Crystal Ball Glazing

 

It's a busy day.

First the good news: We are still alive, the world has not come to an apocalyptic end. Thank God.

But then again, Victor David Hanson has Europe's days of old numbered and things don't look so good for the 56 kidnapped in broad daylight. "The roundup displayed all the signs of an unrelenting kidnapping epidemic in Baghdad. [...] Usually the hostages are held for ransom. Sometimes they are killed because of their faith or ethnicity." In general, such brazen attacks on what clearly was yet another insolent attack on the civilian population, including Sunni Arabs and Shi'ite Muslims, strengthens rather than weakens people's resolve to restore law and order, irrespective of the disparaging commentary from the MSM and certain 'specialists'.

Back home, prepare for a massive broadside  against the Administration and include me as a puzzled bystander. Tony Snow, you'd better fasten your seatbelt and prepare to defend the legal perils inherent in leaving the definition of whether humiliation is torture or not open to interpretation, especially when facing intense pressure from a hostile public opinion, as the Pentagon's reasoning for striking the Geneva Convention rules against prisoner humiliation from its basic guide to soldier conduct; it's about to get rough and this won't do, even when the President bailed you out.

Let's take heart and keep on pushing back at the growing threat that "a superpower that wallows in paranoia and glorifies self-loathing cannot endure and doesn't deserve to", and oppose those who gratuitously adulterate their self-serving criticism with the tone of righteous sententiousness. Could these strong words from an unexpected source be a sign...?  Or is it too late?

Meanwhile, Andy McCarthy takes the MSM to task over the Canadian terrorist plot, "Once the press finally summons the courage to utter that Muslims have been arrested, its primary duty is to obsess over how the “Muslim community” will react", rather than telling us that their "creed commands them to murder".

I join my friends in Israel and "stand back and watch" the evolving fall-out following the collapsed talks between Hamas and Fatah. Stay tuned for a bloody and most certainly messy wrangling for power and the count-down for Washington's strike against Iranian nuclear installations, "probably before the end of 2006", if Spengler's crystal ball is correctly tuned.

Comments

[Saul Davis]

Regarding Spengler -- Darkness and pessimism are sometimes a necessary antidote to lack of realism in an insane world; but Spengler is not merely darkness and pessimism; his jihadi version of Gilbert and Sullivan would do justice to the original; the url is:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GC22Ak04.html

[rich]

Relish Spengler's savory darkness and pessimism.

It is a warning of the challenge we face.

The number of people who do not care or think that meeting the challenge is "just not worth it" validate Spengler. It is what Spengler expects of us.

A reckoning is upon us, most of us unaware of it, that must be met.

[gringoman]

Okay, I'll volunteer to come out of the Spengler woodwork. Can't say he's an acquired taste, as there didn't seem to be anything that needed acquiring. I discovered him fairly recently and haven't been disappointed. (Again, kowtow obliggato to the Internet.) It doesn't seem to matter whether you agree or disagree, since he can intrgue you with his wit, his views and his knowledge of history. I picture some rogue professor who escaped from the faculty to tell us what he really thinks, and the toadies of tenure be damned.

From this early un-archived limited familiarity, I think he does excellent up-dated punchy riffs on the Western pessimism of Spengler The First, seeing old Europe as more or less ready for the hemlock but hoping to put it off for another generation, maybe for the sake of the children (which certain Euros presumably still bring into the world, for some reason.) I say 'I think,' because my reading of 'The Decline of the West' happened probably at least as far back as Kenny Pierce's. (Brooklyn's one and only Henry Miller turned me onto this compelling German.)

As for the stark pessimism, it's something that obviously wouldn't do well on 'American Idol,' but I'd call it classically Continental. Little wonder that Alexandra appreciates it. Americans tend to identify 'pessimism' with depression or a hangdog attitude, so different from the Nietzschean view that saw ancient Greeks as pessimists yet intensely alive and robust, even ready for monsters at the gate.

