CULTURE CLASH AND CIVILIZATION CLASH---MUSLIMS WILL ALWAYS HATE US

(warning: this is very long) The purpose of this piece and my others about the Mideast is to jolt you with the fact that we are in a playground staredown with a world that believes in God passionately, and believes with a religious fervor in their cultural past; in the case of China they have "Confucianized", thrown out Western Marxist Leninism in favor of their past. In 1903 most people of the United States believed in the Bible LITERALLY, meaning they saw no allegory; Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale and so on. Every word was considered true. We are in a world where billions of people believe every word in the Koran is true; every word in all the Hindu Vedas and Upshanads are true and they memorize them. They devoutly pray to their God(s) every day. We must understand this better or we are toast and will continue to be "puzzled" by world hostility. A solution to the "puzzle" of hostility is the purpose of these essays.

We are in a Culture War we may lose, and we don't seem to know it.

Have you ever had the urge to drop into a friend's Bar Mitzvah and read from the Koran? Or tell all those stupid women to stop their whining at an Irish wake?, I mean for no reason other than to piss everybody off? In many parts of the world our Bill of Rights, displays of sexuality, both homo and hetero, is like cutting a big one at Easter Sunrise Services and grinning while those around you fight inhaling the noxious fumes.

World wide, we are facing the Four billion man line and a million line backers with an offense of limited man power and unlimited destructive power; meaning we can kill the four billion plus their linebackers or we lose. That is the way we are looking at the world but we don't seem to know it.

It is possible to face reality. We are looking down the throats of four billion people who hate what they believe we stand for and what they think we want to do to their cultures if they allow our democratic "system" to prevail. Our system is seen as increasingly secularist, anti- religion, and against "Devine" law whether inspired by Koran, Talmud, Bible, or Confucius. Translated: we are immoral. We oppose morality. We seek to impose our filthy immorality on everyone else.

How did we get to this point and what can we do? Four billion people lined up against us is not something to be addressed with slogans, military success, or money. Numbers just happen to be power.

No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

So you do your thing and I'll do mine, and in the end it'll all be fine......

Two corny adages that define two generations. The first defines the so-called "Greatest Generation", the one that led us during the Great Depression and World War II, and the second defines the 60's generation, the Boomer or Anti-War generation. Or maybe the Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll generation, who knows? The first adage, taken from a much longer (and boringly British upper class) piece by a guy named John Donne, told a generation that we had to look after one another because a thing that affects one person effects every person. The second, taken from a work by a guy named Frederick Solomon Perls, told a generation that the only thing that counts is what the individual wants, and the heck with everyone else; "it's none of my business what YOU think of ME" is another way to look at it. We jokingly refer to the way we think New Yorkers apply this mantra as "Fuck you just in case". Which, by the way, is what many of us feel should be our policy toward all Muslim states. In fact I have a friend who sells a flag design of a snarling eagle crapping on the world with just such a slogan ($14.95 plus shipping)

Those two old adages can be taken too far. The "for whom the bell tolls" aphorism gave us a universal caring that embraced Communism, Fascism (socialism with an attitude), Socialism, and various collectivization practices where "we are all in this together" prevails over everything. In this country it also gave workers "rights", started the "Civil Rights" movement, created rules for business and labor, and demanded that we care for each other. This thinking got the U.S. through the worst depression of the industrial age without a revolution, won WWII, and confronted International Communism. It put Social Security, Bank Insurance (our deposits were not insured before 1933), unemployment benefits, and progressive income taxes into the culture. This adage also meant that people defined what "group" was best, so we had Communist Spies, gulags, suppression of dissent (Hungary etc.), Elks Clubs, Labor Orgs, Rotary Clubs and so on. This group-think largely divided us along labor and business lines and eventually led to an almost totally criminal labor movement and a "closed management" style of corporate governance; that corporate style led to business criminality illuminated by the S&L crises. These criminal activities were all "group" activities where the entire corporation involved every employee in the sale of worthless securities, land deals, and so on. Crooked labor unions coerced business into partnerships, corrupt business "got" crooked labor unions to join with them. We soon had a collective corruption masquerading as free enterprise. Union meetings were held in their hotels in Vegas and management had shareholder meetings in foreign countries they were bribing.

