesses by tenure T1, in exactly the same way in which she would pretend to abandon Y, which she does not in fact possess, and would possess by tenure T2 rather than T1 if she did? (And would it matter that tenure T2 is not in fact legally available to her?) [3]

***

In a completely different universe of discourse, mark that the neocomradess does not even consider the possibility that her POTUS might be engaged in a little dezinformatsya hereabouts, with the whole "No More Mr. Nasty Guy" shtyk intended only to deceive and "soften up" the implacable fiends. ("Won’t Abú ’Irháb be surprised the next time he gets himself kidnapped!")

But God knows best what this administration is really up to.

Happy days.


___
[1] It might in some contexts be termed "the minority report WE." Imagine Neocomrade Senator M. McConnell and Neocomrade Representative E. Kantor mutterin’ together sadly against "all the money that we [the Congress of the United States of America] have been throwin’ at undeservin’ slackers lately."


[2] In the vernacular this comes to roughly "If Dershowitz, Esq., did it seriously in Harvard Yard, he should go to jail."


[3] In the vernacular perhaps "Would it be impolite to laugh out loud if Princess Neoterica were to solemnly forswear the personal use of nukes?"

"No democrat can sustain the position ...."

No democrat can sustain the position that the ‘vote’ of a Jewish Israeli in this central matter ought to count more than that of a Palestinian.

Planet Justworld, being intergalactically remote from our humble Terra, naturally makes very short work of terrestrial political philosophy -- so small a mote as that is indistinguishable at the distances involved. Why, one might as well try to see a dime on the surface of the Moon with the naked eye!

However down here where dimes and democracies are visible enough to be getting on with, the position in question could do with some glossing along the lines of "Not so fast!" And one wonders why the alien publicist should festoon the word ‘votes’ with shudder quotes.

To be sure, one would so festoon it oneself, meaning thereby that by the time one could talk about plain vanilla votes with strict legitimacy, "¡Palestine, One and Inseparable, Now and Forever!" would already be in existence. It may seem a shade pedantic to insist that participants in some imagined general plebescite of Arab natives and Jewish Statist locals as to whether ¡POINF! should come to pass at all, would only be "pre-voters," and doubtless this shade, too, is quite indistinguishable from Planet Justworld.

Some of us actually like pedantry, though, at least in moderation. Immoderation in the present case would be to insist that if the hypothetical plebescite were to reject ¡POINF!, then all the inky fingers would not belong even to "pre-voters" but merely to ... (lemme see) ... to "potential but unactualised pre-voters." (I think St. Aristotle would accept that formulation, but do not feel so secure as to be able to offer a money-back guarantee.)

Democracies being at least a little larger than dimes, it appears that the earthgazers of Planet Justworld can make out something to paste the label on. (What’s eighteen billion intellectual light-years between friends, after all?) The extraterrestrial savants even manage to reduce democracy to what I myself consider its single most important trait, namely arithmetical majoritarianism, "one man one vote." Down here, of course, that feature of the product is accompanied by a number of others that are not simply to be dispensed with because they should not come first in a full enumeration.

Whether diluted by sheer disinterested distance or by factious Tendenz, any ‘democracy’ that consists exclusively in arithmetical majoritarianism is not likely to resolve the Palestine Puzzle any century soon. The earthgazers of PJW have evidently been apprised of the Levantine situation through some paratelescopic medium of communication, for they are aware of "around six million Jewish Israelis and more than 10 million ethnic Palestinians." Any schoolboy can work out what sort of a ¡POINF! would arise from that foundation on the dilute-democratic principle. Approximately 5,342,101.6 Jewish Statist locals can work the sum too -- which explains why we find ourselves in beautiful downtown Cloudcuckooland when we talk about it.

(( It is not as if one minds visiting Cloudcuckooland on occasion, of course. How could any tolerator of pedantry rationally object to so similar a product line? ))

"When in Rome, . . .," why not wonder out loud why the Romans, or rather the Cloudcuckoolanders and the best and brightest of Planet Justworld, don’t propose to let twelve or thirteen million non-local Jewish Statists [*] ‘vote’ also.

