A topic that will come up here regularly is that the American Right has never understood the nature of the American Left. In fact, using the terms Left and Right in the political context is a category error. The American Left is nothing like the European Left . It is a radical religion that seeks salvation by purifying the community of heretics. That’s why they are immune to facts and reason. There’s not talking a fanatic out of his fanaticism, anymore than you can talk a Muslim out of his religion. This post is a good example.
Nevertheless, the president of the United States is not amused. We read our government is secretly “reviewing” our support of Egypt. They are urging the Egyptian military to negotiate with the Brotherhood, the same religious fanatics who evidently just told 24 Egyptian policemen to lie face down in the Sinai desert and summarily executed them, the same madmen who are running all over Egypt burning down Christian churches.
What is the explanation for this absolutely self-destructive, even idiotic, policy on our part?
There can be only one — the president of the United States is actually psychologically disturbed. He does not react in a normal manner. I know that’s a vicious and importunate thing to say, but the reaction to Egypt (and to Benghazi, for that matter) is not one of a psychologically healthy human being.
It’s more than the narcissism of which he is often accused, as bad as that is. It’s a form of extreme neurotic attraction to (notably Islamic) religious fascism. Obama is not a Muslim, but he has these deep feelings about it (some of them related to imperialism, others to his absent father, no doubt) that allow him to overlook, or rationalize, all that hideous misogyny, homophobia, and jihadist fanaticism, that loathing of democracy and freedom, even when it could not be more obvious. To Obama, those abhorrent — monumentally illiberal — behaviors and ideologies almost seem irrelevant. But they are the most relevant of all.
There you have it, The President, in the face of all those facts and arguments still embraces radical Islam, so he must be crazy. What passes for the Right in America is trapped in this mode of thought that says the Left is rational, so if they embrace rationality, it’s not their liberalism, but some mental disease or possible diabolical plot that has yet to be revealed. In other words, Simon simply rules out the possibility that Obama believes what he says and is motivated by a moral framework that structures these beliefs.
The Left in America is a religion. They have decorated their religion over the years with stuff from Continental radicalism and, of course, Jewish radicalism, which is the source of the rabid anti-nationalism. That was the lesson from the two last wars, allegedly, was that nationalism, German nationalism specifically, but nationalism in general, is the source of war on the continent. The American Left imported that idea in the 1960’s, first as anti-colonialism and now as a hostility to the very basics of citizenship and country.
Obama is a prime example. Every normal person has a copy of their birth certificate out of necessity. They have a social security number issued in their youth that they used for an ID number since kindergarten. They know their religion, even if they never have attended church. Of course, they know the place and circumstances of their birth. Obama has none of those things. He has never seen a reason to have them. He is a citizen of the world and his identity has nothing to do with his nation of origin. His tribe is his class and status.
It is why Obama struggles so much with odd subjects like how many states there are in America. He has said Hawaii is in Asia. He has mistakenly said he is a Muslim. These are not things that have been important to him. He was raised to eschew these proletarian interests. To American liberals like Obama, the idea of a nation and a national people is as outdated as the buggy whip. He sees himself as a holy man, whose task is is to usher in the age when there are no borders and no national governments.
Therefore, when he looks at the anarchy and chaos of Egypt, he does not see the things Simon thinks are important. He sees people he generally admires, engaged in the same task in which he is enraged. Islamist dream of world after the fall of countries. Their vision of the future is not a lot different from some Italian fascists, who imagined their political cause was linked with the restoration of the Catholic Church in Europe. For the Islamist, “Egypt” is an outmoded concept, so toppling it over is a service to their cause.
For dilettante like Obama, and he is fairly representative of the modern Left in that regard, he has not thought much about what comes next. The post-national paradise is just going to be better. Further, his innate hatred of white people and what he imagines as white culture, motivates him to oppose those things he associates with the West. For Obama and the modern Left, the glorious future is something like a college campus run by women and non-whites, with white males on the lowest rung of the social ladder.
The point here is that there is no reasoning with these people. That’s where guys like Roger Simon slam into a brick wall. He simply cannot accept that Progressivism is free of rationality. it is a secular religion that is esoteric and mystical, especially to the adherents, who are drawn to it out of self-loathing. Marx allegedly said religion was the opium of the masses. Progressivism is the methamphetamine of the American ruling class. The more they use it, the less rational they become and their craving for the drug only grows.