"You do your thing etc....." brought us rampant individualism. The current "Gay" Episcopal Bishop who deserted his two daughters to run off with another "man" is a disgusting example; he deserted his children because he "was doing his thing" but made OK because he left his family for another "man" instead of another woman (if you need to puke I'll understand). "Do your own thing "means everybody has a right to whatever it is they want to do and everybody does what they want to do; pornography, drugs, adultery, child molestation, homosexuality, stealing from your company, and almost every other individually defined behavior became OK, or OK under certain circumstances (your wife saying it's OK being the main circumstance). Doing our own thing has brought us a rebellion against big government, against government regulation, an entrepreneurial business climate (for good and ill), the demise of the large labor unions (except for the UAW and Teamsters), and an "almost anything goes so long as it feels good" society. Churches are bad, government is bad (except for foreign thugocracies), unions are bad, business is bad, the political parties are bad, God should mind her own business; in short every group is bad when defined by the "do your own thing" individual. The individual demands that other individuals and groups agree with them 100% or they are bad. Single agenda politics is one part of this.

The "for whom the bell tolls" generation went overboard and the population wanted something different. Younger people were appalled at the corruption; I remember when I shot my first movie I had to go to an older guy to learn how to bribe the city employees who blocked my camera shots til they were paid off. I didn't know how to do the bribe thing "right". Do you just walk up to them and hand them money? Do you call their union? Do you go downtown and give a bunch of money to a Councilman? None of those moron professors ever mentioned the real stuff. (You call the union guy and give him an envelope with $400 in it for this particular bribe; all twenties by the way) I didn't think "bribing" was something that actually took place. Once I learned the system I wanted to change it. And change it yesterday. So me and my pals embraced the "you do your thing" slogans. This has led us to the wide open culture we now show the world. And it is here that we are having our most serious problems right now. We will lose if we don't wake up. One of the few real intellectuals, Hannah Arendt, once pointed out in an essay called "On Power" (she could have sold a million copies had she called it "I Had Sex with my Dad and I Loved it" but you know how stupid those intellectuals can be). In this outstanding essay she points out that pointing guns at someone to control what they do is terror; Power is numbers, and numbers will always triumph eventually because the guys holding the guns get tired, careless, or just plain don't want to do it any more; at the end of Communism the Russian Army would not fire on their own people. Want to bet the Iranians won't fire on their own people? Religious thugs don't get as tired as most.

"What the world thinks of us is of no concern to us" will bite us in the jugular as we try to deal with the three main competing cultures on the planet: Confucianism (you know, like in "Confucius say, Virgin like balloon ? one prick, all gone"), Hinduism (the guys who drink their own piss for shit sakes), and the Muslim block (Men who dress in robes are always pissed off); almost four billion people who don't like what we show; or to put it more precisely, hate what we show them and conclude what we show them is what we are. And to a billion Hindus you are what you DO. Our culture of rampant sexual excess portrayed in movies, plays, and books; a society that displays gay priests and bishops, unlimited excessive use of drugs and alcohol, the widespread family breakups, and rampant crime; these are things that cannot be viewed by these other cultures as desirable; how this stuff came to be desirable to us would be the subject of another essay. Our culture is viewed as Satan, evil, and every other synonym for just plain bad. These other societies are looking at us. They are evaluating what we say we are; then they compare it what we actually project and hold it up to their own cultures. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights has produced an obscene society to them; a thoroughly despicable Hollywood culture of depravity.

The comparison is odious to them. We are obscene.

But we have money.

So here's a shock: China is NOT Communist. Today it is a society based on Confucius (500BC). They base life on---order, family responsibility, hard work, collectivism, discipline, and moderation in food and drink--China is becoming a successful economic power . Money makes you a successful society everywhere except the Middle East; "He who has the gold makes the rules" is a widely applied aphorism. Asian cultures in South East Asia are becoming Muslim or Confucian (Singapore, Taiwan). When you are successful you become a "role model" for other countries and cultures. Muslim "success" is a negative success; destroy America; bring America down instead of bringing yourself up.

China is culturally older than Europe, Africa, older even than Egypt and Sumeria. What they are doing is reaching back into the cultural past, and their cultural past always regarded the West as barbarians, cultural inferiors, and a people to be scorned; this includes the "new" Muslims, the Japanese (regarded as a separate culture by most academics), Christians, and to a certain extent the Hindus of India. Increasingly, they are showing the world and Asia that there is an "Asian Way" that doesn't have to cough when America catches cold.

