It really started right after 9/11. Then again, that’s probably most likely when I noticed it and it was happening much longer than that.

Many after 9/11 wanted to know what we did to bring 9/11 upon ourselves. To a degree, that’s a good valid question, but when pushed to the extreme it’s almost a device for ignoring things going on in the world. After all, when you think about it, despite the claims that it’s harder to look inward, it’s much easier because it affords you the ability to bring the blame inward and not focus on what’s going on.

Balbulican made an outstanding post on Stageleft yesterday. In it, he describes the various form of hatred that seem to pop up every now and then. He runs down a littany of excuses given and then goes on to explain his annoyance at them, even giving examples such as the folks who say, “moderate Muslims need to say and do more about terrorism and the extremists in their midst.” Balbulican’s problem, of course, is that he completely dismisses that criticism as hate and he moves on about chastising those who say it while completely ignoring the grain of truth encapsulated in that type of thinking.

In his example he explains how he had a conversation with a commenter on his blog who made such a statement, to which he replied that Moderates were fighting back against these types of folks. He went back and forth with the commenter who, at every point of evidence, disclaimed Balbulican’s proof as “not enough.” Balbulican eventually stopped trying to get through to the commenter and just accepted the fact that this guy wasn’t going to change his mind at any point.

The argument was over. The commenter wasn’t enlightened in anyway, and Balbulican was offended by his exhibition of ignorance.

And in the meantime, one of the nuggets of truth that existed throughout the whole thing got lost.

One of the great things about this brave new world is that people have the power to publish “news” as they see fit. In fact, some of the best news sources out there aren’t alphabet networks or dead-tree media. They’re the men and women writing thoughtful commentary on blogs and messageboards around the world. Oh sure there’s a low signal to noise ratio in the blogosphere, but for the most part, things are quite good for people seeking out the truth these days. You have all points of views and all nationalities fairly equally represented and most of them just one click away. Hell, you could start at a center-right blog like mine, click through to a leftwing blog like Stageleft, and end up at at some moderate blogger in another country.

It’s a brilliant time.

Back to Balbulican’s commenter fight.

Inside that commenter’s argument is a truth that, while probably articulated poorly and overly attacked by Balbulican is still a truth. Muslim moderates are not doing a good job of getting the message out there that they don’t support the terrorism that the extremists among them are engaging in.

Now before you see red and dismiss me as just another kook, you need to hear me out.

If the good kook, er, Reverend Phelps had something to spew about. Let’s say how God hates fags, and we were attacked on 9/11 as punishment from God for not stringing up all the gay people in the country by their pinkies, do you think he would have a problem getting that message out? Do you think, as kooky as he and his enraptured followers are, they have a message dispersal problem?

Of course they don’t. In fact, they’re so good at getting their message out and getting under people’s skins, that Congress was trying to act to get these kooks to stop spreading their hate outside the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. They use the web, they play off the media’s morbid fascination with them, they give out flyers, make phone calls, have a television show (in the midwest) and so on and so forth. When they have a message, they make sure you’re going to hear it.

The commenter Balbulican was arguing with had a point, but it wasn’t the point on the surface. It was the grain of truth underneath. Muslims may have that message, but it’s not getting through and they’re not doing a good job of getting it out there.

Maybe they do hate the extremists, but when you have to dig for the people who do, and at the same time you can find those who hate plastered all over the news, then you have a serious PR problem that you need to work out.

That’s the problem, as simply as it could possibly be stated.

But that problem is part of my larger point, not my entire point.

Balbulican is right to say that a lot of the arguments in the vein of what he got are based on hatred. In fact, it’s probably fair to say that a lot of people who say that most muslims agree with terrorists are driven by either blind rage, ignorance, or a combination of the two. There are some thoughtful people who have also arrived at those conclusions from time to time, but I don’t think thoughtful people believe it as an absolute and are open to the opposite view.

This is where Western conditioning comes in.

I believe we of Western cultures are inclined to believe that we’re loaded with hatred and disrespect than they are to believe it exists in others. In fact, the pondering over 9/11 is a perfect example. “What did we do to bring that about?”