To be sure, if one were to abandon one's mind in that direction, the (presumably) desired outcome could be restored by allowing all the non-local Arabs to ‘vote’ about ‘their’ Palestine. That card, in turn, would, or might, be trumped by letting the Parahyperzionists of the world (sc., Gentile fellow-travelers with the Tel Avîv statelet) take an effective interest in their Palestine..

But then how if all Muslims were to ‘vote’ about ‘theirs’?

Indeed, why not the whole human race votes the doom of everybody's Palestine?

But all good things must come to an end. That last step looks a bit like a _reductio ad absurdum_, not because of any practical unworkability in the Age of Tweeter, but because a pedant could so easily maintain that the step has already been taken, not directly by a plebescite, perhaps, but representatively under the aegis of the Parliament of Man™ .

Plebescite-mongering about the Palestine Puzzle thus puts one in mind of the familiar trick in which a stage magician creates a humongous knot and then adds one crowning complication, just to make assurance more assured than ever, don't you know? --- and the whole thing falls apart, leaving her no better off than when she started. Oh, well!

Happy days.

___
[*] Undoubtedly some subtractions would have to be made from that off-the-cuff guesstimate, because the authority that it relies on was counting extra-Levantine Jews simpliciter and not only the Jewish Statists amongst them.

Nevertheless, it is extremely improbable that any such adjustment would not hand full benefit of the "one man one vote" gimmick over to the other team in a flash.

"... no one can spell out a good reason...."

"Why no one can spell out a good reason [for the neocomrades to occupy Afghanistan] beats me."

With so many rear-colonels, and so many electronic armchairs for them to play Hannibal from, a lack of consensus amongst the Commentariat and the Weekly Standardisers could be guessed at two different ways within the first millionth of your average analytical centimetre:

(1) Wingnut City and Tel Avîv lack any STRONG reasons for muckin’ about in Afghanistan, let the quality and quantity of their weak reasons be what it may. [1]

(2) WC and TA (the savin’ remnant, I mean, not out-and-out amateurs) have adequate reasons, but prefer not to disclose them. The reasons might even be such that public disclosure would render them inoperative.


The second guess there comes a little nearer conspiracy-mongering than is pleasing, but on the other hand, Afghanistan and Pakistan are still more or less the neo-Levant, are they not? In light of occupational therapy applied to the former al-‘Iráq, however, it would not hurt to stipulate that "war for oil" is quite impossible, and "war for poppies" extremely improbable. If the neocomrades are in possession of good secret reasons for this branch of their colonial policy, the student can safely assume that these unmentionable reasons will not be economic. [2]

Without venturing into profundity, one may also mention the null hypothesis:

(0) The chief reason why WC and TA insist on their forces stayin’ in Afghanistan has no connection with local conditions but is simply a matter of the neocomrades provin’ that nobody can push them out. If the self-prestige of Narcissus Dexter were to be shaken by an irresponsible withdrawal, why, really dreadful things would eventuate!!! But not necessarily in the vacuum withdrawn from or even its immediate vicinity.


There is a certain affinity between (0) and (2), in the sense that Master Narky would almost certainly not make a good impression on decent political adults by formulatin’ and promulgatin’ the claim that his own self-esteem is chiefly what compels him to create the neo-happiness of Afghanistan.

Despite its stiflin’ subjectivity and hot-house atmosphere, guess (0) does have the --thoroughly objective--merit of explaining why Master Narky abstains from marchin’ on Mogadishu and a long list of other world capitals. Pushin’ oneself in where one is not wanted (but also not present in force already) is, after all, an advanced topic that could easily be omitted from the introductory undergraduate course. [3]

___

Now as to profundity, or new business at any rate, it appears to the present keyboard that none of the above guesses really captures the essence of the neocomrades’ colonial proceedin’s. Each is worthy of being guessed, but even taken together, they fall short analytically.

