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The Spice Girl took out some valuable time from nattering at her children to tell us, to lecture us, to pontificate, to-- oh, oh, oh-- to let us know the history of jihad. It turns out that the Romans fell to defeat because of global warming. Yes, it shocked me deeply. I assume, (because she didn't get into the details of it,) that Hannibal's elephants emitted so much gas that the climate changed all across the Alps and the Italian plain, causing the climate change. Some things are better left unknown. But the depth of the lady's analysis that torments my waking miseries is that the whole of the world was plunged into endless war because the climate rose to such heights of heat that food was spoiling and the world needed spice to preserve it. Yes, folks, the wars of jihad were started by the search for resources, for spice. Today all wars are fought for another resource: oil. I am in a pit of inconsolable despair because in my dreams last night I recalled the hippie girl I related to meaningfully in the 60s who carried in her pack a bottle of our destruction, and in that I see for our collective Humanity the war that will end the whole of us in one fell swoop: The Patchouli Essential Oil War. We are fucked!
We live with our fellows, regardless of their abilities to think clearly, and we make the best of it. Mostly there is a natural balance of needs and interests that keep societies functioning well enough to allow us to live our ordinary lives in peace and security. The Spice Girls can have their informed opinions and I have mine, and we cancel each other out in the course of living. It works in a practical way. But when we are confronted by social activists and those who would "engineer" our publicity, then we face something quite different, a menace to our organic democracies and the free-floating publicity of people living. The vapours of Romance poison our collective publicity and befog even many of the best public minds, those who join in the campaign of fixing and improving the way things are, those who would make right what is wrong with our societies. This is a good thing, in many ways, as we see from our own activities as protesters in public. We, we revolutionaries in support of such radical change as the Agricultural Revolution, for example, are those who stand in the front lines of social change and make it happen. Yes, we are revolutionaries within the context of the greater world. And we try to live as well as possible with those others who cling to reaction. We also struggle against those who would draw us backward into the Middle Ages and the feudalism of Man as farm animal. Sometimes we just can't stand by and allow the vapours of evil to pollute our lives. It's a choking thing these reactionaries produce. We're here to clear the air.
The Spice Girl has all the answers she needs to nag at her children. Fair enough. Now it's our turn to stand out and be known as those who differ in favor of Modernity. And our opponents? They too have opinions, of a sort, of a kind we couldn't quite manage to grasp, of a depth and breadth too-- ah, too, too-- whatever.
Having been defeated by the superior sense of Spice Girl we bravely soldiered on, dazed and confused, to be sure, but determined to confront our enemies as men of courage in the face of certain defeat in the expected street fight their web site promised us. There arrayed beyond our flanks, were hundreds, thousands of people lying on the beach, half almost nekked in bikinis, suntanning. Yes, we did then turn to confront our opponents. Maybe we became a bit distracted now and then, I don't rightly recall. Uh, no, we were professional revolutionaries in defence of Modernity! Yeah, I recall that part now. We faced our enemies! What strength of will it took. But that's the kind of people we are.
We confronted Ivan, a young boy who is the organiser of the day's event, an energetic fellow who demanded that I behave myself, that I not devolve into a violent savage bent on street fighting. Oh, Ivan, you silly goose. Or something to that effect. We set up our perimeter and faced off. For hours we endured the noise of Hip-Hop and the shrill and tinny voice of a frustrated young lady who harangued a clot of teen aged boys on the evils of war and such. Yes, we even listened intently to a song, as it were, that bore an uncanny resemblance to a scene from Sesame Street. "Can you say the letter A?"
