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Another Perspective
Maxwell Smart Was Right
Islamism and Leftism may just be frenemies — but behind them lurks “KAOS.”
It’s a puzzlement: Why do leftists tolerate radical Islam? Begging the question: What does the man who Newsweek’s cover declared is “the first gay president” think is going to happen once sharia comes to his zip code?
Great minds are flummoxed by the attraction of two seeming political opposites. Even the late, brilliant cynic Christopher Hitchens was surprised and stunned by the blasé 1989 response of his leftist then-pals to the Salman Rushdie fatwa. Lesser minds on the left try to justify the wacky attraction by viewing global jihad as primarily a violent spasm of the economically exploited. If not brothers, these Islamists must at least be their cousins in arms. University leftists comfortably ignore that “religious” motivation of fatwas, sharia, or honor killings because, in their world, everyone who’s educated knows that religion doesn’t exist.
No fan of the left, Newt Gingrich offers an alternate psychiatric solution, suggesting that the current president “has almost a psychological need to be totally blind to the realities of Islamic extremism…. as though he has a desperate need to believe in something which is totally false.”
For those still not satisfied with an understanding of the leftist/Islamist cohabitation, dozens of alternative theories have sprung up (see hashtags “secret Muslim”, “Saudi money,” “Indonesian birth certificate”). Irrespective of whether any or all are true, these storylines have been unflinchingly driven against media ridicule and elite indifference by people trying to solve the Islam/leftism riddle. They look for that one hidden secret that will explain it all, much like the last page of an Agatha Christie story.
In the midst of our existential battle of civilizations, these conventional assessments of the Islam/Left dynamic are worse than facile or inadequate — they are dangerous. To make progress and crash flawed paradigms, we are well-served by the terminology if not the insight of one of the sixties’ less-heralded geopolitical strategists. We need to place both leftism and Islamism in a superset best called “KAOS”.
Why KAOS? Readers of a certain age will remember Get Smart, a '60s sitcom send-up of the cold war spy thrillers. Maxwell Smart was the American agent who assessed all threats to the country by unerringly telling his chief, “I think that KAOS is behind this.” And, unerringly, he was right. Only a higher theory such as KAOS explains why two systems — mortal enemies by conventional metrics — can be working in covert tandem, often intuitively, with no strategic plan.
KAOS is neither an ideology nor a religion. It is a pagan — or at best pan-phenomenalistic liberation movement that seeks to release themselves and everyone else from the bonds of time, physics, and biology. As two congruent, malignant light beams refracting off reality at different angles, they measure success by their intellectual and physical deconstruction of Western Civilization.
Stripping away the flamboyant dross of “Allahu Akbar” and “power to the people,” it becomes clear that all KAOS shares the same vital principals:
• Surrender to passion
KAOS is a cover for lusts. Passion rules the left, underlined by their affection for the color red. Cyclically, they mass and charge the barricades to lust, namely: family, religion, and the free market economy. Islamist lusts are served by defining their cravings as divine will. We all know how when a “religious” terrorist yields to the temptations of the flesh, it is termed “incongruous” or “schizophrenic.” But that misses the point: in their zeal to slaughter, they eroticize violence and feed the same obsessions they seek in the strip clubs.
• Situational morality
To live in KAOS is to celebrate moral nullification. By releasing morality from its (Western) mooring, KAOS disqualifies failure. In prison, Islam offers a narrative to the felon that renders penitence and rehabilitation inoperative. And Marx says that if laws are tools of the ruling class, then breaking them is okay. Protections such as private property, voting, and citizenship are to be enforced only to the extent that they advance a known agenda.
• An attack on meaning
They’ll tell you that it’s all about a great, far off goal — but their behavior betrays their eschatology. There is never a meaningful arc of progress. Their goals are a sham — their interest is in an eternal present. Their perceived triumph comes from merely participating in this never-ending struggle. See H.R. Clinton’s senior thesis “There Is Only the Fight.” Or the German book called “My Struggle” that ignited a war.
