Neocomrade R. Cohen limps along behind the main body of the caravan, no doubt, but he seems to be gettin’ there all the same. And he’s certainly headed in the same general direction that the self-appointed neoguiders of his Demographic have decreed de haut en bas.
Now decrees emanatin’ from weekly standardisers and Wall Street jingos and the august fastnesses of Castle Podhóretz, ever neoresplendent City on a hill that it is, do indeed emit a special whiff. Neocomrade R. Cohen characterizes the Demographic’s neoguiders as "the Iran-as-Nazi-incarnation-of-evil school," which seems to me not altogether accurate, even apart from the NYTC neocomrade’s personal parti pris. Viewing the colourful caravan of the Demographic from very, very far off (and, needless to say, from a position of categorical inferiority), I cannot find the distance between Neocomrade R. Cohen and (say) M. de Nétanyahou or Neocomradess C. Glick of the Jerusalem Post anywhere near as important as these gentlebein’s find it. (Mais que scay-je?)
Still, there it is: viewed from Mars or from Dhimmi Corners, USA, the Demographic as a whole, with only the extremest of Messrs. les prétendues ennemis de soi excluded, have trouble imagin’ any evil whatever that is *not* Nazi-like. On the flip side, that which is good for the Demographic is -- obviously -- good simpliciter. Neocomrade R. Cohen may not altogether hold with the flipped notion, and of course he is probably burstin’ with wrong ideas of what will benefit the Demographic’s caravan most beneficially in the long haul.
Just like everybody else in the caravan. Their Demographical comedians make "tot Hebraïci, tot sententiae--et nonnullae aliae" jokes all the time. To be sure, when the stern Neoguiders get their way unchecked and unbalanced, that sort of humor will probably have to go extinct. Stern neoguidance aims, in effect, at makin’ the Demographic an S.R.H., "sole remainin’ hyperpower," in its own right, a status obviously inconsistent with village curs and bitches bein’ allowed to bark at the caravan as it passes. Oderint dum metuant! has its virtues, no doubt, but to encourage laughter is not among them.
Almost as obviously, stern Neoguidance and stand-alone Hyperpower will (would) not be easy to reconcile with permittin’ much dissent inside the Demographic itself. Anythin’ noncomformist beyond narrow questions of ‘existential’ tactics and neo-expediency will lead to the sort of trouble that Neocomrade R. Cohen is pityin’ himself over already. Fifty or a hundred years hence, the Neoguiders in plenitudine potestatis eorum will have to expunge idiots like him from the Demographic altogether, or else, what is a thousand times more likely in my view, Neocomrade R. Cohen III will just keep his damnfool mouth shut if he can’t get his mind right. A policy conducive to lower life insurance rates, that is, but not good for stand-up comedy.
All of which, not accidentally, sounds rather like Neocomrade R. Cohen’s tourist impressions of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
No better than tourist impressions are they, I fear, unless we suppose that the laggard neocomrade is very imperfectly acquainted with the dhimmí tongue in which he chooses to scribble. For example, if the Rev. Khamene’i and his allies were really "bent, in the name of money and power, on the bludgeoning of the Iranian people," it ought to be a cinch to find official documents headed with In nomine Pecuniae Potestatisque or the like. When native Anglophones act "in the name of So-and-So," we do not (often) hide the authorizing N-me under a bushel and hope nobody notices it. What native speakers of Cohenesque do, though, I must admit that have no idea. [1]
More to the immediate point is the alleged bludgeonin’. Neocomrade R. Cohen may not yet have climbed as far down the slippery slope as Castle Podhóretz, but he is definitely on his way. That is the sort of word that would be resorted to by a Demographic chauvinist who considers nothin’ really evil unless it be Hitleroid. It goes with the ‘existential’ neomindset to assume that enemies of the Demographic act out of sheer malice. R. Cohen is not quite there yet, since the NSDAP itself would not have been truly Hitleroid if it had been acting "in the name" of Geld und Kraft. But there is nothin’ in sight to stop him from ascendin’ to truly Podhorétzian neodepths at any moment, perhaps by askin’ himself exactly how the alleged bludgeonin’ makes the Rev. and his merry men richer and more potent. Sooner or later, it seems to me, even a Neocomrade R. Cohen is bound to notice that in fact Geld und Kraft are very secondary objectives of the veláyet-e faqíh crew. The chances that he will guess their real motives bein’ infinitesimal, it seems safe enough to conjecture that he'll wind up with the C. Glick or A. von Liebermann view of what the Qommie fiends are up to, viz. sheer unmitigated Nazi fiendishness.
***
Another sign of slippage upslopewards is that Neocomrade R. Cohen makes no clear policy recommendation to anybody except the Qommie fiends themselves, who are to shape up at once and wash behind the ears and, above all, get right with History:
| It is time for a Persian Sistani. The sons and daughters of disappointed revolutionaries do not seek renewed bloodshed. They seek peaceful change that will give meaning to the word “republic.” Khamenei, bowing to superior learning, in the best tradition of Shiism, should listen to the wisdom of Iran’s late turbulent priest [the Rev. Montazerí]. Iran would thereby preserve its independence, the proudest achievement of the revolution, while better reflecting the will of its people, who overwhelmingly favor normalized relations with the United States. It is time to retire the stale slogans of a bygone era. It is time for Iran to follow China’s example of 1972 in adapting to survive. Perhaps Khomeini, like Mao in Deng Xiaoping’s famous formula, was 70 percent right — and some brave Iranian leader could say that. He would thereby open the way for one of the Middle East’s most hopeful societies to move forward. (...) "At some point something must give." With the birth of the Green movement, and in the spirit of Montazeri, something has given. The further, critical “giving” has to come in the supreme leader’s office, where the 30 percent error of 1979 has entrenched itself and so denied Iran the governance and society its vibrant population deserves. |
Thus sloganises Neotourist R. Cohen, about as ‘stalely’ as can be imagined. That stuff is almost as stale as Neotourist Th. Friedman sloganizes. And Little Tommy with the big moustache sets a very stiff standard.
It is fun, however, to guess what an evil Qommie would make of bein’ lectured by Neotourist R. Cohen that he ought to behave like a wise and virtuous Chicom. Whatever other reactions such a neostimulus provokes, there would probably be a significant element of resentment of the "one size fits all" assumption that seems to be fundamental to neotourism as such. If the fiends pay any attention at all to flat-earthers from the New York Times Company, that is, as presumably they will not.
Meanwhile, I betcha the weekly standardisers, and the Wall Street jingos, and the staff and management and bloggership of Common Terror magazine will pay Neotourist R. Cohen attention enough to render him even more self-pitiful still. Militant extremism bein’ what it is, they are assuredly not goin’ta forgive such a shameless traitor to the Demographic as poor ol’ muddlehead Roger any time soon!
AFZKB.
Healthy days.
___
[1] Again looking forward a century or so, I presume that Telavîvestán will, like India and Belize and doubtless other candidates, have evolved a patois that is nominally still English, but getting pretty distant at points from Westminster and Washin’ton. And Father Zeus knows best!
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