Why does it have to be a case of us doing anything? What if 19 terrorist scumbags, funded by a huge terrorist network decided to kill Americans because they don’t like Britney Spears? What if people like Osama Bin Laden, when they release those video tapes, just say anything on them to justify their actions? After all, rationalization isn’t uncommon around the world and we certainly don’t have a monopoly on it in the United States.

What if that’s as deep as the reason goes and it really has nothing to do with something we “did?”

I don’t think Western guilt will allow us to accept that answer, and intellectuals’ heads would start exploding if they heard people widely start accepting the point of view that not everything bad that happens is because we “deserved” it.

I started thinking about various events in our history, especially recent ones, and how many things we automatically take the blame for to the point where the root cause (two words I hate seeing together to begin with) of everything is something we did, something we deserved, or something we could have prevented if we had just INSERT REASON HERE.. I mean, is this really the way we want to start seeing the world? I for one, don’t.

Balbulican’s argument amounted to calling the commenter’s remarks hatred. That’s fine, and I’m in no position to disagree seeing as I can’t stick myself inside people’s minds that well (although I’m working on it; if you hear me rattling around in there, please be nice). However, while Bal’s approach of presenting examples was a good one, his conclusion was lacking because the point the commenter was making, no matter how repugnant it may have been, probably could’ve been examined better.

Instead, the hate card is dragged out, and in an almost typical fashion, you could sense that the blame was on the commenter for thinking what he did, and for us as a society for not recognizing the obviousness of the faleshood he presented.

Hmmmm…

It’s almost as if some Western guilt was blocking the fact that there might even be a grain of truth to the remarks. We simply can’t believe that because it’s lowbrow. It’s offensive. It makes us uncomfortable. Choose your reasons; they all lead down the same road in one way or another.

We in the West typically feel guilty for everything. We feel guilty because the climate is warming to the point where we ignore any natural reasons that may explain it also. We feel guilty because, despite warnings, people sat in their living rooms as Katrina flooded their homes with 3 feet of water. We feel guilty because a kid in the Middle East lives under a respressive government that steals its money while we feed millions of dollars in aid to them, and their leaders live in palaces the size of cities. We feel guilty because bombers bombed trains in Madrid and in London, supposedly in response to a war in Afghanistan in Iraq that was provoked by an attack on the World Trade Center which we feel guilty about for creating the situation that fomented the terrorism that brought the whole thing about.

We’re caught in an endless chain of guilt.

The worst part of it is not the guilt itself, though. Getting over that simply requires a concerted effort to examine the issues better and follow the issues down the highway even when there’s an exit on that highway that says we did something wrong. That’s merely an exit, but you can’t continue on the highway of discovery if you take the first exit that allows you to call the problem solved and the situation understood. It’s no more valid to drop everything at the “we’ve done bad and deserve it” than it is to drop it at “all muslims act that way,” but the problem is that it’s a hell of a lot more acceptable to call guilt the problem and look inward then it is to look outside of ourselves and not just say “we’re to blame for everything.”

I know this post is going to set off some arguments, and I fully hope it actually stirs up a little bit of thought. Occam’s Razor states that the simplest answer is usually the correct one, but that doesn’t mean that the simplest answer to arrive to is correct, only the one that’s the least complicated. We’d be wise to examine both our tendency to take a hit and our unwillingness to dish one out. I have a feeling if we do that, we’ll have a much better society for it, and discussions like Balbulican’s wouldn’t end up with one side thinking the other is just loaded with visceral hatred and the other thinking that he was arguing with a typical leftist kook who dismisses everything as hate.

What do you think? Do you think we in the west are more prone to guilt than other cultures / parts of the world? Or do you think it’s something that’s only employed in certain situations (ie: racism, bigotry) real or perceived?

I for one am tired of shallow analysis on both sides. Not every criticism of a group is hatred, and not everyone who dismisses your argument as hatred is a kook.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s have some real discussion on the issues.

I’m all ears.

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