In the ahistorical environment of KAOS, there is no cause and effect — none of the empirical reasoning upon which Western Civilization rests. For us, “meaning” derives from our axiom of an ordered, non-random, time-based universe. Everything is built on that — from the patriarch Abraham discovering monotheism to Isaac Newton discovering science. In KAOS, meaning as we know it is an uninteresting and useless construct.
They are Western Civilization’s Lex Luther — an enemy of near-equal genius committed to a polar opposite set of principals and outcomes. Defeating them requires one core insight into the paradox: KAOS, the avatars of randomness, lust and nihilism, are ultimately a rational — even ordered — lot. They are as predictable as the natural urges that enslave them.
We have their number. All we need now is a shoe phone.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (42) | Leave a comment
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Moe Blotz| 11.2.12 @ 6:47AM
Resembles Mr.Terrell's description of Kultursmog.
Moe Blotz| 11.2.12 @ 6:50AM
Mr. Tyrrell, please accept my apology for the misspell.
Alan Third Party Voter Brooks | 11.2.12 @ 8:56PM
The author would be right if this were 1945, when we possesed a monopoly on WMDs.
Now it is a multipolar world and we are very much constrained.
C Smith | 11.2.12 @ 11:09AM
"For those still not satisfied with an understanding of the leftist/Islamist cohabitation":
Robert Spencer in a column in PJ Media explains in part the White House and State Department failure to acknowledged what was really happening that night in Benghazi i.e., four years of Islam-sensitive foreign policy and the lifeless sodomized body of Chris Stevens:
The Obama administration is approaching full meltdown over the steady stream of revelations concerning its inaction and lies over the massacre of Ambassador Chris Stevens and other U.S. personnel in Libya....
Speaking about the Libyan revolution in March 2011, Obama warmly praised the dawning in Libya of “the rights of peaceful assembly, free speech, and the ability of the Libyan people to determine their own destiny.” After providing military aid to the anti-Gaddafi rebels despite evidence of their al-Qaeda links, the administration–whether the call really came from the White House or the State Department or both–had every reason to ignore the request from Benghazi for more security, and to pretend that the whole thing was just a spontaneous uprising over a video, not the carefully planned September 11 jihad attack that it proved to be.,,
http://in-the-name-of-truth.bl.....olicy.html
Albert Constantine Jr.| 11.2.12 @ 7:11AM
"Or the German book called "My Struggle" that ignited a war."
If you were translating the title of Mein Kampf into Arabic, outside the holy aspect of it, Jihad becomes a likely choice.
Harry the Horrible| 11.2.12 @ 9:57AM
Mein Kampf is already a best seller in the Arab World. So is "Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
Appleby| 11.2.12 @ 7:12AM
I believe ideologies such as Islam arise out of a desperate need to impose an artificial order on the world changing too rapidly for the population at large to keep up. I hear people every day crying "If only they'd stop IMPROVING things!" recalling, for example, the price stickers adhered with superglue to products, instead of ten minutes for an electronics-rich cashier to ascertain the cost of cat food. Out of millions of little events of helplessness comes a rigid system meant to stop the wheels. Unfortunately the people trying to impose Order mistake effects for cause, and their attempts to (for example) press women back to Kinder/Kirche/Kuch in the mistaken idea that if only Women Knew Their Place, life would make sense again. Hurricane Sandy's fury has accelerated this retreat to the imposition of artificial order by showing that a guy in a $100 million penthouse is on the same footing as the guy in a squat in Harlem once the lights go out...that "improvements" leave you standing on a rocking chair in ice skates, and start people screaming "simplify!" in a vain attempt to stop the wheels of the juggernaut from crushing them. Out of this comes Islam...and Mormonism, come to think of it.
PolishKnight| 11.2.12 @ 10:40AM
Good heavens Appleby, I don't know what you're trying to say above. What's up with the price stickers? Actually, I just saw a news report that claims that they're looking to replace price stickers below bar coded products with LCD displays that update the prices in real time. The ultimate digital age. Ok, there's one level left: NO price labels at all. Just a bar code and you scan it with your smart phone or store provided gun to figure it out.
