Toons, Outrage
Well, Christopher Hitchens in Slate doesn't hold back. And he's on to part of the problem. Similar to the part I'm onto. What he calls childish, I call insecurity. It's wierd to agree with him, even partly. I mean, he's Christopher Hitchens!
I wouldn't go so far as to say the religion or faith are the culpable causes here (as he does), but would go so far as to say that confusing comment on the psychotic members of a religion for comment on the whole and all its believers, due to insecurity, is one of the culpable causes.
(And as for the White House making statements that limit an until now perfectly normal element of free speech in order pacify these unreasonable (thier actions show them to be so) people, well, that's a sign of fear on our part that we simply should not have. It signals a weakness in relation to our enemies and potential enemies I'd rather we not have or at least not put on official public display.)
The source of this particular obession of mine: Regina Schwartz's The Curse of Cain. (Some info on that here and here.)Identities founded on scarcity (a limited number of blessings from the divine, a vague sense of persecution and constant need for self-defense, paranoid abusive power, and so forth) tend to lead to easy outrage, quick violence, and constant need to kill people who "behave". Schwartz's text suggests that in response to remembering a living in these narratives of scarcity, we should forget them. Of course, that can't happen. So, instead of taking the text at its work, take it at its subtext. Creating climates of security (not militarily enforced security) of idenity, of self, of resources might be a better approach. In other words, between me and the other, the other's existence and difference should not automatically be interpreted as a threat to my being and identity (unless, say, his difference means that ignoring human rights is a-ok.) . In that world, a cartoon rolls off and people save their engery and outrage for real threats -- like, oh I don't know, being stoned to death becuse one's husband dreamed that one committed adultery, or one elopes with a beloved instead of marrying the man one's father essentially sold one to, or being one of the c.500,000 women and children sold in to the sex slave trade every year. That is a real threat, a real persecution, a real offense. About which these particular outraged Muslims, and our own frequently outraged Christians, seem to do very precious little at all.
In short, climbing up on one's moral high-horse, or moral war-horse as the case may be, is likely a sign that one is not so sure at all that one's own morality is in order. (I say, realizing I just put my foot in the stirrup.) At any rate, proof again that you can't reason with people who have no sense of humor or satire or self-critique.
And for a fun, but on point, rant in this general direction, go here: .