Perpetual Indignance As Political Expression
Dean
Many years ago, one of the (many many) things that caused me to walk away from the political left was what conservatives used to call "the perpetually indignant"--the people who perceived racial, ethnic, or sexist slights in everything.
Back in the '90s I considered myself a conservative Republican for a few years, but as I got older started backing away a bit from that as well, even more so in the last few years. Being a blogger has helped change me even further; the diversity of the views you get here in the blogosphere, and the fact-checking you undergo from people who question your assumptions, changes you.
So, while I like and respect Michelle Malkin and many of the blogs she links to, I have to say, this entire kerfuffle over a 9/11 memorial that has a red semi-circle in it strikes me as over-the-top, and it seems to me to point to a growing trend of the right to be as shrill and perpetually indignant as the PC mavens most of us grew to hate so much in the 1990s.
Guys: it's a curved grove of maple trees for God's sake. Get over it.
Sissy Willis says it even better.
(Via Bill.)
Related Posts (on one page):
- The Maple Tree Issue
- Perpetual Indignance As Political Expression
Hey - 9/11 is a very good day for remembering &celebrating your family, like when we all sorta dropped our differences and came together in the week or so after. That's what I learned from the families most affected by it, anyhow.
That's probably the best memorial we can have.
And if the controversy in this case is truly due to a genuine accident, fine--tell the artist to grab a brush and start over. As it stands, the art is as unacceptable as if there was the outline of a steaming pile of dog excrement in the center of it, if not more so.
Yeah right, it's a learning experience all right. A learning experience on what a bunch of Politically Correct thugs and mob-mentality psychos the right can be.
The plans look fine to me. The only steaming pile of dog dung I see is this absurd, over the top fulminating over a grove of trees.
Perhaps a good starting point here would be to stop acting as if "the left" were some sort of monolithic beast. You don't much like it when they treat you that way, do you?
If we can't instill pride and triumphalism where a scratch group of Americans defeated Al Qaeda's A-team, we're without hope.
Sticking a crescent in there was just stupid, inaderventent or not.
As for the left, it isn't a monolithic beast, but most of them are willing to shrug and go along with this crap, making them willing accomplices to it. If the shoe doesn't fit, then they can get the hell out of the way and let us clear out the scum in their midst.
"The only way to stop this sort of thing is to come down on the responsible officials like a ton of bricks until they back off. If it wrecks a career or two among the sneaky, manipulative lefties who pull these scams--that's just a bonus."
That's what the feminists who destroyed men's careers and lives said. That's what Tawana Brawley crowd said. Just listen to yourself.
It's. A. Grove. Of. Maple. Trees.
You've been throwing some pretty heavy artillery around, Dean--so let me ask you this: if the planners *did* intend this particular image to appear in the design for the purposes that are being alleged (i.e., sneaking a message about Islam into it), would you find that worth getting angry over?
I'm not Dean but I'll answer ya: I thought we were fighting Islamic extremists. Not Islam. So let's ice skate uphill with your take Scott; what is the message that allegedly is being sent about Islam? If I run with your ice ball Scott, I would think the message would be the following:
Islam did this!
A red crescent marker showing what ol' Islam did. Celebration of Islam's peace? Bah fiddlesticks! Much better ways to do that than to put a freakin' blood red crescent in the spot where 40 innocents were killed. So the architect did us proud! Very proud indeed. Made a marker in the grove of trees that we would forget. We will never forget that bad ol' Islam killed these people!
No I don't believe anything a word of what I wrote since IT. IS. A. GROVE. OF. TREES. But I'm flexible nevertheless and love to humor people.
But Sissy Willis says the Jury called it the "Arc of Embrace" and not "Crescent." The jury was made up of people from all walks of life, who were asked to visit places like Arlington and Gettysberg before making their recommendations. The actual proposed drawings look quite lovely to me.
If it had been called the "Arc" in the materials released, would we even be having this conversation?
It is inappropriate to use a symbol the bad guys would have liked as a memorial to the good guys who were probably of a different religion. This is not to do with blaming Islam, but simply to state that Islam has no part in this memorial.
At best, this is burping loudly at a fancy dinner party. At worst, deliberate subversion of honoring the dead. I'll accept, a blushing 'excuse me', as the offenders give over the job to someone else.
All the designs in the finals use the SAME trees. I don't see why the big stink on this one.
First of all, the Crescent is not legitimately a symbol of Islam. It was the symbol of Al-Lat, the Goddess of the Moon, worshipped by the Arabs long before Muhammad was ever born. The Muslims later stole it and profaned it just as the Nazis profaned the Swastika.
Second, this monument was supposed to be a monument to the heroic defiance, the resistance, the refusal to surrender, of the heroes of Flight 93 -- the diametrical opposite, indeed the very death of Islam. Islam means "surrender". Like Todd Beamer and all of the other heroes of Flight 93, like Theo Van Gogh, like Pim Fortuyn, like Charles Martel, I, for one, refuse to surrender. I, for one, will never be a slave.