Anyways, a lot of this does boil down to women's places. I was chuckling at the commercials for Obama portraying women as scared mice frightened that Romney was going to take away their abortions and "free" cancer screenings at planned parenthood. If there ever was evidence for why women shouldn't be allowed to vote, that was it! The democrats portray women as helpless, government recipients who have only replaced their patriarchal husbands and fathers with the state. And they're largely correct. Only the government husband is not as good as the regular kind of most of them.
Peppermint Tea | 11.2.12 @ 11:35AM
Exactly, PK. I don't know why the Apfel dumps on Mormons--even for technology?! Did a Mormon invent the television, modern irrigation, and Steve Young?
Drunken Sailor| 11.2.12 @ 3:40PM
Peppermint,
If my soaked memory is at all reliable I believe appleby at one time mentioned she was raised Mormon. Kind of like a ex-smoker, all they want to rag on is people still doing it.
SUBVET| 11.2.12 @ 2:04PM
"There you go again" applebag as always the mormon deal come's to the surface. What's your beef with mormons.......was one of your "friends" a mormon and left you.
You say your a catholic by your comments not a very good one....how is your walk with the Lord ?
Occam's Tool| 11.2.12 @ 2:48PM
Utah is a friendly, safe, pleasant place. Very child friendly. The Mormons I know I would gladly trust my children to.
Appleby just pressed the wrong answer.
Appleby| 11.2.12 @ 7:58PM
Yes, Mormons are generally nice people -- I am especially pleased to learn that Romney does not use profanity of any kind, which will be a nice change and probably freak a lot of people out. I am merely commenting that Islamism and Mormonism both attempt to create a system in which if you turn your back on the world and follow the very rigid Rules to the letter, at the end you will be a God. The Mormon rules are mostly a lot more reasonable than the Islamic ones, at least when you're dealing with official LDS rules. But both are an attempt to impose order by turning their backs on the outside world.
Appleby| 11.2.12 @ 7:58PM
Yes, Mormons are generally nice people -- I am especially pleased to learn that Romney does not use profanity of any kind, which will be a nice change and probably freak a lot of people out. I am merely commenting that Islamism and Mormonism both attempt to create a system in which if you turn your back on the world and follow the very rigid Rules to the letter, at the end you will be a God. The Mormon rules are mostly a lot more reasonable than the Islamic ones, at least when you're dealing with official LDS rules. But both are an attempt to impose order by turning their backs on the outside world.
CJW| 11.2.12 @ 10:06PM
How can you even begin to compare Islam to Mormonism? Islam has been more of a political ideology since its inception in the 7th century, conquering all of Arabia, North Africa, Afghanistan, parts of India, and Spain. They were beaten in France by Charles Martel, at Vienna by the Poles and Austrians, and at Lepanto by the Italians and Spaniards,. otherwise all of Europe would be under Islam. They are responsible for most of the terrorism since 1979. The treat women as slaves and chattels, and have not produced any innovations of any type in the last several hundred years, except for strapping bombs on themselves and blowing up Americans and Israelis.
Get serious.
Occam's Tool| 1.19.13 @ 10:01PM
The tuition for NON-Mormons at BYU is less than for almost any decent State University I can name outside of Texas. Mormonism is extremely decent.
I like Mormons. I'm Jewish.
JmsA| 11.3.12 @ 12:11AM
I concur, and in particular as far as the town of Bountiful is concerned.
John786| 11.2.12 @ 7:58AM
Surprisingly, no mention of Area 51, Roswell, alien abductions in this article just to give it more kudos. Otherwise, this is a fine example of racist rampant islamophobia on this site. The election must already be lost!
Mike G| 11.2.12 @ 8:46AM
Yes, it is lost. He lost in with his sad performance in the first debate, and with his coverup of his failures in the Libya attack, not to mention his poor handling of the economy, ramming unwanted legislation down our throats, kowtowing to enemies, ...I could go on, but I don't have time for a complete list. Maybe someone here can continue my list.
bluecollarbytes| 11.2.12 @ 9:09AM
yes, because we've all been 'misinformed and misdirected by enemies of Islam', who try to convince us Islamists are what they appear...and Claim to be, especially between each other. It's only to the west that Islam feigns loosey goosey myths about its intentions and motives.
