The Bookworm Beat 1/17/15 — Deep thoughts about our world edition and Open Thread

Woman writingIn no particular order, a whole lot of extremely interesting things about Islam, Leftist hypocrisy, John Kerry’s epic appearance in France, and other things that caught my eye.

Pitch-perfect satire exposes Leftist hypocrisy

Okay, I’ll admit that you don’t need pitch-perfect satire to expose Leftist hypocrisy, because the latter is an easy target. Having said that, there’s something about high-quality satire that makes the exposure very powerful. Such is the case with this DuffelBlog piece about the extreme frustration currently afflicting Boko Haram:

BORNO, Nigeria — According to insider reports obtained by Duffel Blog, leaders for the terrorist group Boko Haram have called an emergency meeting to determine how many more murders, rapes and kidnappings it will take before anyone in the international community will start giving a shit.

“It’s frustrating,” complained Boko Haram Commander Abubakar Shekau. “We work extremely hard, and all we get from the rest of the world is phlegmatic indifference. I mean, what’s a warlord supposed to do?”

During a month in which the group has attacked hard targets in Cameroon, as well as orchestrated the slaughter of up to 2,000 civilians, international media outlets have largely focused on recent terror attacks in Paris. The carnage wrought by Boko Haram in the Belgium-sized swath of territory it now controls in the northeastern states of oil-rich Nigeria was designed to get attention.

Much to Shekau’s dismay, however, it hasn’t been enough.

“I’m turning this country into a fucking Lars Von Trier film,” Shekau told Duffel Blog via Facebook chat. “I’ve literally stolen hundreds of kids from their parents and sold them into slavery, and all I got was a Twitter hashtag from Michelle Obama.”

That is top quality satire.  I’d like to wrap this segment up with an email discussion I had with the friend who first put me on to that excellent DuffleBlog piece:

ME: That’s brilliant. I put it on my real-me Facebook. It nicely rubs my Prog friends’ noses into the pathetically rotting pile of bodies in Nigeria. As best as I can tell, they’ve all assiduously ignored it (not just Nigeria, but also the satire).

FRIEND: Nobody notices unless they’re European cartoonists. I’m certain there’s some kind of micro aggression going on there.

ME: I’d call it macro aggression — but unacknowledged, because it’s committed by the same people who have turned witch hunts for racial aggression into an art.

FRIEND: Comparing micro aggression to witch hunts is brilliant. We’ve merely exchanged one thing that doesn’t exist with something else which doesn’t exist.

ME: I often think about the difference between anti-Semitic paranoia and anti-Muslim paranoia. To accuse the Jews, the Nazis (and other antisemites through history) had to come up with all sorts of things that were happening in the dark, where no one could see them. You can’t see it but . . . they’re drinking children’s blood, they’re poisoning wells, they’re stealing the world’s wealth, they’re raping your women, etc. There was no evidence — only malevolence followed by fear.

The situation with Islam is completely different. Indeed, it’s the mirror image. There aren’t any invisible crimes and conspiracies here. Instead, the Islamist are boasting about drinking blood, poisoning people, stealing Iraq’s oil wealth, raping and enslaving women, killing children, torturing gays, etc. Unlike antisemities, we don’t have to make anything up. There’s no connecting invisible dots with imaginary lines. Instead, the Islamists are shoving it under our noses — and we’re still trying desperately to pretend it isn’t there.

We live in a crazy world. Painfully so.

I don’t have anything else to add other than the obvious:  My friend is pithy; I am bombastic.

Speaking of hypocrisy, Islam gets another pass

If you cast your mind back over the past few decades, I’m sure you’ll be able to think of dozens of cases in which Christian-themed groups were driven off of public school campuses, even if they were using a private room for an invited few.  You’ll have an even easier time thinking of moments when any references to anything having to do with Christianity, including a child’s silent grace before eating in a school cafeteria or a small cross on a necklace, get shut down.  Every time, we’re told that separation of church and state mandates that God must be banned from America’s institutions of public education lest the state be seen as endorsing a religion.

Thankfully for Muslims everywhere, that rule seems to be so narrowly drawn as to affect only God and Yaweh.  Allah gets a pass:

Earlier in the week, Duke University officials said the weekly Muslim chant, known as the adhan, would be amplified from Duke Chapel beginning on Friday afternoons. The far left administration later reversed this decision amid fierce criticism from the community and alumni.

But in UCLA this is already in practice…

Islamophobia isn’t a phobia at all

A phobia is an irrational fear. In complete sync with the discussion that my friend and I had, above, the DiploMad explains why there’s nothing irrational about our fear of Islam and its most fiery practitioners.

What PC policing will look like

About John Kerry and the Paris folk and love fest

I didn’t miss the the epic John Kerry/James Taylor recital. I just haven’t known what to say. I really haven’t. Thank goodness for Iowahawk, who’s never at a loss for words about these things:

On the subject of folksinger diplomacy:

And then there’s that memorable Kerry-Hollande tender moment, which simply defies satire:

Kerry and Hollande kiss

If Ted Cruz just runs a one-note campaign, this should be it

Ted Cruz is arguing strongly that we should defund the IRS and go for a flat tax. I’d vote for that.

I got phantom pains and severe vertigo watching this, but still couldn’t stop

If it fascinates you as it did me, be sure to watch to the end, so you can see how he suffers for his art.

On his Facebook page, Dominik Starašinič describes himself as a “Free runner from Slovenia =D. I do stunts, parkour, street workout, calisthenics, acro street, mma etc.”

You should be dancing . . . Mooo!!!

Made me laugh. I always like seeing joie de vivre in action:

And a couple of images I stumbled across

Leftist tragedy is the inevitable but never occurring anti-Muslim backlash

Reason to homeschool