The two faces of evil

[rogerashton]

This could go in GD, but will probably fit better here.

It seems to me -- increasingly -- that George W. Bush* and Osama bin Laden are just two faces of the same enemy: worldwide religious fundamentalism. I am NOT saying that there is any conspiracy between Bush and bin Laden but that they are both products of the same reaction against the reality of globalized, secularized modern civilization. This means:

The global society and polity are now engaged in a wordwide civil war between religious fundamentalism and secular civilization. The forces are not organized on either side. Fundamentalists are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, with enough hatred to keep them apart, while the civilized majority are in denial. The methods of the fundamentalists are the same, however: terrorism when in opposition -- 9-11 and the Oklahoma Federal Building, beheadings and snipers cutting down abortiion providers -- and government sponsored attacks on civilians when they have the power to do it.

This is a civil war more like Bleeding Kansas or Bosnia-Herzegovina than it is like the War Between the States or the Spanish Civil War -- and those examples teach that unorganized civil wars can be even more barbaric than the organized ones. (An ancestor of mine was a Confederate bushwhacker in SW Missouri and later made a career as a gangster. But that's another story.)

The fundamentalists cannot win -- They hate one another too much. If the last secularist were killed, they would just attack one another and destroy one another. But that may very well be what will happen. We can foresee a world dominated by fundamentalist governments, Islamic, Christian, Hindu. armed with nuclear weapons and believing it doesn't matter if everybody dies. That is a far more frightening prospect than the nuclear stalemate of the 1950's -- 1980's. At least the Communist and Capitalist powers believed that megadeath was something to be prevented if possible.

For the same reason, the Fundamentalists cannot organize a united front, and never will. But there may be limited and contingent coordination between some of them, as there was between Hitler's Germany and Imperial Japan, and as represented by Christian Fundamentalist support for those Jewish Fundamentalists who claim all of Palestine as a divine grant.

On the other side, it is possible that those who reject Fundamentalism might form an international united front against it. The obstacle to such a united front is denial: the comfortable view that there are many sources of terrorism and that a fundamentalist-dominated government can ever have the will to oppose terrorism even when it comes from their fellow believers.

Fundamentalism will pass from the stage of history in a few decades. That is as nearly inevitable as anything can be. The question is how many innocent people will suffer or die in the process. A worldwide united front against fundamentalism might limit the suffering. That is the only hope I see. But how can it be brought about?

[LiberalEsto]

1. Education n/t

[Paradise]

2. religious fundamentalism is religious fundamentalism, wherever it breeds!

excellent post! thank you, rogerashton.