The common thread in my politics and my (lack of) religion
is the sad, tragic sense
that humans are irrational.
Throughout the world, hundreds of millions of people -
family men, loving mothers and idealistic youth -
believe in nonsensical religions
and support hateful political positions.
Their heads are filled with
powerful memes
that are good
at reproducing,
independent of truth and reason.
It is not so widely recognised that
people's political beliefs,
as well as their religious beliefs,
are dominated by meme competition,
rather than by reason and logic.
Here's a couple of laws that I see as holding true
on this planet.
Law No.1 (The Paradox of the Fisks): The most criticised societies in the world will be the least criminal societies.
Let's say one has a planet with free societies,
that commit minor crimes,
and closed societies, that commit major crimes.
Which will get more criticism?
The answer, surprisingly, is the free societies.
Why is this?
Explanation
The closed society does not allow
criticism of itself.
The free society allows
criticism of itself
and of foreign closed societies.
But people write about what they know,
and what they are interested in is people like themselves.
So the writing about their own society
is an order of magnitude larger than about
foreign closed societies.
The killing of a dozen protesters
in a foreign closed society
might rate one paragraph, one time.
The killing of a dozen protesters
in the free society
would
completely dominate news and analysis for months,
and be strongly covered for years afterwards, even
decades afterwards.
There are all sorts of good reasons for why this is so.
But the fact is, it is so.
I am simply pointing out that the coverage is not equal.
Of course, in a free society
the killing of protesters
is a rare event.
But even
minor crimes - like
bribery
or lying to parliament
- can dominate the news for months.
While actual massacres in foreign closed societies
may be covered in "World News in Brief".
I am simply pointing out the obvious that
minor crimes
(bribery, embezzlement,
lying to parliament)
in the free world
usually receive more column inches
than
major crimes
(state repression, torture, executions)
in the unfree world.
There are good reasons for why this is so.
But the fact is, it is so.
The end result
is that
in the free press,
the column inches given to criticism of free societies
will be vastly greater than
the column inches given to criticism of closed societies.
The societies singled out to be criticised
are by definition those
that are best-behaved.
What did these societies do to be singled out for criticism?
They were not ruthless enough.
If they were ruthless, brutal and unfree,
they would not be criticised so much.
It is
because their crimes are modest
that they get criticised more.
And so we have
a whole generation of journalists
and polemicists like
Robert Fisk
and John Pilger,
who write almost entirely about the crimes of the
least criminal societies.
Moynihan's Law
This is really
Moynihan's Law,
which points out that the worst societies
have the least domestic criticism.
I am just pointing out that
a free foreign press does not make up for this.
The worst societies
still have the least criticism.
Consequence
Finally, what is the effect on people
of this imbalance?
In the closed society, the regime
(happily) reprints the free society's
criticisms of itself.
No criticisms are printed of the closed society.
Many people in the closed society,
not knowing anything else,
may even come to believe
that the free society is more flawed than the closed society.
For example, in the Arab Middle East,
most criticism seems to be of Israel
and America,
rather than of their own societies,
which are far more flawed.
And in the free society,
naive young people
read the criticisms of the free society,
and don't read the (small) criticisms of
(uninteresting) foreign closed societies.
They too may even come to believe that the free societies
are the worst societies.
And so we see a thousand
marches and protests
against America,
Israel and Britain in the west,
while I personally cannot ever remember a single major
protest against
the Soviet Union,
China,
Iraq,
North Korea,
North Vietnam,
Serbia,
the Sudan
or any of recent history's serious criminals.
By definition, the countries
people protest about are the best countries.
They get this abuse because
they are not ruthless enough.
If they really were imperialists and mass killers
(like the Soviet Union),
no one would protest about them.
Richard Fernandez
makes the same point,
about how the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
are slaughtering Muslim women and children
in Sri Lanka
- and Muslims around the world, the western left, and international bodies
don't seem very interested.
"What's going is a demonstration of the principle that complaints are rarely lodged against those who are feared. Feared not for their power but for their brutality: such as the LTTE. Suicide bombs do not scare them: Tigers were suicide bombing before Islamic militants copied the tactic.
...
