Ghost of a flea: Cherchez la femme

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February 26, 2008

Cherchez la femme

Spengler writes on a secret revealed by Senator Obama's women: He hates America. Make of this claim what you will; I am fascinated to learn about Obama's mother. Ann Dunham was an anthropologist, a fact Spengler believes is far more important to Obama's upbringing and world view than whatever the influence of a Muslim father. Spengler expresses strong reservations about the discipline.

America is not the embodiment of hope, but the abandonment of one kind of hope in return for another. America is the spirit of creative destruction, selecting immigrants willing to turn their back on the tragedy of their own failing culture in return for a new start. Its creative success is so enormous that its global influence hastens the decline of other cultures. For those on the destruction side of the trade, America is a monster. Between half and nine-tenths of the world's 6,700 spoken languages will become extinct in the next century, and the anguish of dying peoples rises up in a global cry of despair. Some of those who listen to this cry become anthropologists, the curators of soon-to-be extinct cultures; anthropologists who really identify with their subjects marry them. Obama's mother, the University of Hawaii anthropologist Ann Dunham, did so twice.

Obama profiles Americans the way anthropologists interact with primitive peoples. He holds his own view in reserve and emphatically draws out the feelings of others ...

Better yet:

He has the empathetic skill set of an anthropologist who lives with his subjects, learns their language, and elicits their hopes and fears while remaining at emotional distance. That is, he is the political equivalent of a sociopath. The difference is that he is practicing not on a primitive tribe but on the population of the United States.

Which may be the most awesome description of anthropology I have ever read. Just started work on the paper I am presenting to the Canadian Anthropology Society this spring, btw.

Update: I had not realized Spengler is himself rumoured to be an anthropologist. Lisa Schiffren writes:

Spengler, the brilliant columnist for the Asia Times, is reputed to be an Australian gentleman of a certain age, with a Ph.D in Anthropology at Columbia University obtained when that was still a first-rate program. He brings a rare level of cultural insight and depth to the discussion, the sort which is so often lacking on the American Right, dominated as it is by economists and those who eschew psychology.

And this: More Spengler, this being a piece on Geert Wilders, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Europe in the dar al-Harb.

Strictly speaking, I do not quite agree with Wilders that the Koran should be banned along with Hitler’s Mein Kampf as an incitement to violence. Nonetheless, he is doing precisely the right thing. A house divided against itself cannot stand, as Abraham Lincoln quoted the Gospels as he made ready to tear down the half that was misbehaving. No civilized state can abide a rival from within who contests the monopoly of violence of legitimate government. If governments refuse to act, the optimal course of action is pre-emptive: bring matters to a decision as fast as possible before the rot destroys the entire house.

That last sentence sums up everything I have been trying to express for some time. I had a fairly heated conversation recently in which I advocated bringing a variety of matters to head with the aim of preempting a far greater violence that I believe is otherwise to come. It is easy to sound like an advocate for violence - which, strictly speaking, I am - with this sort of talk. Not something Lincoln shied from in the end; Churchill neither. But then a hypodermic needle injures a body, so too the attenuated strain of the virus is injects. Better this than plague.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at February 26, 2008 07:01 AM

Comments

Good info there, thanks for that. Haven't read Spengler's article as yet... but as you say about the excerpt... awesome description. And then your last sentence... bravo!

From the Wiki entry on Ann...

""Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia: Surviving and Thriving Against All Odds," was 1067 pages long."

1067 pages... you have got to be kidding me.

Posted by: Luther McLeod at February 26, 2008 07:26 AM

That is hilarious; I had not thought to check the page count. The only way a dissertation gets that long is if it is completely out of control. Sometimes departments will pass a candidate just to get rid of them. Not that I can talk.

Posted by: Ghost of a flea at February 26, 2008 08:54 AM

I had a fairly heated conversation recently in which I advocated bringing a variety of matters to head with the aim of preempting a far greater violence that I believe is otherwise to come.

Kinda like smacking Hitler down in 1936 when he violated treaty by reoccupying the Rhineland.

Posted by: JohnAnnArbor at February 26, 2008 01:01 PM

Exactly. And I am finding many conservatives are reacting with the same reservations as British conservatives of the 1930s. Of course, I could be wrong and the problem may not be as bad as I think it is.

I think the problem is apocalyptic and it is on this supposition the rest of my thinking is grounded. The main differences between our time and 1936 is in those days Britain used to take it for granted that Britain was worth defending, the Nazis were not on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons and when hostilities broke out enemy populations were interned, not given tenure and ten thousand a year for each wife.

Posted by: Ghost of a flea at February 26, 2008 01:07 PM