This is America after 9/11. And all the attacks afterward.
Picture a large family living in one house. They may have been a cozy tight-knit family once, but years of resentments have turned them against each other. The mother and father are both having affairs. The in-laws have long resentments built up that evolved into seething hatred. The kids are dysfunctional, anti-social and escaping into their own delusional fantasy worlds or getting high on drugs.
And then one evening, someone opens fire on the house. Shards of broken glass and shrapnel fill the living room. Many of the family members are injured. Some are killed. In the throes of the crisis, they put away their grievances and hostilities. Wounds are bandaged and last words are whispered. Some drive to the hospital while others set out to look for the perpetrator vowing to avenge the dead.
The feelings hold strong for a few days, a few weeks and maybe even a few months. But then life goes back to normal. The perpetrator is never found. The old hatreds, always much nearer, are embraced. The brief period of unity is dismissed as insincere posturing. The different family members start to blame each other for the attack, for not having been watchful enough or even for secretly carrying it out.
And after the broken glass was cleaned away, everything in the house has gone back to the way it was. The family hate each other all over again. Maybe even worse than they did before. And just as they’re back at each other’s throats, it happens again. Once again there’s bodies and broken glass.
This is America after 9/11. And all the attacks afterward. It’s also Israel, Europe and much of the world. If the attack is bad enough, we briefly wake up, we pull together and rediscover who we are as a nation and a culture. What ought to be an empowering and invigorating experience never gels into anything because we are dysfunctional, because we live in delusional fantasy worlds, and because the idea that there is an outside enemy worse than our internecine hatreds appears impossible and unreal.
Islamic terrorism is reality. It’s a hard and sharp edged reality. It’s knives, bullets and bombs. It’s fires and broken glass. It slashes its way through an unreal fantasy world of media and social media, of celebrity gossip, movie trailers, trending topics and the nonsense that fills our heads and our everyday lives.
It’s too real because we’ve become unaccustomed to reality. The thing about reality is that it’s ugly. Like a patient dying in an ICU or like the smell of a dead animal in a slaughterhouse, it’s a reality we don’t like to confront. And we’ve built elaborate systems to keep us from confronting it. A big enough attack, a massive spectacle, can cut through all the layers of imaginary things coating our brains and our eyes.
But only for so long.
The viral ideas that pass for reality quickly incorporate the latest attack into the realm of the unreal. Simple and straightforward brutality is overlaid with the sophisticated analyses of a decadent society. Academics pontificate on how the straightforward Islamic barbarism of over a thousand years is the result of globalism, colonialism and capitalism. Conspiracy theorists refuse to believe that a bunch of men named Mohammed really did it. And eventually the actual reality of the attack disappears and the old worldviews that ruled the shadows of our minds reassert themselves.
We go back to the way things were before 9/11 or the latest Islamic terrorist attack. And to do that all we have to do is ignore Islamic terrorism. We have to explain what happened in terms of our resentments of each other and then the family dynamic can return. Things can be like they were.
Islamic terrorism is an unwelcome distraction because we don’t actually control it and because it is all too real. It diverts us from whatever it was we were focused on before it happened. It forces us to sit up and pay attention to something that is real in a way that none of the abstract politics before it were.
But the familiar reasserts itself. Unity breaks apart. We start blaming each other and arguing over the right response. And we discover that we are much more comfortable fighting each other than Islam.
In Israel, it’s beginning to happen already just as it did in America.
A week ago, Israelis on the left were seriously asserting that Netanyahu was planning to make himself king. And then suddenly a shocking and horrifying reality arrived. Will Israelis pull together? They have for the moment. But the usual political players are maneuvering for advantage. The families of the hostages are threatening to shake the government. There’s grousing about inadequate preparation. And the conspiracy theorists have already arrived to explain that the whole thing was clearly done by the government because how else could it have missed the Hamas attack. (This shortly after the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur during which the government missed a much larger invasion.)
All of this is normal. But normalcy is exactly the problem.
