Big Cities, Rural Towns, and why I don’t get Obama’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It is virtually a constant of history, so much so that we either forget or take for granted the fact, that one major fault line throughout politics is the politics of the metropolitan urban centers verses the politics of the outlying rural towns.
See, our politics is always informed by what we are used to and what we understand. If we grow up around Jesuits, around homosexuals, around Holy Rollers, around the Amish in rural Pennsylvania–that’s what we are used to and what we understand, and so we may take sides on certain issues depending on what we understand. Someone who grows up around homosexuals, for example, may be more inclined to support gay rights than someone who grew up in an isolated rural town where homosexuality is a sin practiced in the big city.
That gets us to a major political fault line: those who live in a large metropolitan area tend to be surrounded by a variety of folks. Life is made orderly through the intervention of governments and local agencies: governments become something ‘we all do together.’ And because urban centers expose us to a variety of people we become more understanding of different lifestyles and different cultures than our own–we’re constantly surrounded by it so it becomes rather normal to us. Here in Glendale, for example, I’m constantly surrounded by hispanics, by Armenians, by Koreans–it’s normal to be sitting at a sidewalk cafe with my wife and be the only english speakers.
In rural areas, however, things are radically different: you may not be exposed to as much variety of culture or of lifestyle choices. Uniformity of way of life helps to aid in survival: most of your neighbors are probably like you. Government is few and far in-between, so generally you turn to religion as the ordering factor: the Sunday sermons, the Saturday synagog, the daily prayers at the Mosque become the way problems between people are informally handled. You are probably distrustful of outsiders, because in a rural setting you don’t experience a lot of variety of culture–and in many places in the world and across the years of history being different creates friction that makes survival difficult.
Metropolitan areas encourage cultural liberalism: openness to others, reliance on large government agencies (because government becomes the only common factor shared by all residents), a tendency to mind your own business (because privacy is an implicit joint contract rather than a fence or a quarter mile of road between neighbors).
Rural areas encourage cultural conservatism: a drive for informal controls through religious institutions since government institutions are ineffective with low population densities. A tendency to be nosy about your neighbors but judgmental if they fail to live to the community standards. And above all some degree of conformity and voluntary cooperation–if only because rural areas tend to be poorer, closer to the knife’s edge of survival, and requiring mutual aid and assistance to keep from going under.
And all this was true during Roman times (compare the glory of the city of Rome compared to the Visigoths living on the outskirts in late Empire times), this was true at the end of the Dark Ages (note where the Enlightenment started: in urban centers), and it is true today in the United States (where Democrats tend to control urban centers while Republicans tend to be established in more rural districts).
Which brings us to the Muslim Brotherhood and to Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood started as a religious social organization, a rural organization which used the rural values of the Middle East (really, the rural values seen anywhere in the world) of voluntary mutual cooperation to provide support to places like Egypt. A socially conservative organization (like most rural organizations anywhere in the world), the Muslim Brotherhood is defined by it’s (rural) conservative Islamic roots–promoting voluntary religious obedience (as do all rural religious movements) to the basic Islamic principles of faithfulness and charity: all survival traits necessary if you are to survive in a rural setting isolated from your neighbors.
In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood stands in political opposition to the Egyptian Military, which unlike any other military organization in the world, is as much a political and economic force as it is a military force. The Egyptian Armed Forces is an interesting organization: in addition to providing boots on the ground, the Egyptian Military since the 1970’s has had an expanding role in Egypt’s economy: the Egyptian Military is a major manufacturer of a variety of different civilian products, including washing machines, clothing pharmaceuticals and microscopes. The military is also heavily involved in agriculture and in maintaining Egypt’s national infrastructure.
So when we talk about the Egyptian military it’s important to remember its role as a social and economic entity as much as a military presence; Egypt’s military is as much an extension of the will of the people in urban centers as much as it is a military fighting force in the traditional sense.
And this brings me to President Obama’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood.
I just don’t get it.
In a very real sense, as much as analogies translate across international borders, the Muslim Brotherhood is the conservative rural element of Egypt; it stands in direct opposition of the more moderating elements of Egyptian society that comes from her urban centers.
