Ian Buruma wrote an odd piece for the New Yorker in which he takes an insane person's murder of an obnoxious racist as a sign that tolerance cannot survive, and then proceeds to blame the whole thing on an imaginary "Middle East."
I thought of responding, but a post at Dragi Erazmo pretty much says everything I thought.
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3 comments:
eric, happy new year, from ludost!
Gene, thanks very much for your thoughtful comment. I think that much of what you have to say is consistent with Hamo's take, especially that no society ("Eastern" or "Western") is free from its own internal problems and divisions that lead to violence.
One point on which I think there needs to be more thinking done is the point about oil. Although I agree that the dependence of prosperous states on oil from the Persian Gulf region has led to some troubling alliances and severe political conflict in the states in that area, I would suggest that it would be a mistake to assume that getting out of the oil market would solve those problems. Here's why: what exists in the oil-producing states is an economy based on the export of a single commodity. The government is built around a monopoly over that commodity, which is exclusive and corrupt, but is often able to buy social peace by putting a part of the profit to the benefit of the population. If that were suddenly taken away, then the monopoly group would probably fall apart violently, and the impulses to rebellion would be less controlled. Ted Gurr described this sort of situation as "relative deprivation," where people who are frustrated have less of a sense that they have something to lose in political violence. So I would suggest that if there are to be any big shifts in energy markets, they will really have to be accompanied by careful planning for their political consequences.
I think that I might be past the point where I can respond usefully here, since the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is way out of my area of expertise. So anything I offered on the topic would be mostly opinion and projection.
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