Tuesday, November 28, 2006
John Updike's "Terrorist" and a Terrorist Op-Ed in the Times
The op-ed in question is this.
It's a prime example of how irritating space constraints are--and that ends my charitable analysis, because otherwise it's one of the most pernicious things I've read in some time. It's frustrating to me the way the Times pompously interpellates its readership as sensible moderates who are above the political fray, detached from these weirdo hippie bloggers and the fat Christians who live somewhere vaguely west of Morristown. I have no idea who Richard Shweder is, but he's doing a fine job proving everything conservatives about the "liberal media" already think while dissociating himself from facts.
First, people who write things need to realize that by virtue of publication, their words are part of the media; one time contributors aren't ghostly visitations upon the op-ed page just because they don't have a regular, twice-a-week column. It would also be helpful for their naivete to dry up and recognize that no matter how much they strive to present themselves as prudent, cautious skeptics and as adults, there will always be archconservative flameouts because the O'Reillyites who think Christmas is under siege by a secular cabal will continue to regard both freedom of speech and the left's right to exercise it as an indulgent nicety we can and ought to dispense with once the risks to our security become too great--and indeed, according to the Little Green Footballs school of thought, they already did five years ago. So self-described moderates can try their hardest to win converts to the mainstream cause by pillaging the sophomores they see all around them, all those bearded Critical Mass riders supporting Howard Dean's 50-state strategy and protesting the war(s), but it's not actually working.
People who care about politics are either liberal or conservative. People who don't really care, who don't really pay attention, and who make up their minds who to vote for the day before an election are not exactly a constituency. The right writes for right-wingers, and they pillory moderates as the hardcore left, a group that is basically adrift and authorless. CNN doesn't want to be the liberal alternative to Fox; they want to be the Empathy Network (witness the rise of Keith Olbermann on the plucky little MSNBC). The New York Times doesn't want to be a liberal standard-bearer. They want to retain credibility, advertising dollars and the cachet of being the Newspaper of Record (which they actually disavow, explicitly, having forfeited telling us about Peruvian cabinet reshufflings and the monetary policy of Bhutan decades ago). They want to position themselves as moderates because they hope, as the Paul Begalas and James Carvilles continue against all logic to be paid to say, they can sweep the amorphous mass of ill-informed adults who define themselves against hysterical anti-abortion Minute Men on the one hand and some angry Daily Kos diarist on the other.
That said, the actual op-ed was an atrocity because it basically treats the scientific method as just another ideology, equal to Pentecostalism or utopianism. While in a Derridean sense that's largely true, I don't think it's fair to lump them together because at the very least, empirical analysis reveals arduous and well-developed modes of self-correction, something which religious certitude doesn't want to imitate.
Then there's the resilient canard that the 20th century's biggest evils weren't the products of religion at all. I guess that means Nazism and Communism, aka the 10th grade Catholic's tactics for rebutting Nietzsche. Since it's just weak and condescending to say "that bullshit argument doesn't deserve an answer," let's say that fascism's alliances with religion are well-documented, that Communism-as-practiced was grotesquely compromised from its inception, that it was ushered in by megalomaniacs in societies that were far too poor and unstable to withstand the subsequent opposition of the capitalist West, that the left long ago moved away from top-down solutions that pay attention only to class as an axis of oppression, and that the pyramidal structure of 20th century totalitarianism (Nazism in particular) involved psychological sublimations of the Godhead (or somesuch) in a way that exalted the leaders as alternative gods. I just don't see a comparison between, say, a Maoist revolutionary and a subscriber to the New Yorker who doesn't pray.
The very idea that "the West" can be regarded as monolithic and secular is dangerously oversimplistic. The United States might not be a Christian nation in its governing principles, but the historical applications of its policies (up to and including this afternoon) definitely are. And even then, there isn't even unanimity among atheists. There are lots of atheists with terrible politics--Sam Harris, for one. (He manages to support Guantanamo Bay, that fucker). To say, loftily, as Shweder does, that atheists and the religiose live in mutual miscomprehension is smug and irritating. The entire trope of dividing the entire world along one simple axis, installing oneself in the very center, and measuring the stupidity of everyone else by how far they deviate from that center (which just happens to be where one holds court in one's infinite wisdom), is singularly anti-intellectual and dishonest. It's also the basis for Thomas L. Friedman's entire career.
This brings me to Updike. I'm just going to give away the ending, so know that now. Frankly, I can't decide if his latest book is a cop-out or if its cautious optimism might be right after all. In short, it's the story of an 18-year old biracial Muslim convert, Ahmad, raised by a single mom in a city that's obviously Paterson, NJ. His shaikh gets him a job with a furniture company run by people who are funding a terrorist plot, and his guidance counselor (a vaguely self-hating Jew [sorry, I really, really hate that phrase] who's sister-in-law is an undersecretary for homeland security, and who took an 11th hour interest in his well being) attempts to persuade him to go to college and not blow up the Lincoln Tunnel. In the end, Ahmad doesn't do it.