The only way to fight Islamic terrorism is to leave a dysfunctional normalcy behind and rediscover what it means to be a nation fighting for its survival against enemies whose evil is utterly unmitigated.
Out of such stone, great nations, peoples and heroes were once carved.
But for many the reality of Islamic terrorism is an unwelcome distraction from whatever rabbit holes they’ve gone down. Fantasy is more malleable, more exciting and less painful than reality. In fantasy, you are a main character, whereas in reality, you’re someone cowering under a table waiting to die.
And who wants to live in reality? Strong men and women, not necessarily physically, but mentally and morally, who are not easily swayed or crazed, who stick to common sense and hard choices.
Unfortunately the peoples of the world have become weak, crazed, deadened, maddened and, like the former citizens of Byzantium, determined to keep fighting each other to the last minute while the Islamic hordes advance.
Reality is inescapable. We saw that in Israel again, just as we see it with every act of Islamic terrorism. It’s the outside world breaking through the illusions we’ve embraced and forcing us to look up from them. We can either wake up and stay awake. Or we can go back to sleep until we perish.
Susan Bennett says
This article is a brilliant analysis of the dynamics of what is dividing people in the West, in both Jewish and Christian families and call to arms. I am sharing this widely on social media because EVERYONE needs to wake up and face the evil that is islam that is flexing its muscles now that enough muslims have invaded western countries with the aid of their globalist allies.
James Lincoln says
Yes, Susan.
A brilliant article by Mr. Greenfield.
Wellington says
Seconded.
Westman says
Yes, and only too true.
Angelo says
Maybe it’s too late already?
Beneath the Veil of Consciousness says
The effect of accommodating the false narrative that Islam is a religion of peace.
Thank you, George W. ‘Fredo’ Bush.
Linde Barrera says
To Beneath the Veil of Consciousness- Wasn’t George W. Bush a terrible president?
I think so. And I will never forget that his public relations people put out this grand but horribly untrue statement about why US troops were going into Iraq: To bring democracy to the Middle East.” What BS. Just disgusting how any US President could lie or at best, be so uninformed. But I think GWB had people around him that knew Islam was not democratic. I believe the war in Iraq was used to hide behind their real motive: enrich the Military Industrial Complex.
Do you have any opinion on this?
clifford Fodor says
My opinion is that Big Oil didn’t want to lose their source of cheap oil in Saudi Arabia. And so they made Iraq and Afghanistan the scapegoats.
Paul says
Can you please elaborate? Who is big oil? Saudi Arabia’s is cheaper; oh so that’s why we take it from there! Finally, Iraq and Afghanistan were scapegoats? Interesting; I remember that the strait of Hormuz was in Iraq/Iraq and we had similar problems with Iraq in the Gulf War invading Kuwait. Please explain the possible alterior motives for the US. We should have gone after Saudi for funding the Salafist, Islamists who planned 9/11 for 20 years!
SJ says
I don’t agree with your statement at all. Hamas is Islam and what we are seeing now is the excuse Islam makes when attacking another. It’s lies, always lies. The contempt they have for Israel and Jews, is no different than what they think of all nonbelievers and Christians, Hindus, Gays, and Atheists.
They are supremacists, and no, they may not divorce as quickly because they have multiple wives and can beat and kill them at will.
Nothings distinguishes Hamas from Islam. See their face? That’s what’s in store for ALL of us.
Remember, during WWII, a saying that goes something like this: First they came for the Jews, but I wasn’t Jewish, then they came for the Poles, but I wasn’t Polish, then they came for me – but there was no one left.
The West needs to change their immigration policies, and expel Islam from its lands. That means not allowing them into our universities, no Americans working in Saudi Arabia – nothing! If these protests didn’t wake up the west, will it take these monsters going into their homes, stores, concerts and murdering them and their babies? Because it’s coming. By not stopping it, it means permission, and the Islamic world is watching to see how far they’re allowed to go – so we better watch out and expel them!
