Mullah It Over

A recent military parade in Iran included a banner saying “Israel should be eliminated from the universe”. Now wait a minute – the whole universe? So it’s not enough to push Israel into the Mediterranean or move it elsewhere on the planet (I’ve always favored Nevada) – now we have to get it not only off the planet but out of the known universe entirely. But wait, there’s hope! If the new supercollider creates, say, a “worm hole” into a parallel universe, perhaps the Israelis could be persuaded to move there. This would satisfy the Iranians… it would save the United States untold gobs of money… and it might even help the Israelis to sleep better. I think it’s an idea that ought to be seriously explored.

And in the meantime, Iran’s “supreme leader”, Ali Khamenei, said that Iran considered not only the Israeli government to be an enemy, but the Israeli people as well. So, I guess that iconic Jewish farmer on the kibbutz with that funny little hat and those crotch-length shorts is an enemy of Iran? Well… when you think about it, this mode of thought is not confined to Iranian mullahs. It’s still conventional wisdom that any German over the age of 63 is an anti-Semite, a Nazi, and a Hitlerophile, and that any white Southerner is, by definition, a racist. And of course, any white heterosexual male is officially declared a racist and sexist homophobe. This is just another way of saying that everyone is unfairly prejudiced against any class of people to which they themselves do not belong, i.e. that bigotry is somehow built into the human genome – but only in the case of non-politically correct types, like white heterosexual males. Prejudice and bigotry among “persecuted minorities” is impossible, also by definition. This is why accusations of “black racism” directed against Obama’s preacher friend never stick – in fact they tend to backfire. And this, in turn, is a subset of the rampantly humanistic premise that the good only resides in the poor and persecuted, i.e. the “wretched of the earth”, and the evil only resides in the dominant or prosperous classes. Why traits of this type are so closely related to things like skin color and bank balances is never fully explained – and yet the premise is accepted without question throughout American academics, the media, and the entertainment industry. So let’s not be too quick to criticize the mullah for making the same type of generalization.

And, by the way, he also described Israelis as “combatants at the disposal of Zionist operatives.” Um…. “collection prease”, as Charlie Chan used to say – that would be a description of the American armed forces.