The Tigers are impervious to op-eds in the New York Times and speeches at the UN. Law does not affect them. The International Criminal Court would not dare to serve a summons on them. Therefore the LTTE will remain blameless, whatever outrages it may commit against Muslims.
In contrast the Danes cannot even publish a caricature of Mohammed
in a Danish newspaper without bringing down the wrath of the entire Muslim world and half the flagship newspapers of the West upon them. The difference between the Tigers and the Danes is you fear the one and buy canned ham from the other.
...
This is completely perverse. And
it means that modern political correctness will be exercised relentlessly against law-abiding nations because they are the only ones on who it works.
The lawless will be given wide berth: the more lawless the wider the berth. The result will be split level morality where a few countries will be held to an impossibly high standard while the most brutal will be treated with kid gloves, even fawned upon."
The Bias Towards Brutality and Totalitarianism,
by Carroll Andrew Morse,
makes a similar point, on how the ruler of Haiti was not brutal enough.
Had he been more brutal, the world would have been happy for him to stay in power:
"Ultimately, foreign military action in Haiti was deemed acceptable not because the international community
will not tolerate the existence of a dictator, but because the international community will not tolerate the
existence of an ineffective dictator. In terms of opening the door to foreign intervention, Aristide's mistake
was a failure to keep the people of Haiti frightened into maintaining civil order. He did not go far enough
in rigging elections and using street gangs to intimidate opponents. Had he been more brutally totalitarian,
had he done a better job of killing the leaders of any potential rebellion while simultaneously glad-handing
the diplomatic circuit, he could - like a Fidel Castro or a Robert Mugabe - still be in power today."
Reporting For The Enemy
by Deborah Orin
- on how the media will not show pictures of Saddam's tortures in Iraq.
"we do far more to highlight our own wrongdoings precisely because they are
less appalling.
...
We highlight U.S. prisoner abuse because the photos aren't too offensive to show.
We downplay Saddam's abuse precisely because it's far worse - so we can't use the photos."
A letter in the Irish Times,
11 Feb 2014,
makes my point for me.
Israel is criticised more than the really bad countries because:
No one defends the really bad countries.
Well, duh, of course!
Of course no one defends North Korea and Syria and so on. For very good reason.
But the conclusion is therefore my law:
The most criticised countries are not the worst ones.
Israel might listen. The really bad countries won't.
Well of course.
Totally true.
But the conclusion is therefore my law:
The most criticised countries are not the worst ones.
In Israel, journalists have nice hotels, Internet, nightlife and do not have to fear the government.
In places like Syria, Somalia, Congo or Afghanistan, journalists have poor facilities,
lack of comfort, and always have to worry about the secret police or local warlords.
Result: Far more reporting about Israel and its minor wars
than reporting about major wars in less pleasant places.
To get all this negative coverage, Israel's crime was to be comfortable and nice to journalists.
If Israel threatened journalists with death,
it would get far less negative coverage, not more.
Victor Davis Hanson, 17 Aug 2007:
"There is no news or reward in recounting that barbarous terrorists or savage governments murder innocents, but a great deal if accidental deaths can be pinned on the United States. The former earns a journalist no audience, but often real danger - the latter safety, praise, a possible award, book contract, or university guest lectureship."
Another corollary of the above is that
western journalists reporting from dictatorships tend to be anti-western, not pro-western.
Why?
Because it is not safe for pro-western people to live there
or report freely from there.
Hence you have people like
Robert Fisk
reporting from Lebanon and Syria
- because no pro-western, pro-Israel journalist would be safe there.
And you have people like
Michael Jansen
reporting from Gaza
- because no pro-Israel journalist would be safe there.
Hence I cannot visit Gaza.
But lefties can.
Western readers think
"Our correspondent from X"
speaks objectively.
But of course it is only
"Our correspondent that has opinions that allow them live safely in X".
So X forces the western reader to only hear a certain type of voice.
Unfree regimes are able to get their message out,
by filtering out of the western media
any journalists who will be too critical of them.
Definition:
"Demopaths are people who use democratic language and invoke human rights only when
it serves their interests, and not when it calls for self-criticism or self-restraint.