Pecos Pete| 11.2.12 @ 9:42AM
Beheadings and stonings, genital mutilation, forced marriage, and females as slaves. Yep, Islam be doing just fine. Nice stuff. Not to mention 4 dead American heros in Benghazi. Yep, Islam be doing just fine.
Tom Kyba| 11.2.12 @ 11:27AM
Thanks for your valuable contributions to civilization Dhimmi John. and keep practicing with that sarcasm thing. One day you may actually say something clever.
John786| 11.2.12 @ 1:02PM
Tiresome tom,
Do you never tire of this Muslim bashing? Day in day out. Unrelenting bile. Can't we all just live together little Tom! We are afterall all related. And by the way I can't technically be a dhimmi because I'm a fully pledged card carry member of the final monotheistic message to humanity : Al Islam.
Occam's Tool| 11.2.12 @ 3:11PM
I'll tire of it when they stop sodomizing my Ambassadors, beheading little Jewish girls, throwing acid into schoolgirl's faces, trying to blow up buildings in New York, planning to murder me at Fort Hood (only an accident of fate keeps me alive), attempting to censor free speech, honor kill their own daughters....
Occam's Tool| 11.2.12 @ 3:13PM
damn: "schoolgirls' faces"
Occam's Tool| 11.2.12 @ 3:15PM
And you are a scumsucking maggot that endorses murder, sodomy, mutilation, and the elimination of freedom, just like your prophet Muhammed, a thieving, murdering child rapist (piss be unto him).
Muhammed was one of the worst menever to crawl upon the mud of this planet. A true dog wallowing in pig fat.
Drunken Sailor| 11.2.12 @ 3:46PM
John,
Do you ever get tired of labeling anyone who has issues with radical Islam exrtemist as Islamaphobes? You do realize that a phobia is a irrational fear don't you? In this day and age a fear of Radical islam in not exactly irrational.
Bouse Tizi
Skippy| 11.2.12 @ 3:53PM
Islam is lame, and will either reform or perish.
Either way does not matter to me.
Occam's Tool| 11.2.12 @ 2:50PM
I dunno, John786: do the people you support behead little Jewish girls in their beds and pass around candy when 3000 Americans burn to death? Yeah? Then why is opposition to them an unreasoning fear? Hmmmm.....
By the way, don't think of coming near my kids. Ever. Anywhere.
John786| 11.2.12 @ 9:06PM
Toolhead,
You should seek psychiatric help for your condition. You were obviously violently potty trained. Or worse, you are suppressing some deep Freudian condition. It makes you direct your evil desires onto the innocent. 67 or bust? A gambling man I see.
gene| 11.2.12 @ 9:38AM
Chamberlain listened to Corporal Shicklegruber and believed everything he was told. Too many people in power actually think that the rest of the leaders in this world and just about everyone think and behave as they do. I'm sure Jimmy Carter, EVEN NOW, thinks that if he gets all the leaders in the Middle East into one room to talk ,he can settle all this business.
Arafat accepted a Nobel Peace Prize and the whole time he told his own people that Peace for him was defined as the DESTRUCTION of Israel. The MSM ignored this every step of the way. We pay a terrible price for all of this naivete. A terrible price. How many more Holocausts? How many more genocides? Ethnic Cleansings?
Harry the Horrible| 11.2.12 @ 9:59AM
Chamberlain bought time for the UK to deploy Hurricanes, Spitfires and Radar early warning stations. He is not same the class as the others.
KennesawJack| 11.2.12 @ 10:20AM
Not to mention he served in Churchill's War Cabinet. But, Harry, to suggest that Chamberlain's appeasement toward the "Bohemian Corporal" was intentional to give Britain time to arm herself is a bit of a stretch. No basis in the historical record that I know of. He is not in the same class as the others because he didn't act out of malice towards his own country.
Skippy| 11.2.12 @ 3:55PM
Chamberlain believed he could negotiate with the enemy.
You can never negotiate with your enemy.
Peace comes with victory and defeat. Always.
Treaties only delay the inevitable.
FastJohnny| 11.3.12 @ 9:56PM
He didn't buy time, he spent it foolishly and wasted it. Much like the left does with other peoples money.