Rear-Colonel Contender #4, who raised the issue of why there has been no proper spellin’-out, leaves one puzzled as to whether he takes his implicit question to be rhetorical (_sc._ implyin’ that no such spell-out is possible) or real. I take it to be a perfectly genuine question, myself, although some of the answers considered above may seem to #4 to be located at the wrong level. He may not be willin’ to accept accounts of neocomradely behaviour that are not likely to be consciously entertained and advanced by the neocomrades themselves. All three of my own coarse and illiterate guesses are of that type in varying degrees. A strict scrutiniser could complain, fairly enough, that these are (causal) explanations of why Wingnut City and Tel Avîv cannot leave Afghanistan alone without being (argumentative or ‘rational’) reasons for their policy of invasionism and occupational therapy. [4]

In the particular case at hand, and as regards the Kiddie Krusade more broadly, the plot is thickened by the fact that neocomradely violence pros and geopolitical perps insist on puttin’ out various nominal reasons for their invasionism that can only have been designed as boob bait. The gold medal or booby prize in that competition goes, _me judice_, to those factional spinsters who can actually manage to say with a straight face that Qandahár and Quetta and the like are especially good places to conspire against Western Sieve (and/or against Jewish Statism) from. A child of ten could work out that Montreal or ‘Ammán or Mogadishu or Des Moines would be far more comfy and convenient, not to mention safer from detection.

I am tempted to make the Ultimate Guess at this point, namely that even the neocomrades themselves have no idea at all what they are doin’.

Indeed, that is what I actually guess, though it needs to be glossed a little, as follows: their pros and their perps have indeed no idea *in detail* what they are doin’, but the vast mass of unknown and even unknowable details can be comprehended in a summary verbal formula without much difficulty:

(666) In the modern age, nobody can be safe unless the Party of Wisdom and Virtue and Moderation™ (the neocomradely community) possess a veto power over all troublesome natives and non-Zionist locals without exception.

Exactly what things the lesser breeds without must be prevented from doing is unpredictable in advance even in principle. Nevertheless, the Greater Breeds With™ (the neocomradely community) will know wickedness and stop it whenever they encounter a particular instance, even as Mr. Justice Stewart used to do with nonpolitical pornography.

Of course provisional intermediate formulations of native-local misbehaviour that the PWVM / GBW will probably or certainly have to veto and invade against and treat with occupational therapy are not impossible at all, the trouble is only that such formulae look suspiciously verbal and tautological. Should the neocomrades classify acts A through Z as ‘terrorism’, for example, it is at least a plausible hypothesis that the real connectin’ link among the twenty-six different abominations would be rather Narky Dexter’s experienced psychological itch to veto rather than any common and ‘objective’ terroristical character that one could explain to a Martian -- and then sanely expect her to get the right results by application of the announced shibboleth to future cases. But God knows best.

Happy days.



___
[1] This is to look at ‘our’ _libido dominandi_ crew from the outside essentially the same way that Señorito Ottolenghi looks at the evil Qommies: any schoolboy can discover or invent justifications for Iranian gamesmanship both for or against the existin’ neorégime at Kábúl. But none of them can be very plausibly represented as URGENT.

Knowing that they are not in the slightest danger of being hanged in a week, the geopolitical perps feel free to relax and disconcentrate their minds, with the natural (as it were) consequence that all sorts of feebly warranted proposals get offerred and none commands significant support, let alone a majority or consensus.


[2] I see that is worded so as to bring the Huntin’tonian Clashism™ product to mind at once. Though Uncle Sam Jr. and I agree in pooh-poohing economic factors, Harvard Yard Brand ‘civilizational’ neo-baloney is itself useless and worthless.


[3] The Commentariat gentry are sufficiently paracademic / pseudacademic to spot the difficulty with the analogy: obviously Narky Dexter would not be sittin’ at Kábúl or in the Postinternational Zone of the former al-‘Iráq refusin’ to be dislodged unless he had already mastered the contents of Invasionism 3410, the graduate seminar. Or learned how to impose himself on natives and locals from scratch by a course of private study.


