The other day I saw this commercial on one of the news channels. It was on a talker show of some sort, I don’t remember which one, but the chattering skulls were taking turns being outraged by it. I was not quite sure why they were outraged and not all that interested. I think Taco Bell is on the unapproved list so they are not allowed to employ mockery. Alternatively, maybe they are not permitted to mock central planning.

Regardless, the thing that got my attention was the use of the Ramones song Blitzkrieg Bop. Eventually, anything and everything that is subversive or banned in western culture is absorbed into the Borg and turned into a tool of the Borg. Pop songs from the 60’s that celebrated the rejection of bourgeois society are used today to sell products made by global mega-corporations. Punk from the 70’s and 80’s is seeing the same thing.

The same is true of people. Conservative Inc gets their panties in a bunch when kids wear Che t-shirts or sport other symbols of communism, but they are mistaken. What it shows is that in the path of The Borg, there is no resistance. Everything will be absorbed and put to use in furtherance of The Borg. We are the Borg. You will be assimilated.

If you are reading this, odds are you are from the Anglosphere and you have some familiarity with the fictional Borg, as well as the real one, but the latter is taken for granted so you don’t think about it much. There’s no reason to think about it. Fish don’t think about the sea and birds don’t think about the air. English speaking humans don’t think much about the media in which we are suspended.

The rest of the world, however, thinks a lot about The Borg. They see it from the perspective of both outsiders and potential insiders – unwilling insiders. If you listen to the Islamic fundamentalist, they will tell you why they are so obsessed with killing the West, particularly America. That reason is they fear that their culture will become like that Ramones song in the commercial. It will be just another tool to move product.

The central planners of The Borg are already working on how to make Iran chic so they can move product. Once Obama gets his deal done with Iran, you can be sure Apple will have a Persian iPhone cover and the all-women’s auxiliary of the Cult of Modern Liberalism will be sporting swank hijabs.

In the novel Brave New World, the World State has come to terms with the fact there are parts of the world not conducive to easy living. These are set aside as reservations for the savages. They are not really left to their own devices as they are maintained as amusement parks for the World State citizens. You go there to watch the savages. It is not entirely different from how western tourists run around looking at ruins in third world countries.

The story of John the Savage in Brave New World is relevant here as it shows the torment of being in but not being of two worlds. In the novel, the Savage was never accepted by his fellow savages. Similarly, he was never accepted as anything other than a curiosity by the citizens of the World State. His “otherness” was incorporated as a novelty, like an animal in a zoo.

Muslims who have spent time in the West or been exposed to the West often have the same reaction. They can grow up in and immerse themselves in the West, but they are never truly Western. Islam is simply alien to Western culture. Unlike blacks, they cannot blame slavery. Instead, many come to blame the Borg and decide to make war on it as self-defense.

On the other hand, those in the Middle East often feel shame over their backwardness and inability to compete with the West. Without the West, the Arabs would be living in tents and riding camels. They would live and die as they did in the ninth century. At the same time, they adopt the material goods of the West and feel their culture being absorbed into the Borg, losing its vitality and utility.

In other words, to tie the two themes together, the Muslim Arabs stand facing two options, assimilate of die. It’s why Islamic fundamentalism has ticked up as exposure to the West has ticked up. The communications revolution along with the end of the Cold War brought The Borg to the Middle East and Islamic fanaticism has been the response. In the novel, John the Savage resolves this by hanging himself.

It’s why I think the Iranians will have no choice but to scuttle the deal, hang themselves, so to speak. Normalizing economic relations means a Starbucks across from the mosque, Western music on the radio, Western shows in the TV. It means The Borg is on every corner and in every home. Iran already struggles with the consequences of encroaching Western culture. Assimilation cannot possibly be an answer they accept.

Roman expansion was based on land. They seized the lands of others, held them by force and extracted what they could to profit themselves and maintain their grip on empire. Eventually, the math stopped working. Long before Alaric, the Western Roman Empire ceased to be an ongoing concern. But, the Romans did manage to export a great deal of their culture to the rest of the world.

America has never been a land based empire. Ours is a culture based empire. Instead of seizing the lands, we seize the culture and assimilate it into our own. Even our friends chafe at the stifling cultural hegemony. It is therefore no surprise that the fringes of human civilization would recoil in horror at our materialistic, homogenizing culture. It’s why, in the end, Iran can never make a deal with us. There’s no negotiating with The Borg.