Point/Counterpoint: Steinberg On Hasan

Back on November 8, three days after the Fort Hood massacre, Chicago Sun Times columnist Neil Steinberg wrote a little instructional column about how we enlightened Americans should – or rather should not – respond to the actions of Major Nidal Malik Hasan. As an intellectual/writing exercise, I thought it would be fun to go through Mr. Steinberg’s column and offer commentary and analysis, piece by piece.

This is the title of Mr. Steinberg’s column:

“Before You Generalize About The Major”

And this is Mr. Steinberg:

If the combination of the title of Mr. Steinberg’s column and the expression on Mr. Steinberg’s face leads you to expect that you are about to receive a smug, smarmy, and self-righteous lecture from someone who can barely disguise their perceived moral and intellectual superiority, well then either: a) you have skipped ahead, or b) you are prescient.

Let’s begin. Mr. Steinberg’s column will be in blockquotes. My comments will not.

See? This rampage by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan who shot dead 13 people at Texas’s Fort Hood Army base Thursday, confirms everything I’ve been saying all along — psychiatrists are dangerous, unbalanced individuals; they go into the profession seeking the mental help that they themselves need . . .

Scratch that. Bad joke. But of course, Hasan does represent another suspect group in our society — Virginians. Edgar Allan Poe was from Virginia. Shirley MacLaine, too. They’re not stable people . . .”

Oh, if only he stopped right there and moved on to some other topic. But, we know what’s coming, don’t we? This is the Lesson Of The Outrageous Example. This is when the author tells us: “If we extend the principle that you are trying to defend (and I’ll patiently define the heresy that you are defending in just a little bit) then here’s the ridiculous destination of that train of twisted thinking!” One invokes the Lesson Of The Outrageous Example when one begins with the presumption that one is attempting communication with idiots and Neanderthals – aka: conservatives.

No one is suggesting that, maybe because the bias against psychiatrists is more of a mild suspicion, and general dislike of Virginians began to ebb after 1865.

No Neil, nobody is suggesting that – because there is not a psychiatric organization that is dedicated to forcing everyone to accept the Jungian model of the psyche and threatening death to those who refuse to do so. Nor, to my knowledge, is there an organized effort on the part of Virginians to restore the lost counties of the so-called “West Virginia” to the Commonwealth and end the illegal Yankee occupation of Virginia’s historic lands, punctuated by the willingness to murder anyone who opposes this goal. If such groups did exist, most Americans – perhaps even Neil Steinberg – would feel comfortable denouncing these extremist factions of psychiatrists and Virginians. Moreover, most Americans (although probably not Neil Steinberg) would trust their fellow Americans to make the distinction between a rogue, murderous Jungian bent on control of the psychiatric world and the peaceful, loving and even beneficial institution of psychiatry in general.

But Hasan is also a Muslim, and people who would laugh off the psychiatrist/Virginia slurs view that aspect differently, because it scratches a shameful itch.

No. It’s not because Hasan is a Muslim. Nor is it because Hasan is “also” a Muslim. It is simply because Hasan is, whether Neil Steinberg can stomach the uncomfortable truth or not, part of a murderous, fundamentalist branch of a religion and it is pretty damn clear at this point that this murderous, fundamentalist philosophy provided the motivation for Hasan’s actions and many, many more like them.

“We should seal the borders!” said a friend of mine, someone I generally respect when he isn’t saying stuff like that.

“Tell me,” I challenged him “how the actions of this Muslim American indicts all Muslim Americans?”

He sputtered, and I went on.

“If a lady murders her kids and says that Jesus told her to do it, does that indict all Christians? All ladies?”

I never knew anyone who has an actual straw man for a friend before. But, when you are Neil Steinberg, I guess you take your friends where you can get them. (Cheap shot – sorry). Maybe this is an analogy that Neil will understand: every once in a while, some Christian Scientist parent wants to deny critical medical care to their children. Most of us (me included) react in a decidedly negative manner toward said parent and towards the religious institution that demands such action. I am (although apparently Mr. Steinberg’s friends are not) capable of understanding that this particular brand of fundamentalism does not describe Christianity as a whole and, ergo, I can be opposed to the subset without damning all Christians in general.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. There are two false logic threads that define racism. The details don’t matter, you can plug in anything.

The first is extrapolating from the specific to the general. You meet someone from the Netherlands and they need a shower. You therefore conclude the Dutch are a dirty people. That’s racism.

The other is to go from the general to the specific. You meet a guy from Iceland, and you automatically pat your wallet, because your dad taught you that Icelanders are thieves. That’s also racism.

Well I’m sure glad that Steinberg repeated that! “Specific to general.” “General to specific”. Whoa! Slow down Neil! Those of us without a journalism degree are trying to keep up!

The killings at Fort Hood might say something about the strain that overtaxed U.S. soldiers are under. It might say something about security on Army bases. But if you think that it says something about religion, what you’re really doing is saying something about yourself, and it isn’t something good.

I rather think that a fellow who dresses up in Pakistani warrior garb (Hasan was an ethnic Jordanian), shouts “Allahu Akbar!” repeatedly while gunning down his comrades, had repeated contacts with a known terrorist and had the letters “SoA(SWT)” (“Soldier of Allah – Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala) on his calling card, tells us a great deal about what motivated Major Hasan. It may be comforting and convenient for fellows like Steinberg to pretend that a religious motivation can not exist, for admitting that even might be the case leads him down a logical path that he wants to avoid at all costs.