WARNING TO ALL MUSLIMS: I will never bow down to your One God who negates all Gods (including the Trinity of Christians) and all Goddesses (including my Most High Goddess, the Queen of Heaven). I will never be your slave. I will kill you all before I ever surrender to you. You have now been warned. It is for you now to surrender to us -- or else. Respect our freedom -- or die. Your choice.
A far more fitting monument would be 1) an American Flag (Old Glory), and/or 2) a Crusader's sword in the form of a Cross, and/or 3) a huge stone slab engaved with Todd Beamer's immortal words: LET'S ROLL!
I have absolutely had it with Political Correctness. Political Correctness is a cancer eating away the vitals of our Western civilization, of the last citadel of our Western civilization, the United States of America. Political Correctness is treason. We must destroy Political Correctness before Poitical Correctness destroys us from within. We are at War for our very survival as free men and women. We must fight to win. Nothing less will do. LET'S ROLL!
September 11, 2001: NEVER FORGET. NEVER FORGIVE. NEVER AGAIN.
I suppose the following is "just a grove of trees" as well? http://tinyurl.com/ba4qj (Not trying to invoke Godwin's, just trying to point out that sometimes a cigar is more than just a cigar...)
In other words, I don't buy it. I need proof. And if we Americans are going to start giving everything the thrice-over then there are some better places to start than a memorial. To heck with the so-called right side of the blogosphere on this issue.
Then you believe that the destruction of the World Trade Center and the murder of 3,000 Americans happened by accident. Wrong. It is you accidentalists and Muslim-appeasers who are the soft-wingers. This is to be a memorial to those who defied Islam. And we hard-liners will see to it that it is. To Hell with Political Correctness. LET'S ROLL!
About the accidentalist title: huh? Don't know where you got that about me pal. You gave weight to you being a conspiracy theorist (which I am also buddy) but I never excused the 9/11 attacks. Maybe I'm part of your conspiracy. :-)
you'll like this guy. He's like-minded to you.
Alternatively it could be a good design that received intense undeserved early criticism, like the Vietnam Memorial.
At this point, based on this comment by a professional architect, I'm willing to go with bad idea, whether intentional or not. What seperates me from the PC crowd? Well, I don't feel indignant. I think I'm observing bad, mistaken marketing, not deliberate name-calling and baiting.
But it all depends on how history turns out, right? If the war goes very badly, and the West loses, the memorial will be seen memorializing the martyrs who were the hijackers, rather than the martyrs who were the passengers. Or if the war goes very badly, and the West becomes anti-Islamic to the point that we start indiscriminately killing Muslims, then it becomes a monument of blame. If we later regret that indiscriminate killing it becomes a monument of shame.
But if the war goes really well, so that Islam reforms itself and the West helps create lots of democracies in Muslim nations, then it becomes a beautiful monument of hope and humanity.
What's interesting to me is that the designers, if they change the design to make that hope explicit rather than implicit, can keep the monument from any of those nasty fates I described earlier, and the monument itself will help to bring about the desired result!
Yours,
Wince
4) a bunch of liberals went on record, between the time conservatives called shenanigans and the time a conservative broke the code, saying conservatives were paranoid schizos and it was all just a coincidence
5) those same liberals are now backed into a corner. they will now either have to continue to claim it is just a coincidence despite overwhelming evidence or else admit the conservatives they derided as paranoid wingnuts were correct all along.
6) those liberals who will admit conservatives were right all along will now be divided from those who still claim coincidence
I mean I like Dean because he is magnanimous and assumes good faith from all, but this time it cost him. Dean, I hope you'll make another post acknowledging that there's no way this is a coincidence.
If you haven't seen the breakdown proving there's no way this is a coincidence, (there are many) mine is here:
<a rel="nofollow" href="url">Monument to the 911 Terrorists</a>
Monument to the 911 Terrorists
By your logic, we should put crescents instead of crosses on the tombstones of Christians killed fighting Muslim extremists so that all would know who killed them. Yeah right.
I tell you what. Why don't we erect memorials to those slain by Stalin which include groves of trees designed to look like a hammer and sickle from the air. Surely, that would "honor" those killed.
Let's erect a memorial in Oklahoma City - a statue of Timothy McVeigh.
Anyone for a Samurai Museum at Pearl Harbor?
I say all Jewish synagogues must henceforth incorporate a swastika into their design. To heck with the Star of David.
Excellent.
Harkonnenmutt:
Excellent.
Paul Murdoch is an architect, an artist, and the whole work of an artist is to know and use symbols, often in very subtle ways. I give Mr. Murdoch credit for that. I believe that he, and the rest of that committee, knew exactly what they were doing.
Paul Murdoch Architects will be disappointed to hear that.