All of these cultures reject the gay Episcopal Bishop who deserted wife and two young daughters to engage in sodomy with another man (beyond disgusting to Muslim or Hindu); the serial sexual encounters by men and women with no regard for morality; ignoring family responsibilities; abandoning self discipline in favor of drugs, drink and debauchery; the lack of order to any moral principal; and no moderation in any phase of our Hollywodized lives. The direct opposite to cultural traits of Muslims, Confucians, and Hindus. When we say we are "right" we tread on sensibilities and cultures that are thousands of years old. When China intervened in the Hong Kong stock market to support their stocks it was a Confucian "collectivist" move, protecting the entire society and rejecting the individualism of Western markets, not Communist dictators riding roughshod over rules. They are "right" in their view and we are totally "wrong". And they proved it. They saved their stock market from random predators like George Soros (now raising money for people he probably believes will allow him to rig currency markets again), Nobel Prize winning predators like Long Term Capital Management, and so on. The currency speculation that had wrecked the economies of South East Asia was stopped dead by the Chinese actions. They "showed" Asia how to deal with the immoral West. George Soros was not going to wreck Hong Kong. Period. End of story.

China does not have a single period in their 5,000 year history where any form of democracy held sway. They have had autocrats of one kind or another for the entire period; theirs is a society ruled by tradition, a willingness to sacrifice for the "greater good", and the need for strong leadership. That is the Chinese way. It is impossible to overstate the influence of Confucianism on all of Asian thought. Everyone everywhere is at least partly Confucian. Politically, Confucius advocated a paternalistic government in which the sovereign is benevolent and honorable and the subjects are respectful and obedient. This is IT. No argument, and it's been this way, the Confucian Way, for more than 2,500 years.

Further, the philosophy teaches that original human goodness can become depraved through one's own destructive effort or through contact with an evil environment (the West). Communism tried to stamp this Confucius stuff out but now it is back. And we need to understand the difference between Communism and Confucianism as well as their similarities when dealing with them.

In largely Hindu India religion is an occupation to most of the nearly a billion Hindus . Their religion dates back to 1,500 BC. The basic (if you can apply such a word to this most complex of religions) tenant is that you are what you DO; not what you think. And what we are DOING in our culture is what they believe we are; drunks, drug addicts, sex perverts, serial seducers of women, and so on. They have a caste system which we disapprove of, they have "holy cows" we disapprove of, they regard certain trees and plants as sacred, and so on; we don't approve of anything one billion people regard as their religion. Some drink their own urine, we just hate that. Some sit under a tree for weeks without eating (how the hell are we supposed to open a McDonald's for such slime balls?), some will let crocs eat children without intervening because that's the way nature is (we really hate that), they kneel and pray EVERY morning so our secular elites can look upon them with scorn, and so on and so forth. Starting in 1,300BC and added upon til 900BC are the "Vedas" which Hindus memorize (like the Muslims do the Koran); some memorize the Upanishads as well. All this proves to us they are even dumber than Muslims. There can be no argument that the Hindu philosophy is the most complex on the face of the earth and that their religion is by far the oldest. They believe in hundreds of Gods as opposed to The One True God, if that isn't a pain in the ass.

What many of us (not so) secretly like about them when we are young men is that we think they worship their dicks. Like in Penis Worship. Many of us believe they are on the right track and we go over there to meditate about dicks and vaginas hoping for a lifetime of great pussy with no responsibilities because we are "holy"; "Not so fast Tonto!" Hindus live a Greek like mythology. In fact much of Greek mythology is derived from Hindu. Indians actually live Hindu myth. Re- inactors include Kapalikas, who carry skulls to reenact the myth in which Shiva beheaded his father, the incestuous Brahma, and was condemned to carry the skull until he found release in Benares (Oedipus anyone??); yogis who eat ordure (that's a dignified literary word for shit) or flesh in order to demonstrate their complete indifference to pleasure or pain; and then there is Shiva, which is also the deity whose phallus (dick to you illiterates) is the central shrine of all Shaiva temples and the personal shrine of all Shaiva householders. (One of my friends in show biz came back from "Meditating in India" with an idea for a movie he was going to call: "Ordure eating Phallus Worshipers of the East". He actually wrote it; all his friends decided to stay away from both him and India). Now this phallus worship is what many Westerners try to get into til they find out that Shiva's priapism resulted in his castration and the subsequent worship of his severed member (his actual goddam penis). This means it's not so sexy after all, in fact it's anti-sex. So Hinduism is an all around pain in the ass to Westerners, most of whom worship T&A anyway. Or more precisely, young T&A.

