Culture

The 9/11 Decade

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I grew up during the decade we are ready to leave behind. I was seventeen years old, and a junior in high school, when Al Gore lost the presidency by judicial fiat. I remember reading excerpts from Bush v. Gore in the New York Times in the cafeteria, a place that I always thought I’d recall more for its unpleasant and strangely unidentifiable odors than for its role in the formation of my political consciousness. That was how my decade began: as a passive spectator, unable to vote, disturbed by the news that four men and a single woman had decided who the president was going to be. But that wasn’t really the start of the decade.

Culture

American Judaism and Political Ideology

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Norman Podhoretz’s new book Why Are Jews Liberals? (and Leon Wieseltier’s erudite take-down thereof), has sparked a lot of discussion on both left and right. Both pieces deserve a mention at Tikkun Daily. Podhoretz, pulling no punches, argues that American Jews have substituted the “Torah of Judaism” for the “Torah of Liberalism.” Such faith in the power of the state is surely a perverted form of idol-worship, no?

Culture

Ressentiment, or: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us

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As I touched upon in a recent post, there is a palpable fear and loathing in certain quarters of America. The din has been getting louder; people are livid, shouting down one another at “townhall” meetings; some are making offensive and incoherent claims about President Obama (that he is, for instance, both a fascist and a communist). As is often the case, the mainstream media has sensationalized the affair. But their coverage has been simultaneously overbroad and underdetermined. Opposition to Obama’s health care plan is portrayed as being rooted in contending ideologies over government’s proper role, with opposition growing organically out of a disaffected electorate.

Politics & Society

Citizenship and the Politics of Othering

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There is a simmering anger in America, embodying what Richard Hofstadter called “the paranoid style in American politics.” This politics does not define itself according to opposition to, say, the president’s health care or climate-change policies, but by a visceral distrust and resentment of the man himself. During the presidential election, rumors floated around that Barack Obama was a Muslim (implying that that was something inherently pejorative), that he was some kind of “Manchurian Candidate,” that he was not, in fact, an American citizen, and was thus a kind of pretender to the throne. Many rejected these accusations out of hand. Obama was elected; the American Republic did not crumble; we have not been infiltrated by some kind of fifth column.

Islam

The Revolution Will Be Digitized

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Since I am “friends” with Mir Hossain Mousavi on Facebook, I receive updates–mostly in Persian–about goings-on in Iran. These photographs, from today’s protests, were just uploaded to the site. I haven’t seen them on any other news outlets. It’s tremendously difficult not to be inspired by the Iranian people. Some pictures, below the fold.

Politics & Society

Prayer as Protest

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In the last few days there has been some low-level chatter about tomorrow’s prayer service at Tehran University, with the New York Times giving the story its semi-official imprimatur today. But its import has been greatly understated. Tomorrow, I would argue, is the single most important day in Iran since the Islamofascist (and I don’t use the term flippantly) ruling clique baldly stole the June 12th presidential election, robbing the regime of any shred of legitimacy it retained, and squashing the only semi-democratic aspect of the Islamic “Republic.” Tomorrow, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, eminence grise, founding father of the current Iranian regime, antagonist of the detestable Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will speak at Friday prayers. The prayers will be broadcast nationally; losing presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi will be attending, making his first public appearance in weeks.