In Israel, when Palestinians were undergoing an orgy of suicide bombing, whenever one of them targeted a bus and blew themselves up, the next day people still boarded the same line, the ultimate f-u to the Palestinian nutjobs. Simply put, the rest of the civilized world needs the cojones of the Israelis. If I had the money I would surely book my next vacation at the Taj. I wouldn't give it a seconds thought. Those Pakistani nutjobs won't ever get the message, but hopefully it will filter to enough other people the utter futility of their actions and some (however small) support for them will wither away. In any event, having cojones is sufficient enough unto itself. I don't want to cop to any bravado though, the average Israeli possesses much more daily courage than I. I would go to the taj to say F you to those Pakistani nutjobs, and Israeli would take up residence there.

Oh, blackton, i don't think your description is quite correct. In the days following a suicide bombing, Israelis did avoid buses. But life's demands are stronger than fears, and a few days later the routine would resume. It was not  particular courage that makes people take buses. There was no other regular way to go to work, school, etc. The heart of Jerusalem, the famous triangle at the centre of the city, where all the cafes and shops are located, resembled, during the worst months of the intifada,  a ghost town. People stayed home.

I was visiting Israel at the time and my brother drove me around to places I wanted to go. He drove in a perculiar way, swinging suddenly, zigzagging among the cars at times. I asked him why he was driving in this fashion. He said he was trying to get away from the buses. "Buses explode sometimes" he said.

David Aaronovitch:

There is nothing more important about the life of a member of one race or religion than that of another.

George:

He states this as though it were a genetic trait passed down from generation to generation. Instead, it is a narrative that is contrived by all religionists and racialists to weight down the unbearable lightness of being with Necessary Meaning.

It is essentially bullshit, of course. And at times very deadly bullshit.

A child born to Jewish parents who die when he is 2 years old, can be adopted by a Catholic or a Muslim family and he will grow to believe that the Catholic or Muslim narrative is necessarily true.

And throughout human history there have been countless deaths and sorrows inflicted on others because they embraced the wrong narrative at wrong time in the wrong place. They are victums of intolerance, xenophobia, bigotry, prejudice, discrimination. Fierce racial or religious bonding may rescue them from the concentration camps. But it is fierce racial or religious bonding that sent them there.

But folks like Marty Peretz have so much invested in their own people's narrative that everything that happens in the world is strained through this filter.

One becomes a perpetrator or a victum depending on which side of the narrative they fall.

george walton

"And throughout human history there have been countless deaths and sorrows inflicted on others because they embraced the wrong narrative at wrong time in the wrong place." george walton

What a vacuous comment.

Well meaning humanitarians can be the most callous people on earth. They justify their lack of human pity and love by appeals to universal values.

The actual people in this view matter only as examples of some higher value which they hold dearer than actual life.

"A child born to Jewish parents who die when he is 2 years old, can be adopted by a Catholic or a Muslim family..."

and don't tell I took this out of context. The whole rant reeks with contempt for the people killed in the massacre at Mumbai which to him is just another narrative.

I doubt he read the whole of David Aaronovitch' column and if he did he didn't understand it.

He certainly missed this:

"It may seem unfashionably neoconservative to say it, but surely the underlying problem in southern Punjab is a failed society, within a failing state, in which a particular ideology begins to dominate. It is highly suggestive, I think, that the same area that gave birth to some of the Mumbai murderers has one of the highest levels of acid attacks on women anywhere in the world. In 2003 there were at least 74 of these disfiguring assaults in a southern Punjab - surely one of the most appalling manifestations of misogyny to be found anywhere on Earth.

“Sometimes,” according to Human Rights Watch, “the attacked women are seeking a divorce or the husband is seeking a second wife over the first's objections. Sometimes the triggering event can be as trivial as an argument over grocery money.” If readers get a chance I'd recommend the report by Nicholas Kristof, of the The New York Times, last weekend from Pakistan. Just don't look at the pictures...." David Aaronovitch

Of course to George Walton the victim of acid attacks are just giving us their "own narrative" without taking into consideration the equally valid narrative of the aggrieved husband.

I don’t know what makes people like George Walton believe as they do (they may think that not taking sides and forsaking any cultural identity makes on more moral---I think it’s probably just laziness since if they took sides they would have to something about it) but there are certainly too many people like him running around today.

