It has become common to think of 'The West', as depicted by Cox and Forkum, as clueless -- groping at any hope for peace with its enemies. Cox and Forkum's 'The West' character looks like a middle-aged geek with thick glasses, tie and soft belly, comfortable on his knees; he's an apparachik of the easy life, submissive before any appeasement that guarantees another meal.
Of course, this is a cartoon. A cartoon makes caricatures of people and things in simple, pointed exaggerations. But it is still instructive in terms of how we see ourselves.
It's been a while since I had a television, but I remember a phase of advertising that I called 'Dumb Guy.' It's probably still somewhat prevalent. Dumb Guy is the fortyish-year old upper-middle class American male, depicted as an amiable, soft-headed, impressionable dunce. His beautiful wife and kids are always smarter than he is. And yet, there he stands in his palatial suburban house with twin SUVs, unable to solve a simple domestic challenge. He's easily coerced and happily led to a simple answer from the sponsor.
I found the Dumb Guy ads to be particularly condescending. Impossibly, Dumb Guy is able to amass great wealth in spite of his idiocy. Apparently, an army of milquetoasts wound at the top of the global food chain -- not innovative, proud, courageous, manipulative or shrewd individualists. What does Dumb Guy do for a living? Sell balloons to puppies? How could this simpleton get this far in life and represent our culture? Is this how we see ourselves -- as a bunch of soft-hearted simpletons who inexplicably became the spineless backbone of our culture?
I worry that Dumb Guy is our self image -- being that of the West, or America. But our self image as American-consumerist-Bible-thumping Dumb Guys, or European-socialist-teat-nursing-appeaser Dumb Guys doesn't really matter. Either way, we're just dumb. Isn't Cox and Forkum's 'West' hopelessly condescending, and inaccurate?
'Dumb Guy West' also has a huge nuclear arsenal in his back pocket. He is complex, and not merely a caricature of a Pavlovian idiot who is led towards carrots, away from sticks. 'The West' is fearsome -- for its sheer power to create and destroy at huge levels of magnitude. The West is still fearsome.
Boiling 'The West' down to a single caricature is telling. When has the West ever been one? Michael Totten says that it never was on the same page. Why should we all be on the same page now? Is a common threat really a uniter? I doubt it. Common threats more often expose rifts that are normally glossed over. That seems to be the case now.
The Iranian nuclear crisis challenges the idea that 'The West' can act together as one. Political realities are what they are -- Europeans and Americans wound up where they are for different reasons. Expecting a concerted effort against Iran is a fantasy. Presuming that we should act as one in this crisis is a fantasy too. It sounds nice -- I just don't think it's ultimately workable.
Cox and Forkum's cartoon would be more accurate if 'The West' was a pack of animals that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was trying to ride atop of, all at once -- not just one Dumb Guy. Some of the animals might be bears, others sheep, monkeys and birds, running in all directions. It's silly to boil the West down into a single meek caricature while portraying Ahmadinejad as the master manipulator. In spite of Western divisions on the challenges Ahmadinejad poses, I hardly see him as being in control, riding the West like a Persian cowboy. He's on very thin ice.
These are dangerous times, for a lot of reasons. Boiling the present historical fulcrum down to caricatures is a job best left to cartoonists. Hopefully, we're not the dumb guys that just buy into it.
I have a different take on the cartoon. It's not about the West - it's about Ahmdanut. It's what Ahmdanut thinks the West is. The perception of the West by the West is largely different.
However, I will completely agree with your assertion that the West cannot act as one. Nice idea, the united thingy, but I believe the US will have to act largely on its own.
Sadly, the "West" (aka the US left, and Europe) are acting exactly like the guy on his knees in the cartoon. Ahmadinejad's view of the west continues to be reality.
I have to agree with Gabriel. If the caricature is so inaccurate, why aren't we bombing Iran? Why aren't we even threatening to bomb Iran? Sometimes I agree with Ezra Pound's assessment of the West as a "botched civilization/An old bitch gone in the teeth." Our enemies slaughter schoolchildren while we give our enemies notice when we're going to bomb a particular area. We let them hide weapons in mosques because we're to afraid of offending the people who want to slaughter us. One of the primary arguments against the Iraq war was that it would "inflame the Arab street and provide a recruiting tool for jihadists" as though our foreign policy should be conducted so as not to piss off people who already want nothing more than to destroy us. I'm not suggesting we deliberately kill schoolchildren, but that's the difference in strength of will between us and them. They'll do whatever is necessary. We won't.
As usual you have been doing some great posts.
Thanks.
But on this I think it has more to do with PC gone amok. We are now not allowed to disparage any group.
Women (mothers), gays, blacks or any other minority.
That left us with only middle aged white men (fathers).
Your editor is not very friendly.
It won't allow blo gsp ot. to be used in the URL.
I also think that the caricature is accurate.
I think the west is more like Dr Jeckel and Mr. Hyde. The very proper civilized doctor laid back non-violent very reserved full of self hate about the last time Hyde was brought out and run amok. To the average street punk looking for a easy mark the good doctor looks like a easy hit weak, restrained, self doubting but little does he know even thou currently held back in the good doctor lives Mr. Hyde just waiting to run amok again. Little does he know the more he hits and angers the good doctor the less he restrains the Mr. Hyde who once released runs amok?
The West still have their Hyde, Barbarian, Imperial, Warrior, whatever you wish to call it, it exist. The self hating doctor the LLL’s the pacifist, the pansies restrain the Hyde so long. The Islamic Radicals believe their hype that the West is dead ripe for the taking ignoring the Hyde they know exists. They do at their own risk the only question is how many dead, how many attacks, how many useless sacrifices to the alter of appeasement, how much pain before the western good doctor reverts to the Hyde. How much.
#6 from C-Low --
And isn't it a concern that the longer Mr. Hyde is restrained, the more carnage he will unleash when he is let loose?
You find an American city nuked or under significant chemical/bio attack, and you'd better bet that Damascus and Tehran will be burned to the ground in the end, quite possibly along with every other major capital in the region before it's over.
The Euros may have a differing take, but there are enough Americans, even among the anti-Iraq war crowd, who have no problem leveling schools filled with children if they feel they are under attack. If the terrorists and others make good on their claims, that is exactly what will happen.
Which is why I wonder if it wouldn't be easier just to start now.
Cheers
It's accurate until it's not. Whether the breaking point is a nuke exploding in a Western city or something less (I think it's probably much less -- the next time an airliner is flown into a building would do it, so would an announcement by Iran that it owns a nuke), once we're pushed to that point, the West/US is going to be like a grizzly bear poked in the ribs with a sharp stick while napping. The difficulty in pacifying Iraq won't be a deterrent to a violent reaction by the West/US; rather, it will likely cause the reaction to be far more violent than it would have been, seeking not nation building, but a quick decisive end to the threat, regardless of who or what might be in the way, as well as seeking to make a deterrence-producing example. Memories are too short -- it hasn't really been that long, but people seem to have forgotten that the West is capable of great violence when threatened -- we did Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then killed a million or more communists in Korea and then did it again in Vietnam. We wouldn't hesitate to do it all over again, once the threat is perceived. Some of the leadership in Tehran probably see nukes as an insurance policy, but the clearer heads are probably starting to realize that even a single nuke under Iran's control will be seen by a majority of people in the US as justifying a preemptive strike violent enough to get rid of the nukes and fully decapitate the regime -- but in a single day, rather than over 3 years.