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| Bank Robbery? No, just domestic terror. |
A strange thing happened on July 4th weekend when the NYTimes allowed an opinion piece like the one Ross Douthat wrote titled "
The Myth of Cosmopolitanism" to be published in their pages. I'm not saying it never happens (but it happens pretty rarely) that the Times publishes something like this and they probably figured what the hell, no one reads the Saturday paper on the 4th of July weekend but even so you'd think the editors would have some kind of algorithm that would red flag stuff like:
- The people who consider themselves “cosmopolitan” in today’s West, by contrast, are part of a meritocratic order that transforms difference into similarity, by plucking the best and brightest from everywhere and homogenizing them into the peculiar species that we call “global citizens.”
- They have their own distinctive worldview (basically liberal Christianity without Christ), their own common educational experience, their own shared values and assumptions (social psychologists call these WEIRD — for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic), and of course their own outgroups (evangelicals, Little Englanders) to fear, pity and despise
- (There is more genuine cosmopolitanism in Rudyard Kipling and T. E. Lawrence and Richard Francis Burton than in a hundred Davos sessions.)
- But it’s a problem that our tribe of self-styled cosmopolitans doesn’t see itself clearly as a tribe: because that means our leaders can’t see themselves the way the Brexiteers and Trumpistas and Marine Le Pen voters see them.
- They can’t see that paeans to multicultural openness can sound like self-serving cant coming from open-borders Londoners who love Afghan restaurants but would never live near an immigrant housing project, or American liberals who hail the end of whiteness while doing everything possible to keep their kids out of majority-minority schools.
Stop the press or bit-stream or whatever it is that putting this shocking self-analysis out there in the media-sphere for everyone to read and contemplate. Why it's almost revolutionary. And just days earlier I skimmed the
WaPo story about just such a "global citizen" who had a change of heart and wanted to find a way back to his cosmopolitan tribe. Mohimanul Alam Bhuiya was just 25 years old (still a child in Obama's America) when he found himself fighting for ISIS in Syria and decided it wasn't so great after all.
“I am an American who’s trying to get back home from Syria,” he wrote in his email, according to federal court documents unsealed last month. “I just want to get back home. All I want is this extraction, complete exoneration thereafter, and have everything back to normal with me and my family.”
That's all he's asking for - Get me out of here (est. price tag $1M) and clear my record, pretend it didn't happen, make things like they used to be before I flew off the handle and joined ISIS to fight for global jihad. Okay? Can you just do that for me? I'm a US citizen after all. Also:
Bhuiya was not your average wayward Islamic State recruit. Unlike many of the people the Justice Department has charged in connection with the terrorist group, Bhuiya appeared to have a bright future. He attended Columbia University before he fell under the sway of the Islamic State.
Question: Did he "fall under the sway" of ISIS after his time at King's College or while he was attending the prestigious Ivy League play ground? I've got my own theories on that. Also, you've got to love the Washington Post and their "fell under the sway" euphemism - like it could happen to anyone. But Bhuiya was not average, or so the cosmopolitan tribe would have you believe, and for those readers who have a bright college age white American girl with a 4.0 GPA and high SAT scores who was rejected by Columbia University over the past few decades you might want to believe it too. But take it from someone who has strolled the sidewalks of Broadway and 110th street and taken the full measure of the student body - there is A LOT of average and sub-average students who somehow find their way into an this storied institution. These goofy dreadlocked, tattooed, slovenly justice warriors are like cat nip for the cosmopolitan tribal leaders who run this institution and they just can't get enough of them - the white, American loving, studious preppie can go make her mark at W&L or Bowden because there's very little space for her at Columbia.
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| "I just love this plane, don't you?" |
And will our fellow ISIS joining citizen be allowed to repent and have "everything back to normal" now that he's seen the barbarians up close which changed his mind (if not his heart)? Well, considering the events of the last week I'd have you say - Yes, he probably will.
- So, in my life I've worked at large multi-national corporations that deal with classified and highly confidential information (both company info like patents, acquisitions, strategic initiatives, etc and government info form the DOD and Federal departments including the IRS) and I can assure you that if I had set up a private server and run all the companies business through that infrastructure I would be typing this blog from jail right now. Think about that.
- In my youth, before landing the job at the Fortune 500 companies I had my share of run-ins with the police. These included car accidents, drunken brawls, traffic violations, a few arrests and a night in jail - not a hard boiled criminal but just a slow to develop dick who loved to party. I never got shot, though I probably deserved to be a few times, but when the hammer came down - and believe me, the cops were looking for people like me just as hard as they were looking for my melanin enhanced brothers - I took my punches and faced the music. Think about that.
- If my brother were living at Mom's house and practicing paramilitary manuvers in the back yard while constantly talking about how much he hates white cops and wanted to kill them I'd 1. try to talk some sense into him and 2. report his ass to the athorities before he did something stupid like kill a bunch of cops - even a transit cop. Think about that.
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| R2D2C4 |
When I do step back and think there is
one image from last week that keeps playing in my minds eye. I want you to imagine Micah Xavier Johnson hold up and taunting the Dallas police about his success in killing and wounding so many of their brethren. Laughing and singing during the "negotiation" did the Dallas PD toss in a few smoke bombs or tear gas canisters to smoke the gunman out or play loud music and wear him down with psych-ops techniques mastered by the professionals. No, they stuck some C4 on a robot and let the little machine roll its way into the back room where they blew the nigger up - droned him Obama style. I just can't get Micah's face out of my head - the quizzical arching of his brow as R2D2 slowly passes through the doorway with it's whirring treads pushing it ever closer. The widening of his eye as he recognizes the block of explosive material the stupid robot caries in his pincer. The blinding flash and concussive shock wave that pulverized Micah in a micro-second to bloody nothingness. Think about that.
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