George wrote:

"And throughout human history there have been countless deaths and sorrows inflicted on others because they embraced the wrong narrative at wrong time in the wrong place."

Jackson responds:

What a vacuous comment.

Well meaning humanitarians can be the most callous people on earth. They justify their lack of human pity and love by appeals to universal values.

The actual people in this view matter only as examples of some higher value which they hold dearer than actual life.

George responds:

I have on many occassions pointed out [in TNR blogs] the manner in which secular ideologues are as fully capable of precipatating catastrophic human calamities as are their theological kin. And that invarably revolves around attempts to substitute The Word [their own] for God.  

George wrote:

"A child born to Jewish parents who die when he is 2 years old, can be adopted by a Catholic or a Muslim family..."

Jackson Responds:

and don't tell I took this out of context. The whole rant reeks with contempt for the people killed in the massacre at Mumbai which to him is just another narrative.

George responds:

Why YOUR contempt? It is not a rant. It is a reasoned point of view. And it certainly does not lead a reasonable mind to evince the reaction that is erupting from you. I am merely pointing out how religous zealtry [of any denomination] can poison the minds of children such that they can be mindlessly manipulated as adults [and sometimes sadly as children] into inflicting terrible pain and suffering on all that is construed as Other. Religion is just a narrative people embrace to anchor themselves to Reality. To obviate death. How else to explain the hundreds upon hundreds of religious dogmas in which each True Believer insists that their God and only their God is the one TRUE God.

Jackson wrote:

I doubt he read the whole of David Aaronovitch' column and if he did he didn't understand it.

He certainly missed this:

"It may seem unfashionably neoconservative to say it, but surely the underlying problem in southern Punjab is a failed society, within a failing state, in which a particular ideology begins to dominate. It is highly suggestive, I think, that the same area that gave birth to some of the Mumbai murderers has one of the highest levels of acid attacks on women anywhere in the world. In 2003 there were at least 74 of these disfiguring assaults in a southern Punjab - surely one of the most appalling manifestations of misogyny to be found anywhere on Earth.

“Sometimes,” according to Human Rights Watch, “the attacked women are seeking a divorce or the husband is seeking a second wife over the first's objections. Sometimes the triggering event can be as trivial as an argument over grocery money.” If readers get a chance I'd recommend the report by Nicholas Kristof, of the The New York Times, last weekend from Pakistan. Just don't look at the pictures...." David Aaronovitch

George responds:

The irony here being that this is basically my point. Religion is just one manifestation of a particular state's superstructure. It is always the political and economic infrastructure that is being fought over in the end. And here, over and over and over again, history shows us clearly how religion is used in this tug of war for power.

But again, this is, in turn, what fascism and communism revolved around, as well: Who has the power to ENFORCE a point of view, to control the government....and then to distribute the wealth accordingly. When has this not been the anthropological narrative?

In my view, what was done in Mumbai is either a secular manifestation of "fuck the world" nihilism or it is a part in a play scripted in the minds of a clique of religous fanatics.

Jackson wrote:

Of course to George Walton the victim of acid attacks are just giving us their "own narrative" without taking into consideration the equally valid narrative of the aggrieved husband.

George responds:

This is a preposterus declamation. The women would not been been attacked except for the religious dictums built into a fanatical devotion to sharia. And what is sharia but the laws of men said to be a transcendental reflection of the word of God. Again, we are back to fierce hard-core religion that is embraced literally and not ecumenically [as it is in much of America...sans evangelicals].

It is only when people recognize the manner in which their identity...as impressionable children...have been [oh so lovingly!] instilled in them by their family and their community, will they choose instead to explore their own paths as adults; or be swept up in one or another rendition of The Way.

Or, perhaps, just find a cunsumer driven "lifestyle", and stay there?

Jackson wrote:  

I don’t know what makes people like George Walton believe as they do (they may think that not taking sides and forsaking any cultural identity makes on more moral---I think it’s probably just laziness since if they took sides they would have to something about it) but there are certainly too many people like him running around today.

George responds:

Again, yet another absurd twisting of my incessant calls for moderation, negociation and compromise between and among all people who self-consciously and introspectively forego theological and ideological narratives. This is called democracy. And that is why I am able to say that Israel, aside from the narratives her neighbors offer the world, is the only democracy in the Middle East. On the other hand, I have read opinions in the US press that suggests there is a much more vigorous discussion of Israeli policies in Tel Aviv than in Washington. Whether that is true or I can't say.