Meanwhile, Armenian Christians are undergoing genocide for the 3rd time, and the world does NOTHING. As for BLM, they should be astute enough to know that African Christians villages are being mass murdered approximately three times a week, wherever Islam is. Islam, yet again has become a worldwide plague on humanity.
The western world should know better to never believe Islam. Their lies are rampant and we should all know they are LIARS. Their ‘holy book’ tells them to lie, and they do it with vigor.
Grannya says
Thank you for stating my thoughts exactly. But no one wants to admit how the muslums are, they are taught it’s ok to lie.
James Lincoln says
SJ says,
“…the Islamic world is watching to see how far they’re allowed to go…”
Yes, they are testing the limits.
Westman says
It has been 50 years since the Yom Kippur War which means that people who were in their 20s are now in their 70s and those younger than 50-51 have no memory of the 1973 existential war.
This current war appears to have been sourced, over time, by Iran and intended to be another existential conflict for Israel. Iran may not have anything to do with planning the Hamas attack yet it certainly has been planning the eventually annihilation of Israel and boasting about it. The Ayatollah can taste his bile when thinking of Israel’s destruction. Iran is “letting” itself be drawn into the conflict, on pupose.
____
Wanting to live a peaceful family life is the drive that keeps humanity sane. Muhammad complained about it and tried to remove the power of women influencing men to stay home by defining their inferiority, covering them, extinguishing music, denying women education, and reducing their inheritance. They became posessions. Notice that Muhammad found a rich woman to work for and married her. Did his wealth ambitions and desire for women end there? No. He raised an army to spread his tribe, steal wealth by conquest and increase his personal female stable.
For Muhammad’s tribe to grow in a desert with limited resources was near impossible compared to conquest and taking it from other villages and tribes. It was so successful a Quran Surah was required to specify how booty should be divided, making certain that Islam and Muhammad had ample support.
How do you keep young men away from home and wife? Tell them as a martyr they get a carnal paradise filled with servants, endless food, multiple sex partners beyond the wife, and the entertainment of watching the unbelievers being endlessly tortured by Allah’s servants. And what about the men who have some doubts about becoming martyrs? They can pick up some unwilling sex slaves in future conquests and some booty to take home. Kill the sexually mature men and take the rest of the conquered as slaves. And what if the wife doesn’t like the idea of more wives or sex slaves? Divorce, except most Mulimas wouldn’t because the alternative could be much worse.
___
After the recent beastial attack by Hamas, the new generation of Israelis will have no doubts as to the level of depravity Islam’s “holy” texts permit against Jews and unbelievers with particular emphasis on annihilating ALL Jews.
A particular YouTube monolog, by Cyrus Janssen, tried to say it didn’t matter HOW the children and babies were killed. Well, it does because it illustrates how vicious, barbaric, perverted, and freudenschade Islam actually is at its miltant core. Obviously like all the other left-leaning Islam-duped, he’s never read the Quran, Sira, etc.
He even had the misplaced notion that Israel should accept the Gaza “refugees”, into its interior, which even further indicates that he knows nothing of the Islam-wide pogrom for the Jews. Not only could the Palestinians reek havoc, exactly why they were segregated from central Israel, but Hamas would be among them.
And other pundits, calling for a two-state solution, are just as ignorant, believing any Muslim group would leave Israel alone. All the damn wars to eliminate Israel – and the libs learn nothing until war comes to them. This time it might.
Paul says
Thank you so much! I didn’t consider the connection with the banishment of music in Islam. I’m struggling so much because I want to tell my Muslim friends everything I’ve learned about the evils of the Prophet. I just need a way to do this properly. Also I’m so disgusted with the pro palestinian protestors; they have NO idea how evil Sharia is and that’s what Hamas, Iran, ISIS wants; not just Israel. What’s the best way to win these arguments because I think the hostages and Israeli/western victims deserve a voice not only the Gazans (which is sad also.)
James Lincoln says
Paul,
If your muslim friends also consider you to be their friends, they are not very devout muslims.