Obviously the rhetoric of the radicals did not live up to their performances. How could it? The crowd they attracted consisted of boys with nothing better to do. But we are not interested in such, our purpose being to create a demand for common sense and Human decency in our intimidated public. The kids stood aside and watched a group of girls, too terrified by years of indoctrination by our schools in the evils of sexism to approach them from fear of sexual harassment suits. Only a hairy chested Russian, not schooled in the niceties of anti-sexism, strutted back and forth by the ladies changing room. We, professional revolutionaries, gave our hand-outs to those passing by to inform them that we do not have to accept silently the phantastic hostilities of the elites as perpetrated by our intelligentsia, our schools, our media, our politicians and so on. We got luckier than the Russian. Many people walking by took our leaflets and nodded and perhaps agreed that hate rhetoric is unhealthy in our modern societies, and that perhaps having the nation's wealthiest city supporting with tax-payers' money an amateurish hate rally is less than good sense. We, in effect, had the greater impact. A few here and a few there will grumble that the politically correct fog that covers our public discourse is too thick to ignore any longer. Kids can spout all they like, but there is a time when it is not right to allow them to intimidate an entire nation into silence and fear. The West is intimidated by teenagers. It's a willing dhimmitude, a dhimmitude brought on by inflated fears of how tough the enemy might be. I showed up expecting them to be at least as tough in a scrap as I, and I brought reinforcements in case such came to pass. We encountered children. We endured Sesame Street in the park.
Their best effort is something along this line:
The Toronto 17, already found guilty of “terrorism” by the anti-Muslim smokescreen of the government of Canada and the mainstream media, represent something important for working, poor and oppressed people in Canada. The storm troopers of the right wing of Canadian politics are entering through the window of the arrest of the Toronto 17 into the homes of all Muslims in Canada.
[....]
NO TO ANTI-MUSLIM FEAR MONGERING! DEFEND THE TORONTO 17!
Under government driven racist and Islamophobic hysteria, the Toronto 17 do not stand a chance of a fair trial anywhere in Canada. For working, poor and oppressed people in Canada, the real threat to our “security” does not come from oppressed people – Muslim or otherwise. The clear and present danger to our security, our civil liberties and democratic and human rights comes from a government that is using the frame-up case of the Toronto 17 as a cover-up for their war drive in Afghanistan, and their assaults on the rights of working and oppressed people in Canada.
http://www.mawovancouver.org/toronto17.html
The above might be a step up from the analysis from Spice Girl, it might be a step down. It might be a step to the Left, a step to the Right, a shimmy, shimmy, shake, and a get down low. I don't know. The point is not that a gaggle of teen aged boys hung out in the park on a Friday evening listening to obnoxious noise, the point is that our society finds itself terrified of offending these kids. Even Ivan isn't terrible, though he certainly seemed to wish it be thought so.
We protest, not a bunch of kids in the park, but our own foolish fear of offence. People read in the papers, see on television, hear on the radio, listen to friends and colleagues that the West is terrible, and that the primitives of our world are in dire trouble due to our conduct. We listen to ourselves and we believe ourselves, and then so do the primitives. We have created a general stupidity and blown it all out of proportion to the point that this phantasy seems more real than our own lives. So we showed up to protest.
I had two encounters during the course of our assembly that made my time well-spent. The first was with a young man who had the curiosity to approach me for an explanation of the sign I waved at the Death Hippies. He politely suggested that I had made up the word "dhimmitude." Half an hour later, after explaining the history of the Caliphate from the death of Mohammad through the Pact of Omar and the death of the Ottoman Empire at the signing of the Treaty of Sevres, and lots of other pertinent facts and figures, off he went, a sadder but wiser man. Should I meet that lad again I will go on from there to explain in deep detail the literary criticism from Coleridge and his contributions to English literature, which I am sure will be equally fascinating to the young man. The second encounter was with a hostile young man who gripped his hands and shook with fury as he asked me politely if I am the racist Islamophobe his friends say I am. After some short time of getting to know each other he relaxed substantially and began to laugh a bit, a better state for a young guy than his original rage against me and his imagination. And it is that young man more than anything else we might have accomplished that makes our efforts worthwhile: a young man comes to me filled with anger and ignorance of our doings, is caught up in some sense and reason, and goes away with confusion and questions. Both young men are smart enough to think through, however slowly and confusedly it might be the received idiocies they think of as their own. And one of them even knows the meaning and history of the word "dhimmitude."
Of Spice Girl I shall try to hold my peace. I will end with only this comment on her and her like:
Patchouli!
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