[4] Guess (1) is slightly peculiar from this point of view: neocomradely violence pros and geopolitical perps would, as I have conceived their case, be aware of their own secret reasons. The fact that it would be counterproductive for WC and TA to be frank in public has no tendency to demote their rational reasons to causal factors. However, everybody outside the charmed circle of Secret Sharers can have no reliable basis from which to evaluate invasionistical reasons _quâ_ reasons.

Byzantine and neo-Levantine conspiratorialism once again easily seeps in, I fear, should the student attempt to do anything with Guess (1) beyond barely entertain it. Any attempt to speculate _ab externo_ and in detail what Secret Sharers are up to is positively asking for trouble, yet to suppose the SS to be secretly sharin’ some Rumsfeld-worthy "known unknown" that is in effect predestined to remain a known unknowable _in saecula saeculorum amen_ . . . . --well, it is not difficult to see the analytical unsatisfactoriness of that plan!

Maybe Gospodin Minister Liebermann is More Cuddly Than He's Painted?

The new foreign minister of The Jewish State™ [1] has has been rapturously received in Hyperzionistal circles, with Pipes Minor takin’ the cake, me judice. His title runs "Avigdor Lieberman's Brilliant Debut" and as to the substance ... well, go enjoy it for yourself. "If you can't say anything nice &c."

To be fair, Dr. Pipesides doesn't spend much time gushin’ nicenesses about his new hero, he mostly quotes from His Excellency's inaugural address to TJS™ Foreign Ministry employees, a document which has to be seen to be reviled. Here again you must not let me, or even D. Richardovitch Pipes, tell you what is in it. [2]

That rapture is what one expected. What one (or this keyboard, anyway) did not expect was to discover the existence of what might be termed a moderate wing of Hyperzionism, as opposed to the mad-dog or Pipesovitchian wing. I detect this phenomenon in an account of A. Lieberman offered by a certain R. O. Freedman under an e-banner emblazoned with the Name of H*rv*rd.

Right or wrong about other matters, Prof. Freedman does insist on one point that appears to be merely factual and was unknown to me before just now:

Lieberman’s plan to deal with the Israeli Arabs, which some commentators both in Israel and abroad have called ‘racist’, involves giving the Israeli Arabs a choice. Either they can pledge loyalty to Israel as a Jewish State, or they can leave Israel—with their land."

Did you know about "with their land"? I never heard of it myself, but admittedly I do not follow the Palestine Puzzle with undivided attention. Given the Ivy League credentials, who can doubt that the R. O. Freedman allegation is accurate? Certainly not I!

Though this angle is new to me, I have encountered a number of apologists for Hyperzion who tried to make Gospodin Minister Lieberman look not quite so bad by pointing out that non-Gentile Israëlis who refuse the proposed loyalty oath would be expelled too. If both these mitigations of the Lieberman Plan are true and apply simultaneously, one must wonder whether treacherous soi-disant Jewish expellees would get to take their land along too. (As a practical matter, what land would they take, exactly?)

Prof. R. O. Freedman does not raise that question himself; he does not mention that the shibboleth is to be administered to all of the Tel Avîv government’s subjects. Even more puzzlingly, after introducing that "with their land" as if it made a great deal of difference, he goes on to maintain that, like Gospodin Minister Lieberman, the population transfers of Century XX have been unduly deprecated:

[T]here have been cases of population transfers following wars caused by nationality conflicts. Indeed, compared to the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia and Poland after World War Two, or even the exchange of Greeks and Turks in 1923 following the failed Greek invasion of Ottoman Anatolia, Lieberman’s idea is far more gentle.

In the cases cited, there was no question of "with their land" in the Lieberman Plan sense. International boundaries may or may not have been readjusted simultaneously, but that process was quite independent of the ethnic cleansings. R. O. Freedman does not indicate whether he supposes that "with their land" is a qualification that makes the Lieberman Plan for the neo-Levant kinder and gentler than the crude and summary proceedings of Old Europe. The first time through his article, I took for granted that ‘gentler’ only meant that the number of patients to be treated would be far smaller. After re-reading, I see that "with their land" might have been intended as well. But it still seems a bit odd that R. O. Freedman does not say this expressly. His general intention of apologizing for the new Tel Avîv government in advance is unmistakable: I should have expected him to dilate at some length on the gentleness of "with their land," that being, as far as I know, a Liebermanian gentleness that has not been publicized widely. (I apologize if it is really the case that everybody has heard of this but me, but I am not so completely inattentive to the Palestine Puzzle as to think that likely.)