Finally, your post is, well, intellectually lazy. Your's is the true rant. And I suspect it revolves around a threat you feel as you read my words and think how applicable they might be to your own "constructed" sense of identity.

I stare into the abyss that is oblivion with both eyes open. But I do not pretend this is courageous; not in the manner in whch Camus or Sartre are often ludicrously interpreted. Me, I would like very much to believe in God, in a Necessary Meaning, in immortally.

Maybe you can show me how.

But stow away the outrage, okay? I often project myself into these discussions as "a humorless scold" [to quote someone from the Plank blog]. But that is because I am a polemicist. I admire and respect vigorous exchanges. But it's not personal with me. It's not a barage of ad hominems. How could it be when, in the context of all that exists, I am as infinitesimally insignificant as you and Marty.

Marty by the way has a great mind. It would just be all the greater if he would let me deprogram him. But, sure, I am certainly more than wiling to let him try to deprogram me.

They're just words in here, right?

George Walton  

"cojones"?

Blackton -- What are "cojones".  Is it a real word?  Given that I am an Israeli who tried to live normally during the Oslo Accords war I'd like to know what I have.

BTW, Noga is both right and wrong.  Yes for a few days after a bus bombing, ridership was down but a few days later it would pick up both out of necessity but also out of a "screw you" attitude.  That the downtown area lost a lot of business was due in large part to the absence of tourists and that students here for their "post-high school" year studying in an Israeli yeshiva program, were kept away by their school's administration under instructions from their parents.  Israelis had already started gravitating toward the cafes & restaurants in J'lem's German Colony neighborhood (Emek Refa'im) before the outbreak of the O.A. war, for reasons unrelated to fears of terrorism.

On the other hand, when commuting between Efrata (where I live) & Jerusalem (where I work and spend most of my day) on  a road that had its share of drive-by shootings, I used to drive defensively & slowed down rapidly whenever a car was about to pass me.  Also, caving in to my parents' pleas, I bought and wore a ceramic bullet proof vest with side panels (and given my mass, I have wide sides) which killed my back (something like 30-35 kg.).

George -- so is pure nihilism the best solution, forbid all ideologies & beliefs?

Hershel Ginsburg

Efrata / Jerusalem

George responds:   "Why YOUR contempt? It is not a rant. It is a reasoned point of view."

On another thread here you said ""You guys run the world."

blogs.tnr.com/.../samantha-power-is-a-friend-of-israel.aspx

I don't take any one seriously who believes that Jews "run the world."

You are just the latest Jews hating bastard to land here.

"that students here for their "post-high school" year studying in an Israeli yeshiva program, were kept away by their school's administration under instructions from their parents. "

Unless much has changed since I last was in Jerusalem, I would think the majority of students in the city were Hebrew University students, and those would be post military service students, most likely, not some students studying in some yeshiva in Jerusalem. And there is no way the administration can interfere in the life of the students to the degree you suggest.

ginzy, cojones is slang for balls. testicular fortitude, courage, etc. noga, i get what you are saying, but I suppose what I admire most about Israelis is their willingness to endure. Yes, they will be cautious, as ginzy points out they are not suicidal, but they sure as hell are made of stronger stuff than 90% of Americans, myself included. At least I admit it.

Jackson writes:

George responds: "Why YOUR contempt? It is not a rant. It is a reasoned point of view."

On another thread here you said ""You guys run the world."

blogs.tnr.com/.../samantha-power-is-a-friend-of-israel.aspx

I don't take any one seriously who believes that Jews "run the world."

You are just the latest Jews hating bastard to land here.

George responds:

Perfect.

If you go back to my original post, you will note I said this:

"But folks like Marty Peretz have so much invested in their own people's narrative that everything that happens in the world is strained through this filter."

Then I saw Marty's next post regarding Samantha Power.

When I responded to that, using the phrase, "you guys run the world", I was curious as to whether Marty might react to it as you did instead. In other words, the judgmental tone [merely a tool in the polemicist's toolbox] was affixed to an ambiguous predicate.

