Were We Merely the Atheists in the Foxhole?

Grouchy Conservative Pundits has a brief discussion of my recent post “Another One Bites His Tongue” on one of its forum pages. You can find the debate here.

One member of the forum raised a question that deserves consideration. Originally I’d planned just to put a mention of their conversation in the comments of that first post. However the “comment” grew into a full size post, maybe because - despite its brevity - this is really a full-sized question:

Were they [he is referring to Gates of Vienna here - D] bitter when PJM tossed out the great majority of the initially included blogs, or were they just glad to be left included ? I’ll at least echo rayra’s sentiments here. On a personal or a blog level, there’s plenty of sudden conversion when YOU get flushed…

Another forum member suggested that perhaps we were the atheists in the foxhole when it came to our experience with PJM.

Ah yes, indeed! As I said in an email recently, it reminds me of the old aphorism, “First they came for the Jews, but I wasn’t a Jew…”

On the other hand, I wasn’t aware that PJM “tossed out the great majority of initially included blogs”…must’ve missed that one. With my energy level, you miss a whole lotta stuff, which is one reason I don't post on "breaking" news. It's also the reason I don't post as often as I'd like.

It's also the reason I didn’t follow PJM doings much even before we became anathema. After October 2007 we were too busy trying to survive the onslaught from Chazzer and off-the-wall attacks like the so-called “Sanity Squad” podcast. Their diagnosis that Charles was the one with integrity while I was obviously fearful of him seemed bizarre. Still does. This fearfulness could be detected in my voice, they claimed. But what they were hearing was a voice shaking with angry indignation at their ignorance of the issues in the conflict Chazzer initiated out of the blue. You know shrinks; if you demur, you’re in denial…No, they never revisited that original diagnosis to my knowledge. At least no “sorry about that” message has come across the transom. Surely they watched Charles’ disintegration. Surely his state of mind made them wonder if they’d been mistaken? If they ever publicly retracted their misinformed “diagnosis” no one ever sent us an email about it (which is how I learned of Instapundit’s remarks).

My favorite line in their podcast about us and Charles?
- - - - - - - - -
One of them actually asked “is Vlaams Belang a person?” Another startling inquiry was (paraphrased), “well, if they [Europeans] don’t like it, why don’t they just form another political party?” One of the many OMG moments in all this.

What I do vividly remember was an incident with PJM early on in the game. A writer named Luke was invited to join. I looked at his blog and found it interesting. Shortly after being issued an invitation, he was summarily kicked out of PJM because his material was inappropriate, or he had written things in the past they didn’t like. Maybe it had to do with writing or having written porn? I didn’t see any when I read his blog, by the way.

The circumstances regarding Luke are lost now (this darn fibromyalgia causes “fibrofog”, aka CRS: “Can’t Remember Sh**” - CRS was the official diagnosis from my doctor). However, PJM’s treatment of Luke was troubling. I sent the guy a sympathy note. We corresponded briefly (he had fibromyalgia too, if I remember correctly). However, I didn’t make a public issue of it because I didn’t understand the circumstances.

The difference between the mass purge and our situation was categorical. I don’t know the reasoning behind the “mass purge”, but I am well aware of why we were booted: PJM’s politically correct language laws went into high gear.

A guest poster broke these laws in a speculative essay considering the long-term fate of Europe given its massive Muslim immigration. Was genocide possible, he asked. Could it be avoided? Again, it was speculation, not normative speech. Those folks who are hampered by their implanted politically correct blinders do not or cannot differentiate between two very different kinds of thought.

So El Inglés crossed the p.c. line by daring to discuss the horrible possibility of “genocide”. Notice that this line was also crossed by Hapless Harry when he made the common-sense observation that Obama’s light skin and his ability to speak like the average educated American would be advantageous in his campaign.

Had a more powerful blog posted our “Surrender, Genocide… or What?” essay, PJM could’ve ignored it. But CJ was still involved with PJM then… and we are a smallish blog. One of the shrinks from “Sanity Squad” also jumped into the fray with a most unprofessional diagnosis of El Inglés based solely on his essay and on Charles’ reaction to the post. I remain flabbergasted by that because this same shrink himself had been speculatively predicting, in a most dysphoric and anxious manner, the coming demise of Israel.

Well, here we are quite a bit later and Israel continues to chug along, while Shrinkwrapped’s ally in dissing El Inglés has long since unraveled and returned to his Lefty darkness.

Of El Inglés’ essay, he opined:

LGF links to a post at Gates of Vienna that illustrates how rationality can become perverted in service to regressive tendencies.

Honestly, he really said that. He also said:

Charles Johnson’s reaction [to this post - D] is understandable and appropriate.