Even "with their land" is not the primary attempted mitigation of A. Lieberman, however. I put it first because it more a factual question than is Gentleness Number One, the mitigation that comes first in R. O. Freedman's own enumeration:

There are two major challenges which Lieberman poses to the Netanyahu government. The first is the question of how strongly he will pursue the secularist themes that permeated his campaign. Pushing that agenda could lead either his party, or Shas, with which it has been in conflict over religious issues, to leave the government. The second issue is Lieberman’s call for a transfer of territory [&c. &c.]

From the customer standpoint, this question of secularist themes amounts to this: we are solicited to think of A. Lieberman primarily as a defender of the interests of recent ex-Soviet immigrants to The Jewish State™ and only secondarily of his acccomplishments as a forceful speaker of Arabic, despite the well-known fact that His Excellency and his party campaigned on the basis of the latter. R. O. Freedman elucidates

Issues of conversion and civil marriage are central to Israel’s Russian immigrant community. A reported 300,000 of the one million Russians in Israel are not Jewish according to Jewish law, and Lieberman put their status at the center of his campaign.

Here again I defer to R. O. Freedman and the august presumptive authority of "Middle East Strategy at Harvard" as regards the facts. The non-factual aspect preponderates, however: whether the foreign customer prefers to buy A. Lieberman as a gentle defender of self-displaced ethnic Russians rather than ... well, you must know the hostile account of His Excellency in that ‘Arabophone’ capacity of his! After accepting all the facts as alleged by R. O. Freedman, the question remains which set of facts about A. Lieberman is to be regarded as more important, and that is not itself a factual question

Being myself a thoroughly foreign customer with very little interest in the internal squabbles of The Jewish State™ or of universal Hyperzionism, I take Gospodin Minister Lieberman to be defined rather by his declared international enemies than by his local Israëli clientele. It is, after all, foreign affairs that His Excellency holds the portfolio of, a portfolio that seems unlikely to have been his second or third choice. To buy the product that Prof. R. O. Freedman undertakes to vend therefore strikes me as comparable to reassuring the Tel Avîv pols that Secretary Clinton is not likely to give them much grief, because everybody knows that what Hillary cares about most is establishing universal health care in the US of A. That may actually be the case, but even if it is, professional representatives of foreigners would be mad to attempt to conduct negotiations on such a basis.

But God knows best.

Happy days.

___
[1] That ought to be enough recognition-as to be getting on with, surely?


[2] As Schopenhauer remarked of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, don't you know?

Gospodin Minister Lieberman may not fancy himself to be quite so exalted a link as Prof. Dr. Kant in the Great Chain of Intellect, but His Excellency (or ghostwriters) is definitely takin’ a stab at the gold medal: one treat provided is the 132,809th explanation of how what is conventionally called ‘Westphalian’ sovereignty has finally broken down forever. One does not want to reveal the ending and spoil the fun, but many will be able to work out from general principles and previous agitprop why such a collapse as that might gladden the hearts of Hyperzion.

"Galmud@1232" quotes a certain M. Levy of Ha’aretz as welcoming the Advent of Avigdor rather back-handedly: "the veil will be lifted and the nation's true face revealed to its citizens and the rest of the world." True faces had better be left to the Platonist caucus in the Philosophy Department, I'd say, but in another direction M. Levy seriously underestimates the scope of the Lieberman unveilment. His Excellency (or ghostwriters) seems to me to have vouchsafed us mortals a complete novus ordo sæclorum, a panoramic vision of a Weltordnung fit for Hyperzionists to live in. That is to say, His Excellency (or ghostwriters) has ripped the mask off every other nation’s (true?) face, not that of The Jewish State™ alone. Once demasked, a number of nations turn out not to be proper States at all . . . . But hush, I mustn't spoil your fun!