Which is to say that, "you guys run the world" could be construed in different ways. It could be construed as you did, thinking I was a mindless bigot by equating "guys" with "Jews". But my point was that those who think as Marty does will invariably screen such ambiguous comments through the lens of their own narrative. Which is exactly what you did.

You didn't give me the benefit of the doubt by thinking, "well, maybe he doesn't mean that Jews run the world. Maybe by 'you guys' he meant people who think like Marty do. Maybe he was laying a trap to see if Marty would fall into it by thinking, "this guy's anti-semetic...he hates Israel!!~'".

It's not my fault you fell into instead, right?

I am not antisemetic; nor do I root against Israel in the Middle East. Instead, I suggest that religious and secular narratives taken up by zealots are a dangerous combination in today's extremely combustable world.

Then when you respond by saying, "You are just the latest Jews hating bastard to land here", I think to myself, "how dangerous might HE be if he had misconstrued my point while we were in the same room together".

So, should I be concerned?  I mean, all I've done here is embaraas you,right?

George Walton

GINZT WRITES:

George -- so is pure nihilism the best solution, forbid all ideologies & beliefs

GEORGE RESPONDS:

Pure nihilism, in my view is an oxymoron...or a tautology. It is predicated on the manner in which we sometimes fail to distinguish words that can be linked to actual named objects [i.e, "chair", "computer" etc.]; or are by definition [syllogistically] true [i.e the New York Yankees is a MLB baseball team, Joe plays first base for the New York Yankess, therefore Joe is a MLB player];. or are words that have been shown by science to reflect one or another empirical [material] truth [i.e. the language of geologists or physicists]. But even here David Hume rejects an ontological cause and effect relationship.

Nihilism has to be distinguished from words like these.

Which is to suggest that nihilism is a word that was invented to name a value system or a set of human behaviors. But here, words start to become increasingly more problematic. You can't take nihilism out of your pocket as you can a wallet or a set of keys, and say, "here, let me show you nihilsim". Instead, nihilism gets all entangled in philosophy, politics, human psychology, emotional reactions, circumstantial contexts, cultural or hisorical narratives etc.

In my own subjunctive understanding of the word, nihilism starts with Dostoevsky's speculation that, "without God, all things are permitted". And that is because without an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent point of view, who is to say what is right and wrong, good or evil, moral or immoral? If there is no no God...no Heaven or Hell...every human behavior can be rationalized.  Indeed, virtually every behavior already has, right?

The existence of God, or the lack thereof, is always the starting point when narratives revolve around evaluating and/or judging and/or punishing and rewarding human behavior.

Indeed, the possibility of this being true so deeply disturbs many people that, for this reason alone, they will choose God.  

I once did. I wish I could again. But I lost God in the jungles of Vietnam. And once you have lived through existential horrors of this sort it is very, very hard to bring God back inside again. Still, some, like Victor Frankl, lived through the horror of the Holocaust; yet he was still able to write the extraordinary existential account of this in Man's Search For Meaning.

From the internet site God's3blog:

From Viktor Frankl by way of Richard Weikarts discovery institute paper:

“If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, heredity and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone. I became acquainted, with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment–or, as the Nazi liked to say, of ‘Blood and Soil.’ I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”

This is the sort of apocalypic narrative that Frankl struggled to transcend in his book and through logotheraphy. This is the nihilism of Nietzsche on steroids. Did he succeed? You tell me.

george walton

"I am not antisemetic; "

You forgot to add that some of your best friends are Jews.

Such long-winded explanations, about what people SHOULD have thought about what you MEANT in the innermost chamber of your hear of hearts!

If you misspoke and therefore were misunderstood, you should concede as much and be done with it. Instead,  you choose to ridicule other people for reading your words and inferring from them what they actually say!

"If you misspoke and therefore were misunderstood, you should concede as much and be done with it. Instead,  you choose to ridicule other people for reading your words and inferring from them what they actually say!"  Noga

Ditto, here.

NOGALWRITES [AND JACKSON SECONDS:

"I am not antisemetic; "

You forgot to add that some of your best friends are Jews.

Such long-winded explanations, about what people SHOULD have thought about what you MEANT in the innermost chamber of your hear of hearts!

If you misspoke and therefore were misunderstood, you should concede as much and be done with it. Instead, you choose to ridicule other people for reading your words and inferring from them what they actually say!

