The further to the left or the right you move, the more your lens on life distorts.

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Fiction

As we watch the Western world rev-up it’s anti-Israel rhetoric, demand UN sanctions and all the rest, I get an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu. All of the events associated with the delivery of “aid” to Gaza—the purposeful provocation, the necessary but clumsy response, the “deaths of innocents” who just happened to be armed with axes and guns and just happened to attack the Israelis in a transparent attempt to force them to counter-attack—has become a well worn and effective narrative for Hamas and its left-leaning supporters in the media.

Rich Lowry provides commentary:
Yesterday's "aid convoy" incident off the coast of Gaza wasn't about bringing humanitarian supplies to the terrorist-ruled territory. It wasn't even about Israel.

It was about Turkey's determination to position itself as the leading Muslim state in the Middle East.

Three ships of that six-ship pro-terror convoy flew Turkish flags and were crowded with Turkish citizens. The Ankara government -- led by Islamists these days -- sponsored the "aid" operation in a move to position itself as the new champion of the Palestinians.

And Turkish decision-makers knew Israel would have to react -- and were waiting to exploit the inevitable clash. The provocation was as cynical as it was carefully orchestrated.

And yet, our President and his Secretary of State subscribe to the fiction that Turkey remains our friend and partner in the Middle East.

Richard Fernandez looks at the bigger picture. He contends that the political elite in the West, aided and abetted by the MSM, have become delusional. They want to believe a fictional narrative, and in the end, it will get us all in very big trouble. He begins by writing about the narrative:
As a result, any moderately well informed individual knows that there is no Islamic extremism, nor even terrorism. There are only man made disasters. Everybody knows that we can borrow our way out of debt, that the welfare state is the sustainable wave of the future; that Egypt has no border with Gaza through which it can provide supplies if it wanted; that the UN has kept Hezbollah from importing hundreds of missiles into Lebanon; that the thought of a handful of Jews has kept hundreds of millions of oil-rich Muslims from attaining prosperity; and that Global Warming is the main danger facing the planet Earth. That these assertions are untrue hardly matters; that they are indisputable is what seems to count. For who shall dispute them?

Reality might. And therein lies the problem.

Here’s what is going to happen with one hundred percent certainty. All of these lies will explode with considerable force in the faces of political establishment. Nothing can prevent it. Just as reality eventually exposed the hollowness of the financial bubble and showed that nothing was “too big to fail,” eventually it will demonstrate to our extreme cost, that no lie can be maintained forever. That is the real reason anyone should really care about what happened on the “peace flotilla.” We are as corrupt as a preacher in a whorehouse. It ain’t what we don’t know that will hurt us, it’s what we know that ain’t so that will drive the dagger into our hearts.

Over the years I've written about the "through the looking glass" world of those who believe the narrative. Things become very worrisome indeed when those on the other side of the looking glass are making decisions that will sooner or later collide with reality.