The unintended editorial-The Bush Tribe

[underpants]

I was reading over this editorial piece on how there will never be democracy in the middle east (really? I thought there was it was just that they are rushing out to vote for THEIR militant radical fundamentalists not ours) and it struck me that this description very accurately illustrates the W inner circle.

Enjoy. read and understand who we are dealing with....here

Why We Will Never See Democracy in the Middle East
OPINION By STEVEN PRESSFIELD
http://abcnews.go.com/International/print?id=2384603

What history seems to be telling us is that the quality that most defines our Eastern adversaries, then and now, is neither religion nor extremism nor "Islamo-fascism," but something much older and more fundamental.


Tribalism

What exactly is the tribal mind-set? It derives from that most ancient of social organizations, whose virtues are obedience, fidelity, warrior pride, respect for ancestors, hostility to outsiders and willingness to lay down one's life for the cause/faith/group.

The tribesman doesn't see it that way. Within the fixed hierarchy of the tribe, disagreement is not dissent (and thus to be tolerated) but treachery, even heresy, which must be ruthlessly expunged. The tribe exists for itself alone. It is perpetually at war with all other tribes, even of its own race and religion.

The tribesman deals in absolutes. One is either "of blood" or not. The enemy spy can infiltrate the tribal network no more than a prison guard can worm his way into the Aryan Brotherhood. The tribe recognizes its own. It expels (or beheads) the alien. The tribe cannot be negotiated with. "Good faith" applies only within the pale, never beyond.

The tribesman does not operate by a body of civil law but by a code of honor. If he receives a wrong, he does not seek redress. He wants revenge. The taking of revenge is a virtue in tribal eyes, called badal in the Pathan code of nangwali. A man who does not take revenge is not a man. Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the sectarian militias of Iraq are not in the war business, they are in the revenge business. The revenge-seeker cannot be negotiated with because his intent is bound up with honor. It is an absolute.

Perhaps the most telling difference between the citizen and the tribesman lies in their views of the Other. The citizen embraces multiplicity; to him, the melting pot produces richness and cultural diversity. To the tribesman, the alien is not even given the dignity of being a human being; he is a gentile, an infidel, a demon.

[Demeter]

1. And Based On His Definitions, The GOP Is a Tribe

and Democrats are the wussies.

[grizmaster]

2. At this point I'm bent on revenge against the entire bush junta

and I won't rest until they all have been removed

[underpants]

5. Welcome to DU

:hi: if'n I haven't before

[grizmaster]

6. And a fine howdy do to you to

been lurking here often for the past couple of years and finally started getting involved in the chatter

[Dhalgren]

3. Pressfield is full of shit. Some of what he says is about half true.

The rest is just gibberish. His ideas may work well within the confines and world-view of a romance novel, but would not hold water with an historian, anthropologist, or ethnologist. Every characteristic he used to describe a "tribesman" could also be applied to the "citizen", in certain circumstances if not all. And his characterization of the "citizen" is laughable! Which citizens? Of which country? During what period of time? He also seems unaware that the Greeks and Macedonians were also "tribal". Many of their political divisions were based upon their individual tribes. His ideas are at best simplistic and at worse idiotic....

[yellerpup]

4. Nice find, underpants.

K&R! :kick: :kick: