Why Western Accomplishment Provokes Outrage
I don’t know if Matt Walsh and Megyn Kelly wear the same brand of frilly panties. That’s not the point. What’s twisting their briefs out of all proportion is inane. Those two must be packing a lot more of that prickly Celtic DNA than I am. When a pitiful creature like Wajahat Ali can get your Irish up, you’ve gone back to the “am not, are too” playground. If you leave that chip on Euro-phobic shoulders alone, it might fall off by itself.
When you come from a culture teeming with abundance and creativity it’s less than charitable to rub people’s noses in it.
Ali’s “I’ll show those white people” hate video pits the man grappling tooth and nail with Joe Goebbels, Richard Spence, William Pierce, David Duke, and the gamut of crackpots who’d bother trifling about the historical accuracy of Yakub inventing whitey on Patmos some millennia ago. Some people are allowed to wear swastikas with impunity. They can be entertaining. Who didn’t get a laugh hearing Joy Reid say people of European descent didn’t invent anything while speaking on a podcast proving the opposite.
Anyone bothered by having 100 percent of his ancestors from west of 60 degrees east longitude and north of the Mediterranean Sea is beneath pathetic. Anyone suggesting the tribes from there had no culture is functionally illiterate. Western culture permeates the globe. It would oppress readers compiling the number of customs, practices, devices, and even lifestyles — now common in the remotest spots on Earth — that people prone to sunburn came up with. Squabbling over it is as sensible as debating which way tomorrow’s sunrise is coming from.
None of this puts anybody else down. Everyone — who means no harm — is welcome to the party. That people from elsewhere make magnificent contributions to human welfare is not in dispute. Still, Europe and North America together comprise less than 25 percent of habitable landmass. The burden of development in developing countries falls on the occupants of them. El Norte cannot be the perpetual solution. Constitutional republicanism appears to be the closest thing to a political panacea yet known. Wherever it has failed the denizens of the nation must simply try harder. How else did the U.S. thrive after its devastating Civil War?
Everywhere has had its share of dictators, demagogues, misanthropes, mass murderers and villains. Superior technology has enabled the most destructive of them. But isn’t it the rust in the spear? It also enables convenience, comfort, reduced suffering, and longer life. Greta Thunberg is on the same course as Ted Kaczynski.
Getting down into the slop with the Reids and the Alis leads straight back to where Hitler and the like would take us all. Competition is good for business, tribalism is good for violent combat. It is redundant to point any of this out. Without good doses of history we can’t learn from mistakes. Wallowing in the sins of forefathers around the clock however, is what kept Hatfields and McCoys slaughtering each other. Wajahat’s loathing for the land he has adopted runs so gut deep it plumbs into cuisine.
Hence, I’ll state my preferences with no apologies to anyone. When starving after swimming the Atlantic all afternoon spaghetti Bolognese with mixed greens tops my list. Some dish that originated in the Pamirs never comes to mind. I’ll take Dover Sole, a mustard rubbed rack of lamb, chicken saltimbocca, schnitzel, Hungarian goulash, and a score of other menu items before thinking of leaving the continent. I can go Thai or sushi now and then, sure, but the idea that Euro-cuisine alone leaves a palate bereft is silly. Adding new things to the mix is no indication that its dietary predecessors were inferior. Looking over a Delmonico’s menu from the 19th century would leave very few salivating for kabobs.
When it comes to literature can anyone imagine the picaresque genre out of Spain if the Moors remained in charge? Sun Tzu gives excellent tactical advice but his oeuvre is a bit sparse on the laughs and heartbreaks you’ll get from Fielding, Hugo, Dostoyevsky, or Cervantes. The world has an insatiable appetite for entertainment generated by the West. Going round with people enraged about movie actors with complexions like Thomas Edison’s makes as much sense making a stink about the rarity of ridge runners from Appalachia in Noh productions.
Denigrating American chicken dishes is about as close as Ali gets to funny. If he thinks a bird on a skewer is never dry it can only be by avoiding that fare. Pakistan has a population over three and one-half times the size of the UK while producing about one-fortieth as many books. The U.S. publishes at least 80 times as many titles, if you include self-published screeds, the factor exceeds one thousand. That explains why a writer like Waj stoops to salvos in the kitchen rather than the publishing house.
The very reason applying yardsticks to compare ethnic accomplishment is called “racist” is the sad reality of how far behind some people are. The fact that everyone knows is that Westerners hit the cultural lottery. That’s exactly what drives aimless dolts nuts. Watching them melt down in sour grapes is delicious fun. The cultural world marches on around them.
When you come from a culture teeming with abundance and creativity it’s less than charitable to rub people’s noses in it. But humbly bowing before the ungrateful raving of lunatics is taking etiquette a bit too far. If Wajahat really wants to gather traction he should convert to Hinduism. Giving up beef would be a small price to pay for the right to say how bad whiteness was in a past life.
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