America, You Look Like an Arab Country Right Now. Welcome to the club.

[geek tragedy]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/america-you-look-like-an-arab-country-right-now-214678

Dear America,

We have been watching the drama of your presidential elections with much interest and curiosity for some time now. It’s hard not to notice the many similarities between our own countries and yours. From fiery inauguration protests and bitter disputes about crowd size, to the intelligence service’s forays into politics and the rise of right-wing extremists, it appears that you are traveling very much in our direction—and at the same time, like us, becoming a curiosity for foreign correspondents trying to explain what’s happening in your region to the world. You might be distraught about where you are headed, but we aren’t! Perhaps this will be an opportunity to put our differences aside and recognize how similar we are.

Let’s start at the beginning. During the campaign we were surprised to learn of the influence that the head of the American mukhabarat (state security, i.e. your FBI) can wield over the election process, simply by choosing to pursue a certain line of investigation. As you may know, this has been a constant feature of our politics since independence. Our surprise turned to astonishment when we started to witness the blossoming feud between the then-president-elect and the American mukhabarat, another important feature of Arab politics.

On top of that, we started to hear reports of foreign meddling in your elections, which some say may have influenced the result. Of course, we are quite familiar with that situation, too, not least because of the efforts of your own administrations over the decades. Yet it came as a surprise to hear talk of “foreign hands” and “secret agendas” in a country like America. We sympathize.

On the bright side, this was also the moment that the conspiracy theories started to spread. You know us; we’re quite fond of conspiracy theories—particularly when they involve plots by external powers—and consider ourselves connoisseurs of the genre. Your plots are a bit rough around the edges, we have to admit, but top marks for creativity. Was the election of Trump a Russian conspiracy? Was talk of the Russian conspiracy a liberal conspiracy to undermine Trump? Did the mukhabarat leak information to help Trump? Did the mukhabarat leak information to hurt Trump? Was media coverage of Trump’s mukhabarat conspiracy theories part of a liberal conspiracy theory to bring him down? They’re all so deliciously complex and open-ended, much like our own.

Things started to get even more interesting when your liberals started to rally around the heroic CIA branch of the mukhabarat in order to fend off the threat of extremists in power and external meddling from Russia. You will recall that we have had similar experiences in recent years in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria, and we were disappointed when the world didn’t understand our position. Nonetheless, it was moving to see these public displays of affinity for state security, the enlightened guardians of the nation.

Painful precisely because it's on point.

[guillaumeb]

1. Can Sharia law be far behind?

Many in the GOP express a fondness for Bible based law.

[geek tragedy]

2. we're more like a classic Middle Eastern strongman state than theocracy.

More Mubarak/Sisi/Erdogan than Iran or Saudi Arabia

[guillaumeb]

3. Very true.

And as in any strongman state, the family and associates of the strongman will profit immensely. But the façade of religiosity is necessary to convince the gullible GOP voters that all is right with the Empire.

[geek tragedy]

4. Even Saddam got religion in the approach to the first Gulf war.

Arafat also played that game.

[guillaumeb]

7. Hitler also adopted the pretense of conventional religion.

All part of the classic sociopathic style of knowing how to project the appearance of normalcy.

[Bill Fishlore]

5. The American Chameleon

As a nation, our Gesellschaft is made up of dozens of frequently incompatible Gemeinschaften strung together by the Enlightenment abstractions of the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution. Americans do not share a common core of community values, only a shifting consensus derived from the lowest common denominator.

As a result, we have a very strong tendency to become like those we hate. We don't share their values or beliefs, of course, but our social and political styles are quick to adapt American versions of the things we most detest in our enemies.

The War on Women has its counterpart in Sunni Sharia. Examples go back into our history...

[geek tragedy]

6. welcome to DU! I agree that the only American value that really exists

is the need to pretend that there are American values.

[guillaumeb]

8. There is one constant value in the US Empire:

That the Empire must be strong.