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{"id":4014,"date":"2010-12-29T10:54:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-29T10:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2010\/12\/tim-rutten-doesnt-get-it.html"},"modified":"2010-12-29T10:54:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-29T10:54:00","slug":"tim-rutten-doesnt-get-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2010\/12\/tim-rutten-doesnt-get-it.html","title":{"rendered":"Tim Rutten doesn’t get it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Tim Rutten writes a\u00a0piece<\/a> for the LA Times<\/em>\u00a0lamenting the West\u2019s lack of concern regarding the plight of Iraqi Christians.\u00a0 He focuses on America\u2019s policies, the West\u2019s general blindness to the historical intolerance of Christianity in the Middle East, and the important role these historic Christian communities play.\u00a0 All fair enough.\u00a0 But the main reason we hear or see nothing is not mentioned.\u00a0 That\u00a0is because our media, like our culture, is weaned on a Super-Narrative<\/a> that simply doesn\u2019t compute such things as being worthy of the radar screen.\u00a0 The basic narrative of the post-war West is that White, European and American, Heterosexual, Christian Men are the incarnation of absolute evil and the singular cause of all human suffering in the world.\u00a0\u00a0 All other peoples, cultures, and civilizations, in addition to being infinitely superior in every way, are both morally and intellectually pure, peopled with happy and loving individuals who only wish to run through the lily fields of life chanting John Lennon songs all day. <\/p>\n

So when Bill Clinton sounded the atrocity alarm in the 90s to validate our attack on Milo\u0161evi\u0107 and the Serbians, it fit.\u00a0 Serbians, White European Christians, were assaulting and massacring Bosnian Muslims.\u00a0 That fits.\u00a0 That fits the paradigm, the Super-Narrative.\u00a0 So we went to war.\u00a0 When George W. Bush attempted, in the earliest days post-9\/11, to rally support for our inevitable invasion of Iraq, he played up to the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein among other reasons.\u00a0 Problem was, that did not fit the Super-Narrative.\u00a0 Non-White, non-European or American, non-Christian committing atrocities against anyone?\u00a0 Didn\u2019t compute.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t support it, or think\u00a0what Hussein did\u00a0was good.\u00a0 It just didn\u2019t strike \u2018That Nerve\u2019 that comes with pointing to American Slavery, or the US treatment of the American Indian, or the Nazi Holocaust.\u00a0 Hence the focus turned almost exclusively to the infamous WMDs. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s that nerve that fails to be hit when people try to whip up similar visceral responses by mentioning the atrocities of Imperial Japan, the aggression of historic Islam, the brutality of Chinese history,\u00a0or the butchery of the atheistic Communist empire of the USSR.\u00a0 The formula isn\u2019t there.\u00a0 We don\u2019t react.\u00a0 Sure, it was bad.\u00a0 We don\u2019t say it was good.\u00a0 But there isn\u2019t that Pavlovian response that you get with good old fashioned stories about Inquisitions, Witch Burnings, and Crusades; with American Slavery, European Imperialism, the Holocaust \u2013 all of which can be fitted into that mold, that model, that formula.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

So the fact that 9\/11 has been an inconvenient blip has been bad enough.\u00a0 Early were we able to ponder what we did to make them hate us so much.\u00a0 After all, it must have been us.\u00a0 Thus does the Super-Narrative demand we interpret all things a certain way.\u00a0 But continued violence by Muslims across the Islamic world is becoming a troubling reminder that\u00a0many simply choose to ignore.\u00a0 A reminder that the Super-Narrative upon which so much our modern progressive thinking is based, might be wrong.\u00a0 And that cannot be accepted.\u00a0 So we will blame Bush, the US, Europe as much as we can.\u00a0 But when it finally comes down to something that may challenge the Super-Narrative, and no amount of interpretive gerrymandering will do the trick, turning a blind eye is our best bet.\u00a0 And it\u2019s a tactic that has, so far, worked like a charm.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"