Is today's Spengler so accurate in seeing the U.S. as now being too confident and worldly-wise and powerful to go the way of Europe? I don't know. I'll have to check him out a little more, especially at a time when the national debt is soaring to new trillions, the smart global guys are exporting most industry and much inventiveness to China, the smart global guys are also importing Mexico's low-tech poverty by tens of millions, the White House is clearly no match for World Media and its U.S. affiliate, and they now have a young Naval corpsman, who aided dying Marines, in chains, in solitary confinement in Camp Pendleton, CA, while prisoners in Guantanomo get recreation, al-Jazeera TV, halal meals, and prayer rugs five times a day.

I'll have to catch up on Spengler's case for optimism about the U.S. today.

[MarcH]

Hopefully this thread will bring the Spengler fans out of the woodwork.

I don't think that Spengler II is quite as pessimistic as Spengler I.

At his core Spengler II seems to be a Christian optimist. He's pessimistic about Europe because (in his view) 17th cen. European Christian civilization introduced a fatal flaw by adulterating its Christianity with a quasi - idolatrous/pagan nationalism ("The sacred heart of darkness", http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/EB11Aa01.html). The French are his great villains due to their role in this matter.

Nevertheless, Spengler II seems to be somewhat optimistic about the United States (Abraham's promise and American power*, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GB08Aa01.html) because our melting pot removed the national identities of the 19th century European immigrants and bred a bible based Christianity. Spengler II also favors Pope Benedict (Ratzinger's mustard seed, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GD05Aa01.html) because he sees him moving in the same direction.

If Spengler II has an intellectual hero I'd say it's Franz Rosenzweig ("Indispensable handbook for global theopolitics", (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GK22Aa01.htmlv).

Reading through Spengler II's achieves is an education (of course this should only be done after reading through ATB's achieves;-), especially in demographics and theopolitics.

Regards,

MarcH

* Alexandra - I had been meaning to recommend Spengler's review of "Abraham's seed" to you as a good companion to your post, "Standing With Israel - The Birth Pangs Of An Important Alliance". Sorry that I didn't get around to it until now.

[Kenny Pierce]

Alexandra,

You beat me to the punch on bringing up ol' Oswald. I read The Decline of the West a very long time ago and remember very little other than that I thought (a) he was wrong because (b) he didn't know very much about America. I was in high school at the time and probably didn't know enough to have an intelligent opinion about him, but at least for the last quarter-century my optimism about America has proven reasonably well-founded...but then if he was going to be right about anybody, it was going to be Europe, since Europe was the part of the West he actually knew something about.

I do absolutely agree with you that Herr Oswald has supplied today's "Spengler" with his nom de plume, and for obvious reasons of shared pessimism.

[Alexandra]

Igout,

"Gloomy" eh! Well, he has always thought provoking ideas and his vision is quite often forward thinking backed by sound reasoning. Keep reading him but don't let him depress you too much. I often find his articles an excellent read.

He has a particularly bleak view of Europe:

"For today's Europeans there is no consolation, neither the old pagan continuity of national culture, nor the Christian continuity into the hereafter."
"They have no ambition but to die quietly, no concerns except for those amusements which might reduce boredom and anxiety en route to the grave. They have no passions except hatred born of envy. They hate America, a new kind of universality that succeeded where the old Christian empire failed. They hate Israel, which makes the Jewish people appear all the more eternal in stark contrast to Europe's morbid temporality. They will pass out of history unmourned even by themselves."

Real slash your wrists sort of stuff (or should I say "hang yourself" sort of stuff [read it, it's good]), but very thought provoking. I personally love it. Readers have been trying to find out who he is for a long time. He obviously admires Oswald Spengler, who was a German historian and philosopher, and died in the early thirties. His major work, "The Decline of the West" brought him worldwide fame. Spengler maintained that every culture passes a life cycle from youth through maturity and old age to death. Western culture, he believed, had proceeded through this same cycle and had entered the period of decline, from which there was no escape. Spengler upheld the ideal of obedience to the state and supported German hegemony in Europe. His refusal to support Nazi theories of racial superiority led to his ostracism after the Nazis came to power in 1933.

[igout]

Alexandra, What do you know about this Spengler? I've only been reading him for a little while now, and find him totally gloomy and totally persuasive in equal measure.

[Crusader.NoRegrets.]

The new superpower is no longer world opinion. It is Muslim grievance.