Demopaths demand stringent levels of human "rights"
but do not apply these basic standards for the "other" to their own behavior.
The most lethal demopaths use democratic rights to destroy democracy."
"Characteristics:
Radical imbalance between their insistence on asserting their own rights,
and their lack of interest in defending the rights of others.
Moral rhetoric expressing great indignation when appealing for personal rights.
Tendency to tell demonizing tales of the enemies (of "human rights")
Tendency to think in conspiratorial terms (they are conspirators themselves),
and to project ill will onto opponents/enemies.
Do minimal (required) work protecting the rights of others, especially opponents/enemies."
Definition -
"The projection of good faith and fair-mindedness onto others,
the assumption that "other" shares the same human values, that everyone prefers
positive sum interactions. In a slightly more redemptive mode,
LCE holds that all people are good, and if only we treat them right, they will respond well.
This is a form of empathy that
... projects onto rather than detects what the "other" feels."
Definition -
"a form or pathological self-criticism that essentially holds that
"everything is my (our) fault, and if we could only do/be better, we could fix anything.""
(e.g. that the West needs to change,
rather than the Islamic world).
"If you want to know what exercises the human rights community today,
don't ask who the victims are, nor how badly they suffer, but who the victimizers are.
If the culprit is white, the indignation knows no bounds;
if they are people of color,
HRCers look the other way."
Law No.2 (The Paradox of Cruelty): The greater the hatred, the less the reason.
One of the great mysteries of human history
is the staggering cruelty of its genocides,
massacres, deportations, death camps and tortures.
The fury that has been unleashed against certain groups
must surely have some origin that makes sense,
mustn't it?
Such hatred couldn't just arise for no reason at all,
could it?
Again, there is this
belief that humans must be rational.
This is expressed in the question:
"Why do they hate us?",
which assumes there is an answer.
Their hatred must surely be founded on reason.
It couldn't just be founded on memes
could it?
Yes it could, of course.
It is not true that
people must hate for a reason.
Sometimes people hate for a reason
that is somehow grounded in reality.
But people can hate for no reason
at all,
or at least, no reason that makes any sense.
Humans kill for no reason.
Humans die for no reason.
They always have, and they always will.
Obviously, there are "reasons" of sorts in their crazy,
addled brains. What I am saying is that history shows us
those "reasons" can be junk - hallucinations, lies,
inner demons.
That's my bleak view of religion and politics
and human nature.
The law
How can we tell whether hatred is (even remotely)
grounded in reason?
Let me suggest a law:
The more violent that people are in pursuit of their hatred,
the more unjustified their hatred usually is.
The greater the
hatred people have,
generally
the less reason they have for that hatred.
The greater the
violence and cruelty they use against their enemies,
generally
the more innocent their enemies are.
Germany rounded up 6 million Jews - men, women, children,
crying toddlers, babies - and shot them in pits
and gassed them in camps
in scenes from hell.
Yet what did the Jews ever do to Germany to deserve being hated?
Hitler's complaints about the Jews
are fantastical,
imaginary,
hallucinatory,
and simply pathetic
compared to the unbelievable violence
he carried out against them.
The Jews of Old Europe
were the ultimate innocents.
There was no reason whatsoever for the hatred against them.
And so they were the recipients of the most staggering violence.
One could say the same about the "kulaks"
who were exterminated
by Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin.
What did these poor peasants do to be hated so?
The answer, of course, is nothing.
Nothing at all.
It is the same with the "bourgeoisie"
who were butchered
by the hate-filled killers
Mao and
Pol Pot.
What did these ordinary families
ever do to cause such staggering hatred
and violence against them?
Again, nothing.
What did the
"witches"
do to deserve being burnt alive
by the thousand in the Middle Ages?
What did the
Armenians
do to be hated so much and slaughtered
by the Turks?
What did the Asians do to be driven out of Uganda?
Basically, nothing.
Massive hate does not have to have a good reason.
In fact, it basically never does.
The greatest hatred, killing and cruelty
in human history
has always been
against the innocent, not the guilty.
Truly unrestrained hatred is always
against the innocent.
Left and right responses to barbarism.
Only one of these responses is based on logic.
