Insanity Thriving

While reading his news sources this morning, OTR came across another unsettling story focused on perception, reality and world politics. Apparently there is a new fatwa in Egypt that prohibits the owning or driving of the Chevrolet. It seems a Salafi - read "literalist" and "puritan" - sheik has noticed that the Chevrolet logo is actually a representation of the Christian cross and therefore haram or legally forbidden. Though the exact origin of what has become known as the Chevy bow-tie is lost to history, the "threat" itself has been part of our culture for 113 years.

The greater threat from the Chevy logo may be in our future. It seems the Salafi sheik is not alone in Egypt. In fact, the recent elections tell us that fully 25% of the new parliament can identify with him. Fortunately, the internal link in the Moonbattery story indicates that not all Egyptians are sympathetic with such twisted thinking. That's a good sign because history tells us it is difficult at best to deal politically with rampant paranoia and distorted realities, and downright futile to reason with insanity.

Some Sanity Restored

Dr. Pat Santy, blogging as Dr. Sanity, is back to writing daily after a few months off. Today, she updates us on the Israeli Defense Force's killing of Assud the Bunny, that lovable Al Aqsa television character used by Hamas to indoctrinate the next generation of suicide bombers. Yes, my friends, in a phrase we're seeing more of these days, this is stuff you just can't make up. It is frightening, hilarious and heartbreaking. BTW, Assud now joins Nahoul the Bee in martyrdom.

Group Therapy on a National Scale

When I was a grad student many years ago, the crossroad of geography and psychology for me was the study of perception, both physical and behavioral. At that time, my studies applied to the individual. But I have always had a more than passing interest in perception and group behavior, the world of Marshall McLuhan, and marketing. The Islamofascist attack on the World Trade Center in February 1993 should have brought many aspects of those academic studies into focus. Both the Clinton administration and American media worked against that, and I waited until the 2001 disaster to be fully awakened.

In seeking answers to this dilemma facing the West, I was attracted to the sound reasoning of two pundits, both psychiatrists. One of them, Charles Krauthammer, is likely familiar to most of my readers. He has an ability to interpret the complexity of issues at hand and present them in sound bites appropriate to broadcast and mass market print media . The other doctor, blogging as Shrinkwrapped, also synthesizes the material well, but delves deep into the collective minds of the respective groups, explaining the how and why of the behaviors, and appropriate responses to them. Together, Krauthammer and Shrinkwrapped make for extraordinary reading at two levels. At this moment, the Gaza Strip conflict is the specimen in the lab, and Shrinkwrapped is writing a series on Hamas under the title, "Adolescence and Societies." Read it and you will have a better understanding why this and other radical Islamic conflicts present the West with a challenge it has not faced since the Battle of Vienna in 1683. If this battle is a new subject for you, your background reading begins here.