GEORGE RESPONDS:

Unless, of course, you are just being ironic, this rejoinder [qua retort] has absolutely nothing to do with the subtantive trajectory of my posts.

I explained very, very carefully how I had not misspoken. I explained the motivation and intention behind my misdirection rather clearly and at length.

But, as with Jackson, you are unable to address the philosophical or political points I raise so you make me the point, instead.

It is all so blatently transparent I can't help but suspect I am being set up. But, even more to the point, you have no idea what I mean by this, do you?

Still, you know what really has me shaking my head regarding the perturbations I arouse in here?

This:

If you go into any one of the hundreds of snarling red and blue meat eating political blogs, you expect the discussions to be submental at times. In other words, you expect to encounter folks with not a wit of intellectual depth, cache, pananche or sophistication.

I just took it for granted that in The New Republic blog I would encounter much less of that. And, indeed, there is less of it in here.Yet over and again I keep bumping into people who are simply not able to sustain an argument that is in any way intellectually challenging. I don't care if someone strongly reject the points I raise. I just want to be intrigued by an argument that, from time to time, makes me think, "hey, I never quite thought of it like that before".

I have come across pundits not sharing my views who impressed me with their carefully thought out and nuanced assessments of topical issues of the day. Folks like Andrew Sullivan, David Brook, George Will etc. But so many people respond to their stuff, you don't really have a chance in hell of engaging them in a spirited and discerning joust with words.

But then I picked up The New Republic in the library some months ago and was really impressed with the writing....[even when I did not agree with the points raised. So I subscribed to it and here I am. What I like about TNR online is that you can comment in a blog and not find out there are 446 others who did the same.

But I have to tell you guys I am rather dissapointed that in The Spine....the blog of the magazine's editor-in-chief....you are not doing Marty proud at all.

george walton

"Ad hominem abusive

Ad hominem abusive (also called argumentum ad personam) usually and most notoriously involves insulting or belittling one's opponent...., This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and even true negative facts about the opponent's personal character have nothing to do with the logical merits of the opponent's arguments or assertions."

en.wikipedia.org/.../Ad_hominem

George:

You have just treated us to a 412 words of self-salutary self-exculpatory ad-hom. Because there is no way you can justify your initial, incontinently hostile  exclamation: 'You guys..." etc without admitting you either misspoke, or are an antisemite.

Would be more dignified just to admit you misspoke.

Instead, you choose to carpet bomb us with your ponderous insults.

But the fact is, you are left hanging from a corner with one hand while with the other you are making a lewd gesture. Considering your situation, the lewd gesture generates pity, not indignation.

Sincerely,

Noga1

NOGAL WRITES:

noga1 said:

"Ad hominem abusive

Ad hominem abusive (also called argumentum ad personam) usually and most notoriously involves insulting or belittling one's opponent...., This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and even true negative facts about the opponent's personal character have nothing to do with the logical merits of the opponent's arguments or assertions."

en.wikipedia.org/.../Ad_hominem

You have just treated us to a 412 words of self-salutary self-exculpatory ad-hom. Because there is no way you can justify your initial, incontinently hostile exclamation: 'You guys..." etc without admitting you either misspoke, or are an antisemite.

Would be more dignified just to admit you misspoke.

Instead, you choose to carpet bomb us with your ponderous insults.

But the fact is, you are left hanging from a corner with one hand while with the other you are making a lewd gesture. Considering your situation, the lewd gesture generates pity, not indignation.

Sincerely,

Noga1

GEORGE RESPONDS

Well, first, of course, I want to thank you for sticking in there. It must be rather painful to take the sort of "ad hom" abuse I inflict on minds like yours.

But, really, go ask Marty if I misspoke. If nothing else that might help me to zero in on how close or how far I am from confirming my initial observation about those who sieve the world through religious or ideological sifters.

Either that or you are channeling Allen Funt. Really, your posts are so surreal, I half expect the blogosphere equivalent of Marty coming in now with, "smile, you're on Candid Camera!"

Okay, you got me. I've been humbled. I feel worse than O.J. Simpson. I'll stop using words you have to look up in the dictionary.

Is that enough for you?

george walton

I'm not claiming that I first pointed out the obvious when lots of journalists were doing it. But