Law No.3 (Corollary): All great suffering is always for worthless causes
A corollary of this is that
it is not the case that the greatest killing has been
inflicted for the greatest causes.
It has been inflicted for the worst causes.
Hitler,
Stalin
and Mao
all had
useless, worthless causes
that have since been simply abandoned.
All that pain, suffering and death, for nothing.
This law would imply that all
really great, monumental suffering is always for nothing.
There have been more worthwhile causes in history
- the fight by the west for democracy and human rights.
The west had far more reason to hate, and to kill.
And yet the killing by the west was more restrained,
not less.
Truly unrestrained killing is always in pursuit of a cause
that is worthless.
How to spot a worthless cause
What do we learn from this?
The major consequence is that when we see massive
deliberate killing of
civilians,
we know the cause is worthless,
without knowing anything else.
For example, on September 11th 2001, a group killed thousands of civilian
men, women and children in cold blood in New York.
Without knowing anything else about this group,
we know their cause is worthless.
If their cause made any sense at all,
their killing would be far more restrained.
And indeed
their cause did turn out to be worthless.
Their cause is imaginary, based on dreams of ending the west
and restoring some kind of 7th century utopia
that nobody wants.
All that killing for nothing.
This is the norm in human history.
The people who carry out genocides and atrocities like Sept 11th
are not rational people.
It would be very surprising if their
complaints actually had any basis in reality.
It would be simply incredible if their
causes were actually worthwhile.
"Hitler, perhaps the most evil human being who ever lived, decided it was his job to rid the world of Jewish genes. What did he think he was accomplishing? The Jews of Germany were assimilated, productive, loyal citizens.
...
Hitler didn't care. He was determined to kill Jews."
"Chairman Mao created the greatest famine in human history by asking peasants to melt their tools in backyard furnaces so that they could provide steel for weapons. The steel turned out to be totally useless."
"Pol Pot .. emptied cities in his attempt to create a classless society. The number of deaths he caused is not known, but it was enormous.
He too was acting selflessly and causing incredible damage for no purpose whatsoever."
"Monarchs of the Kim Dynasty in North Korea .. enforced laws leading to repeated famines in their country - again, for no logical reason."
"Hamas periodically aims rockets at Israeli towns. ... If Hamas did not insist on launching rockets, there might have been an independent Palestinian state by now. Hamas doesn't care. ... They too must pursue their evil policies even though there is nothing they could possibly gain."
We are taught in childhood stories and
Hollywood movies
that evil is unattractive,
ugly, rude, hostile, bad-tempered, friendless.
But Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
is what evil really looks like.
Handsome and popular, as it blows the legs off kuffar children.
Ahlam Tamimi
is what evil really looks like.
Starry-eyed, idealistic, charming,
as it puts children into the ovens.
Rolling Stone cover in July 2013 features an attractive photo of Boston bomber
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
They got a lot of criticism for glamorising this butcher.
But I think the cover actually makes a serious point.
That this is what evil looks like.
That what matters is not how handsome you are, but what is inside your head.
And what is inside this young man's head is putrid and disgusting.
I tweeted:
"Jahar: The handsome, dreamy face of evil, ignorance, violence, cruelty and primitive religious stupidity."
The smiling face of evil.
This pleasant-looking young woman,
Ahlam Tamimi,
helped burn children alive
in the
Sbarro pizzeria
in 2001.
And they were not collateral damage. They were the target.
And she says:
"I'm not sorry for what I did."
Photo from here.
Palestinian Authority TV host
sends best wishes to Ahlam Tamimi, Aug 2011.
Evil is not ugly and friendless.
Evil is beautiful and charming.
Arnold Roth
says in 2012 about Ahlam Tamimi:
"She really is a monster.
There is such a thing as monsters. She's a human monster. She regales in the deaths of the children.
She is genuinely animated by happiness in knowing that she killed the children."
It is announced in March 2017 that the USA seeks her extradition from Jordan.
(She murdered 2 American nationals.)
If Jordan refuses to extradite her, Trump should send in Seal Team Six.
Law No.4 (The Law of Protests): Protests and demos do not represent public opinion.
In the west, people often take to the streets
in marches and demos.
