I’m frightened by the events in Spain.<\/p>\n
My fear is on several different levels, on several different issues. Each of them is worthy of a much longer essay by someone much smarter than I am, but since I’m what I’ve got and the time I have is what it is, here you go.First, because we’ve shown how easily such little effort can move to such massive tragedy. I’ve believed for a while that we have both an emerging conflict with Islamism and an internal conflict coming from those whose relations to Western culture – hell, to any culture – are fractured by weak philosophical underpinnings. Whether it’s a mad Muslim-American veteran and a teenage boy in search of identity with a rifle, or an angry white Christian veteran and a truckload of fertilizer-based explosives, or a gang of – whoever – with backpacks and construction explosives – the ability and need of the few and weak to kill and terrorize the many and strong seems to be getting stronger.<\/p>\n
Second, because we’ve now shown that terrorism works. I don’t know nearly enough about Spanish politics (and, in reality, neither do most of the commentators left and right<\/b>, weighing in on this) to dissect the cause of the shift – whether it was disgust at the government’s manipulation, craven appeasement, or some complex human combination of these and other reactions – it sure appears clear that the terrorist act toppled a government. That’s a far greater effect than 9\/11 – they only toppled two buildings. People are smart creatures because we learn what works and we go back do it more often. People who want to change regimes have been shown they can do it with eleven backpacks and 165kg of explosives.<\/p>\n
That means they will do it again.<\/p>\n
And finally, and most frighteningly, because reading the news, the columns, and the blogs, I see one thing very clearly. Everyone<\/b> is looking at the events of 3\/11 through the prism of their positions on 3\/10. The hawks see what supports their positions, the doves what supports theirs.<\/p>\n
I am seeing more simple-minded rationalization around this issue than I think I’ve seen in quite some time, and that frightens me and ought to frighten you all. Because the path through this will come from our ability to reason and plan together – to show solidarity in word and deed, and thereby resolve to pursue whatever path is ultimately chosen. I see very little solidarity, and a deepening fracture.<\/p>\n
I think my task in writing for the next little while will be to delineate that fracture and try and suggest some paths back toward the bridges that may span it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m frightened by the events in Spain. My fear is on several different levels, on several different issues. Each of them is worthy of a much longer essay by someone much smarter than I am, but since I’m what I’ve got and the time I have is what it is, here you go.First, because we’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}