Not that I necessarily have any problem with conservatism of any form; our politics tend to be informed by our own experiences, so to blanket negate someone’s political positions is akin to negating their life experiences. However, as the world tends towards urbanization, we are increasingly evolving into a more culturally liberal world which increasingly relies on government regulation rather than informal religious obedience to maintain social order.
And while there are elements of rural culture (such as self-reliance, voluntary mutual aid, and respect for traditions) which are important to preserve even in urban centers where nihilism tends to be the order of the day, rural conservatism is currently dying–and only a massive depopulation of the planet through a global catastrophe will change this trajectory.
President Obama’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood, in other words, would be akin to his supporting rural Democrats of the 1950’s or rural Republicans today: it just makes absolutely no sense for the consummate urban liberal-progressive politician to do this.
I have a theory, however.
The problem in Washington D.C. is that most modern liberal-progressive politicians today who learned at the knee of their liberal professors after the Left’s grand march through the institutions have been blinded by The Narrative.
And The Narrative is this: today’s modern world is defined by the world’s reaction to The West. That is, Western Civilization, in imposing colonialism in the 19th century and causing two World Wars (and their aftermath) in the 20th century, was the chime that rung the bell of history–and the entire world is still vibrating in reaction.
Take the Middle East, for example. A liberal professor may note that the Middle East was the fault of Western Powers who, around World War II, took a largely nomadic population and drew artificial lines in the sand. We created the modern Middle East and all of its disasters by imposing a western notion of country on a tribal nomadic people–and thus all the wars and disasters in the Middle East today is a direct result of this process.
The Middle East’s ringing, in other words, was because of the British chime.
And today, the United States as inheritor and de-facto guarantor of Western Civilization, is the force that is causing the rest of the world to react.
So look at the Middle East through this prism. Nine-eleven was not a result of 19 terrorists successfully hijacking 4 airplanes–it was triggered in reaction to a U.S. presence perpetuating a British and French-defined political order imposed on the Middle East, causing thousands to live in near poverty as Western imperialists confiscate badly needed oil and prop up puppet regimes in places like Saudi Arabia.
The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood was not because of local conditions on the ground in Egypt; it was in direct reaction to U.S. imperial efforts in that region, perpetuating a British imposed order on Egypt. And the fault-lines between the Egyptian Military and the Muslim Brotherhood is caused by the U.S. playing favorites, king-maker and arbiter to a world order that was imposed externally when that part of the world was drawn up around World War II.
So to the liberal-progressive raised on the tit of post-modernism, on deconstructionism and on modern multi-cultural studies, the answer to Middle East peace is clear.
First, apologize. Not for who we are as a nation, but for the blunders we’ve committed as an unwitting and de-facto successor to Western Civilization, and for our misunderstandings which cause us to impose an alien order on a people who may wish to organize their affairs differently.
Second, reach out to opposition organization, for the express purpose of bringing them to the table and giving them greater regional responsibility. In essence Obama’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood makes sense if you consider them to be akin to a more politically active Red Cross organization whose ties to terrorism is in direct reaction to a hundred years of Western blundering in that region.
Once you do this then eventually you can withdraw–well, not western support, but at least overtly western influence in the region, and allow the region to reach a more natural political equilibrium with all interested parties at the table.
Of course this forgets that the natural state of the world is warfare, destruction and death. Primitive man was not enlightened man living as one with Gaia; primitive man was poor, hungry, on the edge of survival, and at constant battle over necessary resources to survive.
And this worries me because Egypt is running out of food, it’s running out of money, unemployment is at a very high level, and it appears to be descending into civil war.
The real irony is that by believing the U.S. was imposing its will on Egypt, by taking the college-professor liberal-progressive approach of attempted reconciliation and appeasement, the United States runs the risk of triggering the very civil war it sought to prevent–all because Egypt’s civil war has nothing to do with the United States and everything to do with local cultural conditions on the ground, local cultural conditions that are a constant throughout the world–local cultural conditions which a liberal-progressive who studied at the feet of Heigel and Derrida and the like are utterly blind to.
And, ironically, I believe it placed Obama on the wrong side of history.
Fuzzy little things that I find interesting. 