Steinberg makes it abundantly clear that there are only two choices: 1) mindless prejudice against all Muslims, or 2) blind, unquestioning acceptance of every aspect of every form of Islam. That is, anything bad that a Muslim does can not be because he has signed on to a murderous, fundamentalist view of Islam, it is rather because the poor fellow is “unstable”, as it were.

If Steinberg were to believe that choice number 2 is untenable, then he is left with only choice number 1 and accepting choice number 1 would place him squarely in the legions of the brain-dead, right-wing, gap-toothed rabble he so clearly despises. A nuanced view of the religious aspect (which I suspect Steinberg would not have trouble formulating if fundamentalist Christians were involved) is apparently beyond his intellectual capacity.

We don’t do that kind of thing

Here’s another example.

A few days before the Fort Hood massacre, one of my depressingly regular correspondents sent in the following brief, taunting e-mail:

“What, no comment on the Richmond rape? No thoughts on the richness that the perps add?”

The first sentence refers to the vicious gang rape of a 15-year-old girl two weeks ago after a high school dance in California. The second refers to my oft-stated opinion that, rather than ruining the country, as bigots claim, Hispanic immigration enriches it.

I’ve learned long ago that it’s not my job to argue with everyone who can type an e-mail. Don’t bother trying to teach a pig Latin, the saying goes: it only frustrates you and upsets the pig.

But the attitude of that message — See what these people do? — screams for reply. He doesn’t mean high school students or Californians. He means Hispanics. Sometimes you have to answer.

I wrote back:

“One of the keys of being a racist is to hold other groups accountable for things you dismiss in your own group. The crimes committed by whites don’t undermine your status, so why should crimes committed by Hispanics undermine theirs? Oh right, because you hate them already. Thanks for writing.”

So, not only does Steinberg have straw men for friends, he also corresponds with them. Well, you sure showed him Neil! Finding the most feeble argument available to counter does not enhance your position Neil, it rather exposes its weakness. If you want to convince the thoughtful conservative on this issue – hard as it may be for you to believe that there are any of us out there – try reading Steyn, or Hitchens, or Sowell, or Spencer, or any number of other intellectuals who recognize the jihadist threat for what it is, and see if you can counter them.

Assuming the Fort Hood murders are an act of extremism and not a symptom of mental illness — it can be hard to tell — then what could the killer possibly have hoped to accomplish?

I dunno – fulfilling his duty to God as he has been taught to do maybe?

Just a thought.

Well, an American soldier of Islamic extraction committing such an atrocity will be seen by some as supporting the notion — embraced by both fundamentalists and bigots, ironically — that Muslims are somehow not part of the American story, that they don’t belong in the U.S. Army. That they don’t belong here.

There are Americans — many, I would guess — who draw that conclusion, oblivious that they are doing exactly the thing that the terrorists, knowingly or not, want them to do. Highlighting our differences, embracing sectarianism, strife, disharmony, jihad.

Ah, and now we build to the climax of Steinberg’s argument: “they don’t belong here!” We send that message when we “highlight our differences!”, which leads to “embracing sectarianism!” which quickly leads to “strife!” – “disharmony!” – and – (why didn’t I see this before!?) – JIHAD!!!! In other words, it’s our fault. Of course it is. If we had just been a little more inclusive, nobody would have to shoot or blow up or behead anybody in the name of Allah. Damn us!

In reality, of course, “highlighting our differences” is part the American story. It always has been. Fortunately, for those who live here, it’s a relatively harmless part of the American story, so long as you have a skin that is thicker than Neil Steinberg. If you want to see just how dangerous those differences can be abroad, try being an American – or worse a Jewish American – travelling in the Middle East. Try being a black man in Japan. Try being a white woman in Nigeria. There are places in the world – many places in the world – where those differences will get you beaten, enslaved, raped and even killed.

And does the fact that there are places where “our differences” are highlighted in blood excuse any form of prejudice, however mild, in America? Of course not, but it does put things in perspective. Highlighting our differences is a human condition, not a disease unique to America. Growing up in the sixties, I was routinely called a “Dumb Polack” by those who had lived here longer. Riding the “L” through the largely black south side, I got my fair share of “honkeys”, accompanied by pushing, shoving and the occasional punch. My wife was a Mexican-American and she took her fair share of crap from ignorant people, white and black. Every ethnic group, at one time or another, went through the same thing, from the Irish migration through the Asian migration and beyond.

And every ethnic group got over it. They became part of the melting pot. Did they feel excluded at some time or another? Sure. But was that ever an excuse for murder? When Leon Czolgosz shot McKinley, did anyone – ever – suggest that he did it because the nation didn’t do enough to embrace anarchists? Or, to go back to Steinberg’s original theorem, should we have done more to understand disaffected Confederate sympathizers in the North and, since we did not, it was our fault that John Wilkes Booth acted out in a murderous rage? Neil’s argument is, in other words, pathetic.

So how does the patriotic American try to thwart negative results of such a crime? Only one way, obviously, by rebutting the fundamentalist message, by reaffirming that America is an open tent to all who would come and peacefully accept our values, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that lone unbalanced individuals who do barbaric things do not sweepingly indict their co-religionists, even if thinking they do feeds into our comfortable prejudices.

Especially if thinking they do feeds into our comfortable prejudices.

By all means Neil, let us not indict every Muslim because of what Hasan did. But let us not be so stupid and short-sighted as to fail to admit that Hasan is a jihadist and that, if we fail to recognize the evil that this particular form of fundamentalism represents, we are simply deluding ourselves with a comfortable, and ultimately dangerous, fantasy.

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