An even bigger pain in the ass is that half the Hindus seek the sacred and profane rewards of this world. THIS world, not the mythological stuff. They want health, wealth, children, family, and a good re-birth. Half the Hindus are materialists. You could say it's almost free enterprise with a lot of praying and severed dick worshiping. These religious bastards are going to med school, university, and inventing bombs and things. These people are the part of the culture of India that is responsible for their exploding economy. GDP growth in excess of 8% for the past five years. One thing about all of them: they believe in God (Gods), totally. As they prosper they look down on us. They don't think we are so hot.

What we show all these other cultures as a better way, is our "culture", not our Bill of Rights. One rap song is enough for everyone to say "get out of my life". India is now a certified power. They have the bomb, a ton of money, a successful university system turning out some of the world's top programmers and scientists. They are a net food exporter. They think they are every bit as good as us. They are right, because they have money too.

So we better re-think our dealings with all of these people before it is too late. We are outnumbered. Europe is a decaying and putrid corpse. The U.S. has become a culture that is selling out to personal indulgences that four billion people hate and regard with contempt.

This hatred of our values includes the various dictatorships and thugocracies scattered about the world who care about nothing other than power, but pretend a religiosity. Egypt, Sudan, our pals the Saudis, Palestine, the game players in Europe, and the posers in Latin America starting with drug enabler Mr. Fox in Mexico. We have to differentiate between cultures and political thugs. But some political thugs become religious thugs, while some religious zealots become criminal political leaders..

So where is the threat? Are Hindus going to visit your house and insist you join them in a urine cocktail? No. What about the Confucian Chinese? If we understand their philosophy we will understand that all of Asia wants to be Asia and not California (Kah-lee-foh-nee-ah, in Ah-nold speak). They want to do things "the Asian" way. They think that we can learn from them, that their way is better. One "Asian Way" that most Asian immigrants use to fund their businesses when they first arrive here revolves around the "Thirteen" (known by at least ten other names too). Thirteen people who have jobs form a unit. They pool their capital for thirteen weeks and then donate it by lot to one of them to start a business. They continue this process til all thirteen have received the largesse. Not all business succeed, but a hell of a lot of them do. That is why you see so many successful Asian business enterprises start up"from nothing". American Blacks refuse to learn from this and continually whine that Asians get money from China. They don't, they generate it themselves. In the Asian Way. The Asian Way is not to go to Uncle for a welfare handout.

Numbers is Power, eventually. We are outnumbered. So are we to fear a mob of Hindus opening up some fast-ordure restaurants? A bunch of Asians attempting to make us memorize the two books of the Shih Shu by Monday morning or else? Won't happen. What can happen is the Muslim Terrorists representing the Wahabi wing of their "religion" will continue their reign of terror. This is the only segment of the four billion we have to fear. But we do need to understand their "ways" if we want to do business.

SO WHAT DO WE DO IF WE WANT TO "PROTECT" THEIR CULTURES
1. Only make movies that Muslims, Hindus, and the Chinese government approve of.
2. Only allow books to be published that Muslims, Hindus, and the Chinese approve of.
3. Only allow music that is approved by the above groups.
4. All our laws must be cleared by a religious council. And the Bill of Rights must not be mentioned in mixed company (Westerners and others)
5. Force everyone to memorize either the Bible, Koran, Shih Shu, or Vedas.
6. Force everyone to live by one of the above.
7. Stop with this voting bullshit, that is what is causing all the trouble.

Because that is what we'd have to do; some of that is what our schools and universities are doing to us right now so people don't get their "feelings" hurt. The other way is to show these other cultures that if they leave us alone we will certainly leave them alone. But if you attack us, we will strike back. Hard. There is positive evidence that Muslim theocratic dictatorships will be overthrown, eventually. Unlike the other major movements in the world, the Muslims cannot hold up success as a model.

We can, and should, continually point out to the world the other cultures not practicing terror are successful; every bit as successful as America. Eating ordure can build character, if you do it right. American entrepreneurial spirit will produce a video on that: "Ordure Cooknin': Ordure Teriyaki, Ordure Alfredo and 50 other exciting Meditational meals: $19.95 plus shipping. Toilet paper not included. Just to piss India off.

Anyway, some stuff to think about.