Nick says
Paul,
How much do you trust these friends of yours? Be careful mate, you could wake up headless one day!
Paul Braunstein says
I’m sorry but maybe the liberals DO need to really see it; they’ll turn conservative real fast (even though it’s not about politics it’s about values.)
SJ says
Islam is this way with every religion, even some of their own. We all better get to know history, as well as current events to stop these killers.
They’ve been murdering and conquering their way through the world, but we didn’t have pictures- but we knew. It’s time to stop backing down from them, because our children will face the full brunt of it.
They’re out for all of us and will use a selected excuse to murder and genocide anyone in their wake. Why do we still listen to them? They lie! Read MEMRI.org. What they say in English and Arabic is two different things!
commonsense says
Thank you, Daniel, for yet another insightful albeit highly disturbing column. Its truth chills me to my core.
Aum says
Well said.
Scotsman48 says
A young 30 year old muslim guy in Malaysia asked me, a mature Brit, if it was true that all the men in the Western World were actually homosexuals…. Once I stopped laughing when I noticed he was and in fact had a very serious look on his face I asked him where did he get such a strange point of view… He looked at me with a puzzled look on his face and replied… ”Well it looks to me like you guys dont seem to stand up for what you believe in”…. Good point, young man, good point.
You see islam has a strong belief in revenge while Western Societies believe revenge belongs to the Lord and so when muslims see little to no reactions to their obvious violence and insults directed at us then they see us as weak men.. girly boys in other words.
SJ says
Yes, they think like cavemen. We have some issues here, but we don’t believe in state sanctioned Religious Apartheid murder!
FYI says
The islamic thought for the day calender
Monday Death to Israel allah akbar!
Tuesday Death to Hindus and all non muslim religions allahu akbar!
Wedeneday Death to Apostates and atheists allahu akbar!
etc
Meanwhile,to all other World Religions who do not rejoice in Violence:Have a nice day and look after your kids.
Leave the muslims in their misery- projected on to us all.
T. Jefferson says
Exceptional article!👍
Mari Forever says
I just saw this very good video of Robert Spencer TELLING THE TRUTH. Thank goodness he exists. I just bought online his book The Palestinian Delusion.
My maiden is that of a jewish converso whose ancestors were expelled from Spain. I have an extremely very tiny amount of askenazi jew DNA. I am a Catholic. I am too old and too handicapped now to ever travel anywhere again but my daughter did go ten years ago to Israel and she cried while visiting where Jesus had died. Before when I was younger I lived for 11 years in Muslim countries and met very nice people there but also learned a lot about that religion which I think is a political ideology to CONTROL all their followers.
https://youtu.be/yDs58krKXm0?si=YvEvrihTofEIGCuk
Trevor Mellet says
One of the finest, “lets really tell it how it is” articles Ive read regarding this seemingly never ending argument, theory, or call it what you will. What boggles my mind is this European/American and EVEN Israeli, belief of burying the specter of inevitable doom. Hitler was a perfect example of appeasement until it was eighty million people to late.
The difference was that Hitler was European, and cased the destruction of Europe. These barbaric hordes are from another part of the world entirely, and we have allowed them into destroy OUR countries and way of life for the past fifty years.
A quick summary of what they have contributed to our society:
Not a single airport where you are not scrutinized and searched in case you have the notion of bringing a plane down.
Hardly a city in Europe that does not bare a scar of muslim terrorism.
Rape gangs all over Europe
Almost all of them collecting some form of hand-out from their host governments.
No collective positive contribution to their “new” countries like ALL the Europeans gave to their new countries one hundred years ago.
I could go on and on, all I will say is while you ALL pick on and vilify Israel, remember that your time too is coming…
KuhnKat says
I have already read allegations that Netanyahu ordered a stand down of the military to increase the damage to enable him to eradicate the Fakestinians.
I would offer that the left in Israel had a lot more reason to cause a delay in response to harm Netanyahu and end his effort to change the leftist dominated Judicial System.