The arc and the trees among other features, were intended to have metaphorical meaning, including the open section of the arc, according to the architects own description of his plan.
Now, I guess I'd count as a tin-foiler, because I contributed to the "kerfuffle" with a diagram showing how the arc and the public meditation spot opposite the arc are rather closely aligned along the the muslim prayer qibla.
It's a long story but I started out mainly to prove to myself that the arc could not be on the qibla. (I confess my first reaction to the "crescent of embrace" was very negative, and wanted to know for sure. I got an unpleasant surprise)
The architect says the break in the arc represents where the flight path of flight 93 broke the circle" as it went down. That is the flight path, and the explanation is simple and plausible.
The name, the geometry, the seasonal red color (timed for the anniversary of the crash) and the angle of the monument in relation to the qibla may be completely unintentional. It's very unfortunate. For a sensitive guy, a "visual poet", the architect sure missed the obvious symbolism, and the obvious reasons people would object to it.
Add to those unfortunate associations, my personal objection:
I don't just think of the heroes of flight 93 as disembodied voices getting/giving a big healing hug. I want a memorial that focuses on the need to fight back against those who would take our freedom, and recognizes that they fought tooth and nail to save themselves and to save others.
That doesn't mean that I don't have some doubts or suspicions that the islamic references and imagery might actually have been intentional. (I come by it honestly - I'm still mad about Starbuck's "crash into summer" snark, and still laughing at - and trying to come up with - stealth goatse art.... ). Bottom line, that imagery, intentional or not, should not be in the memorial, no matter how it got there. It's in really bad taste.
How about this:
What did you say when conservatives claimed that sodomy laws have nothing to do with discriminating against homosexual men, per se?
Brilliant analysis, including your manifold links.
Black Republican:
I think Dean and and the Queen can testify as to what this particular conservative (I am as far to the Right as General Horemheb) thinks of "sodomy" laws. I'm against them because they "discriminate" against sexual men and women per se. Government does not belong in our bedrooms.
A better analogy would be the cross. Lots of Jews have suffered from Christian religious extremism (granted, not much recently), and the cross is a common, simple pattern. I'm not sure that no synogogue looks like a cross when viewed from the air.
*--I suppose we can be grateful at least that the chosen arrangement of the trees doesn't--when seen from a sufficient height--depict OBL directing a middle finger at the passengers of flight 93. I have a feeling that "it's only oak trees" wouldn't move the angry--and fully justified--folks who would come looking for the hides of the designers.
I'll agree as a matter of good sense. Do you think that some conservatives were ... shall I say, "fudging a bit" ... when they made the argument that they were "not trying to discriminate against homosexuals 'per se'" by defending such laws? Did liberals and libertarians had a right to scoff at such claims and doubt the sincerity of social conservatives? Would social conservatives have garnered any sympathy if they had claimed that liberals and libertarians were "perpetually indignant" about conservative attempts to control social mores?
Even I didn't sympathize, even though I happen to agree with their perspective (albeit for different stated reasons).
I think the impropriety of the design - real or imagined - is not well defended by Dean's stance here. I use the example because it strikes me as appropriate - it's just as facetious as some social conservative statements in favor of sodomy laws. Defending the architect by attacking the sensibilities of those offended by this as "perpetually indignant" isn't a well-reasoned argument. It's simple name-calling.
Give me a logical reason why I - and others like me - should ignore all the "coincidences" and shrug off what seems to me to be a thinly-veiled attempt to make PC peace overtures toward an Islam that everyone tells me didn't bring down Flight 93. Every bone in my body is telling me that in 40 years (assuming we're still here) we're going to have to admit the architects meant it to be what they always denied it is, and we'll be forced to rip it all up to plant a nice, simple, sterile stone marker with the words "Let's Roll!" on it.
But those who advocate "sodomy" laws can only be motivated by a hatred of homosexuals -- and of individualism -- per se. Such are Senator Santorum, Robert Bork, and also Lou Sheldon, Robert Knight, Paul Cameron. They are my enemies. I have to put Justice Scalia in that camp as well, from the way he vociferously demogogued the issue on and after 6/26/2003. Justice Thomas, on the other hand, argued solely on grounds of a philosophy of judicial restraint, and has consistently upheld individual rights and limited government in his other decisions, so I do not put him in the same category.
Back to Flight 93, 9/11/2001, and the War Against the Terror Masters: If we allow the enemy to win this War, then there will be no question of homosexual marriage or even of "sodomy" laws. Homosexuals will simply be put to death, along with "uppity" women, Polytheists, atheists, Jews, Christians, and anybody else, even any Muslim, who dares to deviate from the "New Order".
Symbols are all-important. They are the means by which we communicate. The very words I'm typing are symbols, and so is the money with which you buy your food. If our symbols send weak or mixed signals to the enemy, then we will lose this War. If our symbols as well as our actions convey strength and the will to win, then we will win and stay free.