With their colourful banners
and street theatre,
these often get a large amount of media coverage.
It is often implied
that the government should actually listen to what these
people have to say
(instead of, say, completely ignoring them).
Governments however, being more sensible than journalists,
do frequently completely ignore demos
as if they had never happened.
Governments realise that demos are simply another form of speech,
no different to (apart from being ruder and more aggressive)
and no more privileged than
the usual collection of various points of view
one can find in blogs, newsgroups
or letters to the paper.
One fact governments understand instinctively:
Demos do not represent public opinion:
Demos represent only the people
who are against the government.
- It is an obvious point, yet forgotten in media
coverage of even miniature demos of a few hundred people.
People who are happy enough with what the government is doing
simply will not demonstrate.
Even if the vast majority supports the government,
all public demos will be against the government.
The media will cover a few hundred people having a demo.
It doesn't cover the vast number of people who didn't demo.
Even huge demos may not represent public opinion.
Votes represent public opinion.
Demos don't.
Demos represent only the people
who have time to go on a demo.
- Demos are dominated by young, unmarried people like students.
People who have tons of time and energy
and are mobile.
People who have serious jobs, mortgages,
babies
and children to care for,
perhaps
elderly parents to care for,
and so on -
not to mention having tired, middle-aged bodies
exhausted by their reponsibilities
- will not be found on demos,
or travelling round the country
living in tents
and engaging in "direct action".
They have opinions just as strong as the
carefree, childless students,
but they will not express them at demos.
They express them
at the ballot box.
Governments know this, and that is why they do not take demos seriously.
Posters and graffiti don't represent public opinion either.
- In every city centre in the west, one sees posters
and graffiti representing various points of view.
Or rather, all the same point of view, I should say.
"END THE OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE. PUBLIC MEETING ..."
say the posters.
Why does one never see posters saying:
"STOP SUICIDE BOMBINGS. PUBLIC MEETING ..."?
It is not because nobody subscribes to that view.
It is because only certain types of people
go round putting up posters and having public meetings.
Posters do not represent public opinion,
and should not be taken seriously.
Similarly,
"NO WAR" and "DON'T ATTACK IRAQ" reads the graffiti.
Why does one never see graffiti saying:
"BRING DEMOCRACY TO THE MIDDLE EAST"
or
"END ISLAMIC LAW"?
Again, it is because only certain types of people
spray graffiti.
Graffiti does not represent public opinion,
and should not be taken seriously.
"How come,"
I asked Andy,
"whenever something upsets the Left, you see immediate marches and parades and
rallies with signs already printed and rhyming slogans already composed, whereas whenever something upsets the
Right, you see two members of the Young Americans for Freedom waving a six-inch American flag?" "We have jobs,"
said Andy.
- Parliament of Whores,
P.J. O'Rourke,
1991, explains why demos do not (and cannot) represent the people.
"Why do the Iranians do these things, year after year? To paraphrase Dirty Harry, "Because they like it." And, of course, it pays. Take away the bomb threats, the terrorism, the hatred of the US, and Iran would be an oil-rich Turkey or a bigger version of Kuwait, in the way that Costa Rica is not Cuba or Laos is not in the news like North Korea. Influence, attention, the spotlight, fear, honor - these are not inconsiderable stimuli.
That fact does not mean we must be at war with Iran, but that the government in Teheran has similarities with other violently anti-American regimes in North Korea and Cuba that have long bitter histories with America, a deeply entrenched sense of victimization, and a wildly inflated notion of their own importance - and who all find "outreach" and "reset" a sort of weakness to be despised rather than magnanimity to be appreciated. In short, if Iran were to normalize relations and call off its endless religious war against the West, then hundreds of thousands of otherwise incompetent religious hacks, who are now wealthy and powerful at the helm of their police state, would have to go back to ranting and panting at mini-skirts from the mosque as they returned to the dole. Constant near war is what enriches them, and so why would they give that up for an empowered, free populace and a watchdog press?"
-
Victor Davis Hanson, January 2, 2012, explains how the "right-wing" view of why evil men do as they do
is more or less the opposite of the "left-wing" view (which assumes they are reasonable people
driven by "grievances" that should be addressed).
