Забавные рассуждения (всё по-английски)

http://daashedyot.blogspot.com/2005/04/black-white.html#comments

Da'as Hedyot
Definitely not da'as torah.

Monday, April 04, 2005

Black & White

One of the characteristic tendencies of a product of the chareidi world is that he/she tends to view the world in absolutist black and white terms. Of course, it's not only chareidim who do this. In fact, last week Dilbert (the real Dilbert, not Dr. Dilbert) pointed out that he deals with such people too. On an old post of mine, I quoted a commenter who said to me:

"What puzzles and saddens me is that even "burn outs" from the "frum" world continue to view religiousness as black or white. The view seems to be that you're either in for a penny, in for a pound - or not, and nothing in between."

I'm sure what I'm about to say is obvious, but I want to spell it out anyway: Using the term "black and white" doesn't fully express how fundamental this is. It's not just about seeing an issue in stark contrasts and not appreciating subtlety or nuance. It's about all sorts of extremes. The idea that it's All or Nothing. That there's only ONE right answer. That it's Us vs. Them. Tradition vs. Modernity. You're either with us or against us. Complexity vs. Simplicity. Religious vs. Secular.

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Игнорируйте, если американская политика вас не колышет

Look Back at Anger
Why the "vast left-wing conspiracy" failed to unseat President Bush.

BY JACOB LAKSIN
Tuesday, April 5, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

It was several months before Election Day. George W. Bush and John Kerry had pulled to a statistical dead heat, and the pundits were poring over the polls in an effort to divine the reasons for the latest shift in public opinion. But MoveOn.org had more pressing concerns. It was moved to ask its network of true believers: "Why aren't we talking about a landslide in November?"

Such groundless conviction "was not at all unusual in the world of MoveOn," writes Byron York in "The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy." The triumphalism flowed, he notes, from a deceptively simple rationale. Feeling a passionate contempt for the president and his policies, the MoveOn rank-and-file labored under the illusion that they represented the majority of the American people.

They weren't the only ones. In the months following the 9/11 attacks, there emerged an activist movement of left-wing loyalists, Democratic operatives and deep-pocketed financiers all united under one aim--to defeat President Bush--and all confident that history was turning in their direction. Mr. York, the White House correspondent for National Review, gives us an engaging account of the partisan passions that made this "the biggest, richest, and best organized movement in American political history" and that ultimately proved its undoing.
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