You ought to read the comment section of that post, though you might not be able to make it through all seventy-one of them. Here are snips from two, near the top.

First, from Morton Doodslag:

I read the item in question twice at GOV, and I repudiate utterly Charles Johnson’s snarky description of its content. In order to make his point he has resorted to the same kind of infamous inflation with which he embarrassed himself in the Vlaams Belang affair. Most saliently, I cannot find ANY exhortation for genocide in the article, and I encourage readers at this site to see for themselves. I do see a well disturbing but fairly well reasoned examination of the dilemma we face, and the likelihood of several possible scenarios which might unfold.

This schism within the anti-jihad camp boils down to whether one believes that Islam is or is not an existential threat.

I believe it is. I would also love to avoid “option 3”. But I don’t see the Muslims doing much of anything to doctrinally defeat the Jihad and supremacist strands of Islam.

Another commenter, Paul, said:

…the essay in question is an excellent shock piece. It forces us to look at a possible future. It forces readers to offer alternatives, but as they offer alternatives, we find that most are not realistic. It’s not good enough to recoil from talk of genocide … because genocidal action or extreme violence has always been a part of the human condition and we in the West are very capable of extreme violence when pushed … Hiroshima comes to mind. Europe may be beyond the “reasonable” alternative phase. It is this possible reality that the writer looks at.

Charles and ShrinkWrapped are finding offense in the notion of genocide, without taking the context of the essay into consideration. They are recoiling from even a discussion of genocide, when in fact, that discussion is vital if exactly the predictions within the essay are to be avoided….

He’s nailed that one: Leftists’ (and here Shrinkwrapped reverts to his original thinking, before his ‘conversion’ to the right) aversion to particular words appears reflexive. Leftists are so trapped within that paradigm that they no longer see the bars on the window. As I said before, it’s not cortical blindness, it’s a verbal one. I’d also add that it is a kind of moral perversion, this frantic attempt to silence others by character attacks.

It’s worth going over there just to see El Inglés’ response to this attack. It reads as though he’s trying to calm an agitated soul. Obviously, he struck a nerve.

I wonder if Shrinkwrapped has ever revisited his opinion of Charles’ “appropriateness” as the latter became more obviously separated from reality? Such public revisions take courage.

Anyway, as I said, PJM did us a favor, so my feelings toward them are mixed. The blogger who most influenced me , Wretchard, is there. So is Phyllis Chesler, the best of the anti-honor killing writers. The woman’s research is invaluable. Nothing prepares you better for understanding this evil than actually living it, which Ms. Chesler did as a young woman stuck in Pakistan.

Am I bitter about PJM’s unjust accusation? Sure, but it grows fainter all the time. As I’ve metabolized and processed the whole thing many times, the trauma continues to heal. The nightmare which began when we were blindsided immediately by Charles after the 2007 Counter Jihad conference, a nightmare which continued into 2008, has become an integral part of a larger tapestry of learning and experience.

Thus, every time some Biggie puts up a post about Chazzer’s implosion, which was really a simple reverting to his original Leftism, the whole thing fades a bit more into the background noise of life, especially if I get around to commenting on their opinion. Even though few bloggers (M. Simon and Emperor Misha are two remarkable and blesséd exceptions) have acknowledged their alignment with Chazzer as a mistake in judgment, over time we were vindicated. That is a balm.

David Hume put forward benevolence and justice as our two most indispensable virtues. He considered them fundamental to both individual happiness and to the health of the group. In this whole affair, those were the two things I wanted and was denied as the public persecution of our blog continued.

Now, however, my perspective has changed. Our readers were repeatedly sympathetic, which is an example of benevolence. Their continued faith in us proved essential to our ability to continue despite the ugly attacks.

Justice was served up to Charles on a myriad of silver platters. Some portions consisted of a rough, uncontained “justice”. In fact, more than a few attacks against CJ went way past fair dealing, devolving into savagery. It may have been karma, but the assaults became brutal mockery; I stopped reading them. When feelings of sympathy for Chazzer began to flow from my heart, I knew his attackers had gone beyond the bounds of justice and into persecution. That’s not a fate I’d wish on anyone. Even Charles Johnson.

In sum, the issue is largely resolved in my heart and my mind. That doesn’t mean that I won’t talk about it again. If nothing else, the persecutions and betrayals allowed us to experience a heady freedom. The kind you get when there’s nothing left to lose.

As CJ’s sad trajectory continues I’ll probably have something or other to say on occasion. Betrayal is the most common of human experiences and also the most upsetting. Metabolizing deep betrayal in an ongoing process, so stay tuned.

Or not. If you find the subject tedious just scroll on by to something more interesting…

I suggest y’all visit the conversation at Grouchy Conservative Pundits.