Wednesday, January 21, 2015

The Tom Friedman Politics of the Genitals

Some people “don't get no respect,” and some get more respect than they wish for. Two of the latter type would be Charles Darwin who would be horrified by what is called “Darwinian economics,” and Sigmund Freud who would be horrified by the mention of sexual repression to sex-up every argument that is going nowhere.

We set aside Darwin and concentrate on Freud's predicament because Tom Friedman of the New York Times saw fit to return to an earlier era when everything was explainable by Freud's theory of sexual repression. Friedman does it in his latest column: “Say it like it is” which is a bastardized version of the old “Tell it like it is,” an admonishment that was given to the Pentagon a million times a day during the Vietnam War. Tom's column was published on January 21, 2015 in the New York Times.

Here is the part where Friedman reverts to his fixation on the genitals: “It is the struggle over modernity and women's rights. That struggle … has left these societies with too many young men who have never held a girl's hand, who then seek to overcome their humiliation at being left behind.” When in the past, this kind of argument was used to describe some of the ills in “Western” societies; it was defeated by the mention that if it were true, the most violent people on the planet would be the nuns, the Christians brothers and the Catholic priests who take a vow of chastity. But no one has seen a nun wear the vest of a suicide bomber.

Moreover, the people who fight on their own soil, such as Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and what have you; have a cause defined as the liberation of the homeland. It is something that has been done for ages everywhere on the planet – by men and by women. What can be difficult to explain at times, however, are the activities of young men (and now women) that were born and raised in Western societies, and have embraced jihad. These people cannot be said to have suffered sexual repression given that they leave behind girlfriends, boyfriends, wives or husbands to go die for a cause that sounds more like seeking the thrill of an adventure than the quest to gratify a sexual urge.

The irony is that Friedman begins his argument by saying: “When you don't call things by their real name, you always get in trouble.” And here he is getting in trouble because he sees genitals where there are none. This reminds me of a correspondent who once wrote something to the effect that our so-called vibrant democracy is vibrated only by the gadgets which are bought in sex shops. This observation is reinforced by the fact that more rapes are committed against men and women in the two largest so-called democracies, India and the United States, than anywhere else in the world.

Thus, instead of telling it like it is – which is that every time a prominent figure is caught practicing sexual impropriety, the figure turns out to be a Jew – Tom Friedman tells it like it is not. In fact, he writes: “the real issues [that] many Muslims know and are actually starved to discuss, especially women.” And guess what he does right after that. He quotes prominent Muslim women who discuss the very issues he says are not being discussed.

And guess what it is that he does not mention even though he should be. He does not mention the fact that no Jew – man or woman – was ever allowed to criticize the Jewish practices which are known to lead straight to the gas chamber and the incinerator.

Tom Friedman would do well to tell his readers about the shortcomings of the Jewish approach to “educate” the American public because this is the time bomb that needs to be diffused before an uproar is raise to the effect that “the Jews came with a smile on their faces, a plan in their heads and a poison in their pockets.”

And the uproar will continue: “They lulled us into trusting them, they poisoned our culture and took everything that used to be ours.”

“The Palestinians in Palestine are fighting for their rights. We have been turned into Palestinians in our country, and we don't know how to fight back.”