PolishKnight| 11.2.12 @ 10:49AM
I'm reminded of my friend's family's experiences with a termite problem. They noticed they also had an ant problem. They figured that if the ants and termites were natural enemies of each other, they would fight it out and solve the problems for them. But instead they formed a kind of weird alliance or at least understanding. They both shared the wood of the home.
American leftism is founded upon a notion of consuming the host and worrying about what happens afterward. They don't think beyond Greece going broke. Or what happens when there are no more suburbs to take "flight" to. Here's a joke a libertarian told me:
A traveling salesman stops by a farm and asks if they can help him out and the farmer is hospitable and invites him to dinner. He sits down and sees a pig at the end of the table treated with honor and a golden pegleg. He asks what the deal is. The farmer tells him that's a very special pig. Last summer, it saved his son from drowning by jumping in and pulling him to safety. And it also learned how to drive a tractor. So the farmer is still puzzled and asks about the pegleg and the farmer replies:
"A special pig like that... you don't eat all at once!"
That's the left's view of us, folks.
Peppermint Tea | 11.2.12 @ 11:37AM
Reagan told that joke in reference to capitalism and how we treat it. PJ O'Rourke repeated it in "Eat the Rich."
PolishKnight| 11.2.12 @ 1:32PM
Did Reagan come up with it or just popularize it?
Thanks for the tip/info.
cicero| 11.2.12 @ 11:38AM
Instead of using its head instead of its heart to analyse the ME situation, the West andd the US was seduced into fighting the battles for the Islamists, and affecting regime change the juhadis sought. And now we are shocked, shocked, that the Brotherhood has taken power and turned on us like a scorpion. How silly we are - we have merely forgotten the lessons of history, and have decided that we need not teach our young. After all, our history was written by old white men.
Who Knows?| 11.2.12 @ 12:06PM
It’s the resentment, stupid.
Schadenfreude, by any other name, permeates Islamists and leftists alike.
And, of course, there will always be some people who take separation to the limit. Me verses you, and all that, expressed in utter differences that make real communication impossible---ergo, kill the other, or die.
Can’t we all just get along?
Spread YOUR wealth, out on a table, like a meal YOU created—I’m hungry!
My old radical self---the one that joined a commune back in 1973---was dominated by FEELINGS, engendered by knowing the vast disparity between the frivolous and overflowing wealth of Americans, and the too many people in God forsaken places who were dying of starvation.
But, it is a HARD truth, for a HARD man to realize, that karma does rule.
I am NOT you!
Doesn’t mean I can’t HELP you, but also doesn’t mean I HAVE TO, either.
What a show!
Humans are so funny!
Theo Prinse| 11.3.12 @ 1:02PM
Well What does Judd Magilnick suggests ... MKULTRA - Paperclip perhaps ?
No I think this KAOS theory is for little children.
Read Ann Coulters book "Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America,"
At this moment David Petraeus is involved in an arms deal with Al Qaeda which is why ambassador and liaison in that deal was murdered by the Turks after Russion proxies forced Erdogan to confiscate the ship loaded with weapons.
This is high treason from the currrent President as well as all involved like Dempsey, Panetta, Petraeus, Clapper, Brennan, but most of all Iranian Valery Jarrett .. where Richard Helms once was ambassador before the Irangate unfolded and set the stage for Benghazigate ...
Why do leftists tolerate radical Islam?
Well because the Muslim Brotherhood (1928) was made compatible with socialism by Moscow ...
It is a fact that Nasser and his thousands of Nazi's - like in Syria - in his state apparatus had fled with operation Odessa Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen,” this national-socialist Nasser uprooted the Muslim Brotherhood in the fifties ... but with muslim Barack Barry Obama Soetoro Davis 4th of June 2009 Cairo speech. Subsidizing Al Qaeda at the petrol pump against the west since Roosevelt struck a deal with Arab Sheiks at the harbor of Suez on a marine ship which was renewed by Richard Nixon in 1973 to guarantee the Saudi Wahabites a huge price increase through OPEC and Kissinger ... in return for US Arms deals ...
FastJohnny| 11.3.12 @ 9:54PM
Yes, now only if the left and radical islamists dressed as snappy as Sigfried and Schtocker from KAOS.