Neocons sometimes reveal their conservatism as Jewish religious parochialism. Bill Kristol did so at Yivo. And here is Martin Kramer in the Jerusalem Post, dripping with righteous condescension toward Khalidi and Obama as half-made men. Sounds like Naipaul of 20 years back:
For such people caught between traditions, Third Worldist sympathies
often serve as ecumenical substitutes for religion. (Obama himself
allows that as an undergraduate, "in the dorms, we discussed
neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy." One wonders
how Israel fared in those conversations.)
What Kramer fails to understand is that this situation of being "caught between traditions" is the human condition, the condition of modernity, of history, and yes, too, of progress. Who in the American elite is not perplexed/intrigued/delighted/staggered by the confluence of so many crumbling traditions that a body must step over (including Protestantism spavined by entitlement, Catholicism by pedophilia and Judaism by dual-loyalty)? Well, the neocons. They are not uncertain, and now they are over.
"For such people caught between traditions, Third Worldist sympathies often serve as ecumenical substitutes for religion."
US Jewish Zionists might be said to be caught between the traditions of their physical location and their Nation of Zion traditions. For them, Zionism serves as a substitute for religion. None of this would be a problem if all were willing to assimilate into melting pot America. But all are not, and organized Jewry has raised resistance to assimilation to a science and art form.
It would be amusing when US Jewish Zionist Israeli-loyalists accuse others of conflicted loyalties if they haven’t been given a “pass” on their own for so long, and leveraged that pass to manipulate America into wars for Israel. One would think divided loyalties would be the last subject these people would want to raise, but that’s not how their minds work. They are far too intellectually narcissitic and self absorbed to ever hold themselves up to standards they try to apply to everyone else. Functioning sociopaths.
The fons et origo of multiculturalism, i.e.
resistance to assimilation and fetishization
of racial/religious identity, is Horace
Kallen; need one guess what he was?
Multi-culturalism and the vision of a melting pot America are two completely different things. Multi-culturalism encourages tribes to maintain their tribal identities and wants to turn America into a "patchwork quilt," which is why so many left-liberal Jewish Zionists intellectuals have been a primary force behind it. And if you look closely at Kramer's critique, it is a criticism of the kind of human being melting pot America creates. Multi-culturalism allows for, and encourages, insular racial and ethnic groups like Jewish Zionists.
Jewish Zionists have calculated that once America is reduced to a patchwork of multi-cultural tribes, their centuries of evolutionary cohesive techniques and eugenics will keep them the strongest and smartest, and thus able to pull all (or most) of the strings. They didn't (or couldn't) realize that their eugenic inbreeding has created a problem with intellectual and emotional narcissism, or allow for the fact that mutts are smarter than purebreds.
Suspicion. How could an Israeli/pro-Israeli/upright American Judeo-Christian ever trust a Palestinian? (the ultimate neo-inquisitive-source)
We the righteous and all the other suspect out there:
The difference is that while I came away from these encounters convinced that Khalidi's purported moderation was a sham, and have said so, Obama went the other direction, maintaining their friendship right up to Khalidi's send-off from Chicago, to which he contributed an encomium. Which is why I'd really like to see that videotape. I'm just curious which of Rashid Khalidi's virtues I somehow missed, and Barack Obama saw.
Israel must decide what it wants to be. A refuge for Jews from persecution or a bridgehead on the Middle East for the coalition of the bribed. Can it be both?
I doubt it.
Sorry: seems I have done it again. I'll shut up and am retiring to my corner in shame.
The neocons are not uncertain, nor are they over–they are temporarily absent, while they calculate their new rhetoric under a likely Obama regime. It will be more of the same as to facts on the grounds.
"They are far too intellectually narcissitic and self absorbed to ever hold themselves up to standards they try to apply to everyone else. Functioning sociopaths."
That's the problem, in a nutshell.
A few months ago, I saw an interview on CSPAN of John Podhoretz by Brian Lamb. Lamb asked if his/Commentary's support for the Iraq war had anything to do with Israel. Of course, he gave a long-winded answer seemingly saying no.
Then Lamb played a clip of John Podhoretz's mother being interviewed in about 2000, wherein she said that the U.S. should invade Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, etc (the 'Clean Break' agenda). It really made John Podhoretz look very disingenuous.
He started babbling that the idea that there was some kind of cabal behind the decision to invade Iraq was absurd. He sounded very nervous and seemed to be 'sweating bullets'.