Essentially, the underlying theme is the rootless waste of modern American life. There's adultery too, like in every Updike book, but Ahmad (who has unconvincingly precise diction and intuition for a messed-up teenager) is excruciatingly sensitive to how ugly, meaningless and unhealthful Christians make the world. But as a zealous adherent to the Abrahamic tradition, he scorns the body's urges and detests infidels. There isn't an apocalyptic tension the way there is in Left Behind, as Ahmad's act of terrorism isn't aiming to set in motion a chain of events leading to a nuclear holocaust or anything; he just wants to strike at the enemy. But Updike goes on an on describing postindustrial urban North Jersey, and he makes guidance counselor Jack Levy a spent shell who tosses out one lengthy, depressing diatribe after another about what a waste life is.
There is a scene, the day before Ahmad's supposed deed, where he takes the time to pick up a beetle that has landed on its back, only to see it take two tiny steps and then die anyway. Ahmad's encounter with insignificance, his spiritual equivalence with a dying bug, is painful and sad. So how can it be that literally everyone who isn't a hollow moron, everyone sensitive or intelligent, comes to the exact same conclusion--that the United States embodies a terrible, ugly void and wants to reproduce it everywhere--yet diverges so dramatically over what to do about it, i.e. kill lots of people on behalf of a God, or recognize that no god exists and do your best to reformulate everything around that cruel, central axiom?
This is why I think the Times's op-ed is essentially terrorist in nature. It's a poorly thought-out fig leaf designed to give them moral cover from some fellow citizens, fascists awaiting a more serious national crisis, who wish them to be shut down, jailed or hanged. The Times is, de facto, the periodical of choice for a large number of secular cosmopolitans, a small and educated caste--some of whom make a shitload of money, to be sure--who are neither persecuted nor taken seriously, and among whom (although not exclusively) there is a subset of people who have abandoned metaphysics entirely.
In Terrorist, the government infiltrates the homegrown Islamists' inner circle and their informant is beheaded. This information is the only thing that nudges Ahmad to reconsider. It's coincidence alone that prevents his suicide-homicide bombing. The holy moderates of punditry are doing their part to keep things together for now, but their reach isn't global and the false moral equivalance they foist on the left and the right can't last forever. More and more people grow disenchanted with globalization, consumerism, and the values of the self-purifying market all the time, but most of those people are kept from thinking critically about it, and are driven into the irrational, nationalist myths of their respective cultures.
It's a prime example of how irritating space constraints are--and that ends my charitable analysis, because otherwise it's one of the most pernicious things I've read in some time. It's frustrating to me the way the Times pompously interpellates its readership as sensible moderates who are above the political fray, detached from these weirdo hippie bloggers and the fat Christians who live somewhere vaguely west of Morristown. I have no idea who Richard Shweder is, but he's doing a fine job proving everything conservatives about the "liberal media" already think while dissociating himself from facts.
First, people who write things need to realize that by virtue of publication, their words are part of the media; one time contributors aren't ghostly visitations upon the op-ed page just because they don't have a regular, twice-a-week column. It would also be helpful for their naivete to dry up and recognize that no matter how much they strive to present themselves as prudent, cautious skeptics and as adults, there will always be archconservative flameouts because the O'Reillyites who think Christmas is under siege by a secular cabal will continue to regard both freedom of speech and the left's right to exercise it as an indulgent nicety we can and ought to dispense with once the risks to our security become too great--and indeed, according to the Little Green Footballs school of thought, they already did five years ago. So self-described moderates can try their hardest to win converts to the mainstream cause by pillaging the sophomores they see all around them, all those bearded Critical Mass riders supporting Howard Dean's 50-state strategy and protesting the war(s), but it's not actually working.
People who care about politics are either liberal or conservative. People who don't really care, who don't really pay attention, and who make up their minds who to vote for the day before an election are not exactly a constituency. The right writes for right-wingers, and they pillory moderates as the hardcore left, a group that is basically adrift and authorless. CNN doesn't want to be the liberal alternative to Fox; they want to be the Empathy Network (witness the rise of Keith Olbermann on the plucky little MSNBC). The New York Times doesn't want to be a liberal standard-bearer. They want to retain credibility, advertising dollars and the cachet of being the Newspaper of Record (which they actually disavow, explicitly, having forfeited telling us about Peruvian cabinet reshufflings and the monetary policy of Bhutan decades ago). They want to position themselves as moderates because they hope, as the Paul Begalas and James Carvilles continue against all logic to be paid to say, they can sweep the amorphous mass of ill-informed adults who define themselves against hysterical anti-abortion Minute Men on the one hand and some angry Daily Kos diarist on the other.
