Monday, March 07, 2011

Arabs are Still Revolting

By which we mean: in revolt.

To the conditioned thinking of the European left that Andre Glucksmann is being as suffocated by as the rest of us by, this is inherently good. Too bad it's the European left's butt buddies that are being deposed:
those at the top, in the grip of panic; those on the streets, who from one minute to the next have no idea how to overcome their fear; those on the outside - experts, governments, TV audiences, myself - blamed for not having foreseen the unforeseeable. Where does this bickering on the French belfries hail from: the Right has failed, the Left proclaims banging its drum, prudently forgetting to explain why Ben Ali (and his RCD party) was kept on as a member of the Socialist International, just like Mubarak and his monocratic party. The former was expelled on 18 January, three days after his escape; the latter on 31 January in great haste. Yet no one seems remotely bothered by this.
The blindingly obvious part of this display of apoplexy is largely due to the yawning gap between who the left are, and who they want you to believe they are: wagging fingers in the promotion of decency and civility, as patrician as it is, belies stupidity about freedom, human nature, and their underling love of revolutionary violence that scares them personally.
Instead of questioning the widespread predilection for autocracy, people prefer to attack the "silence of the intellectuals".

Perspective, Andre: talking a lot, even on painfully wierd TV sound stages does not make one an intellectual. It doesn't exempt the left from human morality, the consequences of finding it irrelevant, or thinking that pretending-about-perceptions can make a utopia.

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