Absurd. Your intention from
the beginning was to be a snobby
jerk.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/102gwtnf.asp
Among
the Bourgeoisophobes
Why
the Europeans and Arabs, each in their own way, hate
America
and Israel.
by
David Brooks
04/15/2002,
Volume 007, Issue 30
AROUND
1830, a group of French artists and intellectuals
looked
around and noticed that people who were their
spiritual
inferiors were running the world. Suddenly a
large
crowd of merchants, managers, and traders were
making
lots of money, living in the big houses, and
holding
the key posts. They had none of the high style
of
the aristocracy, or even the earthy integrity of the
peasants.
Instead, they were gross. They were vulgar
materialists,
shallow conformists, and self-absorbed
philistines,
who half the time failed even to
acknowledge
their moral and spiritual inferiority
to
the artists and intellectuals. What's more, it was
their
very mediocrity that accounted for their success.
Through
some screw-up in the great scheme of the
universe,
their narrow-minded greed had brought them
vast
wealth, unstoppable power, and growing social
prestige.
Naturally,
the artists and intellectuals were outraged.
Hatred
of the bourgeoisie became the official emotion of
the
French intelligentsia. Stendhal said traders and
merchants
made him want to "weep and vomit at the same
time."
Flaubert thought they were "plodding and
avaricious."
Hatred of the bourgeoisie, he wrote, "is
the
beginning of all virtue." He signed his letters
"Bourgeoisophobus"
to show how much he despised "stupid
grocers
and their ilk."
Of
all the great creeds of the 19th century, pretty much
the
only one still thriving is this one,
bourgeoisophobia.
Marxism is dead. Freudianism is dead.
Social
Darwinism is dead, along with all those theories
about
racial purity that grew up around it. But the
emotions
and reactions that Flaubert, Stendhal, and all
the
others articulated in the 1830s are still with us,
bigger
than ever. In fact, bourgeoisophobia, which has
flowered
variously and spread to places as diverse as
Baghdad,
Ramallah, and Beijing, is the major reactionary
creed
of our age.
This
is because today, in much of the world's eyes, two
peoples--the
Americans and the Jews--have emerged as the
great
exemplars of undeserved success. Americans and
Israelis,
in this view, are the money-mad molochs
of
the earth, the vulgarizers of morals, corrupters of
culture,
and proselytizers of idolatrous values. These
two
nations, it is said, practice conquest capitalism,
overrunning
poorer nations and exploiting weaker
neighbors
in their endless desire for more and more.
These
two peoples, the Americans and the Jews, in the
view
of the bourgeoisophobes, thrive precisely because
they
are spiritually stunted. It is their
obliviousness
to the holy things in life, their feverish
energy,
their injustice, their shallow pursuit of power
and
gain, that allow them to build fortunes, construct
weapons,
and play the role of hyperpower.
And
so just as the French intellectuals of the 1830s
rose
up to despise the traders and bankers, certain
people
today rise up to shock, humiliate, and dream of
destroying
America and Israel. Today's bourgeoisophobes
burn
with the same sense of unjust inferiority. They
experience
the same humiliation because there is nothing
they
can do to thwart the growing might of their
enemies.
They rage and rage. Only today's
bourgeoisophobes
are not just artists and intellectuals.
They
are as likely to be terrorists and suicide bombers.
They
teach in madrassas, where they are careful not to
instruct
their students in the sort of practical
knowledge
that dominates bourgeois schools. They are
Muslim
clerics who incite hatred and violence. They are
erudite
Europeans who burn with humiliation because they
know,
deep down, that both America and Israel possess a
vitality
and heroism that their nations once had but no
longer
do.
...
( originally linked from www.dynamist.com
)
---
On 28 Jul 2002 at 12:53, Mladen
Gogala wrote:
...
> This debate
is getting increasingly personal and that is why I am going
> to end
> it right
now. I tried avoiding a personal conflict in my first reply,
> but you
> insisted.
As I have nothing to gain from the squabble, I'm out of here.
...
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