That said, the actual op-ed was an atrocity because it basically treats the scientific method as just another ideology, equal to Pentecostalism or utopianism. While in a Derridean sense that's largely true, I don't think it's fair to lump them together because at the very least, empirical analysis reveals arduous and well-developed modes of self-correction, something which religious certitude doesn't want to imitate.
Then there's the resilient canard that the 20th century's biggest evils weren't the products of religion at all. I guess that means Nazism and Communism, aka the 10th grade Catholic's tactics for rebutting Nietzsche. Since it's just weak and condescending to say "that bullshit argument doesn't deserve an answer," let's say that fascism's alliances with religion are well-documented, that Communism-as-practiced was grotesquely compromised from its inception, that it was ushered in by megalomaniacs in societies that were far too poor and unstable to withstand the subsequent opposition of the capitalist West, that the left long ago moved away from top-down solutions that pay attention only to class as an axis of oppression, and that the pyramidal structure of 20th century totalitarianism (Nazism in particular) involved psychological sublimations of the Godhead (or somesuch) in a way that exalted the leaders as alternative gods. I just don't see a comparison between, say, a Maoist revolutionary and a subscriber to the New Yorker who doesn't pray.
The very idea that "the West" can be regarded as monolithic and secular is dangerously oversimplistic. The United States might not be a Christian nation in its governing principles, but the historical applications of its policies (up to and including this afternoon) definitely are. And even then, there isn't even unanimity among atheists. There are lots of atheists with terrible politics--Sam Harris, for one. (He manages to support Guantanamo Bay, that fucker). To say, loftily, as Shweder does, that atheists and the religiose live in mutual miscomprehension is smug and irritating. The entire trope of dividing the entire world along one simple axis, installing oneself in the very center, and measuring the stupidity of everyone else by how far they deviate from that center (which just happens to be where one holds court in one's infinite wisdom), is singularly anti-intellectual and dishonest. It's also the basis for Thomas L. Friedman's entire career.
This brings me to Updike. I'm just going to give away the ending, so know that now. Frankly, I can't decide if his latest book is a cop-out or if its cautious optimism might be right after all. In short, it's the story of an 18-year old biracial Muslim convert, Ahmad, raised by a single mom in a city that's obviously Paterson, NJ. His shaikh gets him a job with a furniture company run by people who are funding a terrorist plot, and his guidance counselor (a vaguely self-hating Jew [sorry, I really, really hate that phrase] who's sister-in-law is an undersecretary for homeland security, and who took an 11th hour interest in his well being) attempts to persuade him to go to college and not blow up the Lincoln Tunnel. In the end, Ahmad doesn't do it.
Essentially, the underlying theme is the rootless waste of modern American life. There's adultery too, like in every Updike book, but Ahmad (who has unconvincingly precise diction and intuition for a messed-up teenager) is excruciatingly sensitive to how ugly, meaningless and unhealthful Christians make the world. But as a zealous adherent to the Abrahamic tradition, he scorns the body's urges and detests infidels. There isn't an apocalyptic tension the way there is in Left Behind, as Ahmad's act of terrorism isn't aiming to set in motion a chain of events leading to a nuclear holocaust or anything; he just wants to strike at the enemy. But Updike goes on an on describing postindustrial urban North Jersey, and he makes guidance counselor Jack Levy a spent shell who tosses out one lengthy, depressing diatribe after another about what a waste life is.
There is a scene, the day before Ahmad's supposed deed, where he takes the time to pick up a beetle that has landed on its back, only to see it take two tiny steps and then die anyway. Ahmad's encounter with insignificance, his spiritual equivalence with a dying bug, is painful and sad. So how can it be that literally everyone who isn't a hollow moron, everyone sensitive or intelligent, comes to the exact same conclusion--that the United States embodies a terrible, ugly void and wants to reproduce it everywhere--yet diverges so dramatically over what to do about it, i.e. kill lots of people on behalf of a God, or recognize that no god exists and do your best to reformulate everything around that cruel, central axiom?
This is why I think the Times's op-ed is essentially terrorist in nature. It's a poorly thought-out fig leaf designed to give them moral cover from some fellow citizens, fascists awaiting a more serious national crisis, who wish them to be shut down, jailed or hanged. The Times is, de facto, the periodical of choice for a large number of secular cosmopolitans, a small and educated caste--some of whom make a shitload of money, to be sure--who are neither persecuted nor taken seriously, and among whom (although not exclusively) there is a subset of people who have abandoned metaphysics entirely.
In Terrorist, the government infiltrates the homegrown Islamists' inner circle and their informant is beheaded. This information is the only thing that nudges Ahmad to reconsider. It's coincidence alone that prevents his suicide-homicide bombing. The holy moderates of punditry are doing their part to keep things together for now, but their reach isn't global and the false moral equivalance they foist on the left and the right can't last forever. More and more people grow disenchanted with globalization, consumerism, and the values of the self-purifying market all the time, but most of those people are kept from thinking critically about it, and are driven into the irrational, nationalist myths of their respective cultures.
