Doug's Darkworld

I love the Drudge Report! Matt Drudge, here was a man who realized that people don’t want to know what’s going on in the world so that they can make rational judgements about it, oh no, people just want their prejudices and hatreds reinforced! The above image is how the Drudge Report revealed the results of the election in Egypt. The first story: “Muslim B’hood takes Egypt.” Too much trouble to write out “brotherhood?” Of course not, but B’hood with its suggestion of gangsters and hoods is so much more delicious. Other helpful stories in this category included “Egyptian beats pregnant wife to death for not voting for Mursi…” and “Supporters mass, chant ‘Allahu Akbar!'” I’m sure the gentle Drudge reader is now so much more informed, Egypt is just a bunch of wife murdering, Allah worshiping, towel heads! Might as well nuke em now before hordes of Egyptian children with suicide vests stream across the border into Israel and onto the tarmacs of unsuspecting American airports from Egyptian airliners. Where’s Chuck Norris when you need him?

Is the Drudge Report really that bad? Pretty much. At least they’ve stopped running a banner headline every time a black teenager beats someone up. Reality check people: I’ve lived in Berkeley/Oakland for thirty years, I walk around for miles every day, passing dozens or hundreds of black teenagers every day. I have been assaulted and insulted exactly zero times. Granted I avoid the worst neighborhoods, but still, millions of Americans think that the streets are full of black thugs just looking for trouble. This is the reason I am highly skeptical about Zimmerman’s version of events, this kid, with no history of assault or violence, just attacked him out of the blue for no reason? The fact that Zimmerman got caught lying to a judge to save himself bail money doesn’t help his credibility then either, or my opinion of his judgement.

I see the Drudge Report has expanded their coverage of the Egyptian elections in the past few hours. (Yes, I write slow.) They’ve now added two new stories: “Islamist Joy …” and “Israel Jittery.” Yerp, nothing like a joyful Islamist to get people’s attention, since Drudge readers know the only joy in Islamist’s lives is plotting the destruction of Israel. Which is why Israel is “jittery.” Yes, a peace treaty with an Arab military dictatorship that was bought and paid for by the USA was such a great strategy for protecting Israel’s long term interests. And of course they used the breathing room the peace treaty gave them so productively, creating one of the world’s ugliest apartheid states … all in Israel’s best interests of course.

Sigh. I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s even worse with Syria destabilizing. I do know that broad generalizations and stereotypes are silly, but sadly they infect us all. Over a half century of anti-Islamic and anti-Arab propaganda in the west, and it’s no wonder everyone’s thinking on the subject is muddy. Well, crystal clear but completely obscured. What’s going on in Egypt isn’t another Iranian Revolution, nothing like it really. (Yes,I have already heard that comparison made.) Not that Americans have any clue about the Iranian revolution. Most Americans couldn’t grasp how Iranians could still in 1979, 26 years after the fact, be still upset that in 1953 the USA overthrew a democratically elected Iranian government and installed a brutal dictator in its place. Yet in 2012, 33 years after the fact, many Americans still rant about the Americans taken hostage in Iran in 1979. Go figure.

As one American hostage put it, after a year in captivity, he one day snapped and told his guard how fucked up it was that they had been held hostage for a year. The guard, without any sympathy at all, told him that America took his entire country hostage in 1953. They don’t hate us for our freedoms (I still throw up a little in my mouth when I hear that,) they hate us for the horrific things the USA has done in the region for decades. Compounded by stupidity. Yeah, selling Egypt tear gas to use on protestors, that was smart. Then there’s American efforts to buy influence, which almost always give the kiss of death to their benefactors. Yeah, like an American political party funded by Iran would get anyone elected in the USA. Well, Maybe in Michigan. (Yes, that was a joke.)

In just four more years it will be a hundred years since France and Britain sat down and carved up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire for their own narrow self interest, the interests of the people living there be damned. We are still paying for their greed and short sightedness today, compounded by American and Israeli folly. I can only hope that the Muslim Brotherhood has the wisdom to lead Egypt, because American and Israeli governments can’t even lead their own nations into peace and prosperity, and they sure as shit aren’t spreading the same around abroad.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. I got it from The Drudge Report, I have no idea where they got it or I would attribute it properly. It’s purportedly an image of people in Egypt after the election, I don’t think The Drudge Report sinks to Alex Jones’ level. Next blog, something fun. I been working on a  post about Lincoln’s second term, it’s a hoot.)