The Midwest versus the Middle East

by Dillon Freed
January 12, 2012

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/2066/the-midwest-versus-the-middle-east

I spent my holidays in the Midwest of the United States – the heart of America. I was born there, and though grew up elsewhere, I spent most summers in the area.

The Midwest is, in my opinion, the epitome of how a society should function – there is freedom without juvenile exhibition, tolerance without idiotic relativism, and compassion without therapeutic effeteness.

Of course, not everyone sees it that way.

Along the littoral of the United States many aver, admittedly without much error, that the people of the Midwest are mostly uneducated and more concerned with sports than, say, protests in Russia or the Arab Spring. Sure. That is no doubt true, and pathetic in a sense, but in another sense, it is a testament to just how good things are there. For the day the Middle East is more concerned with sports than much else will be a great day for the world.

And it is a blessing that Midwest Americans, in some respects, are apolitical and a historical – again uneducated. This is in stark contradistinction to the Middle East where the people, while not always technically educated, know history very well – too well. Indeed, you would be amazed by the enormous number of names, battles, treaties, foreign leaders, and dates even the most unschooled Middle Eastern Arab or Muslim driving a cab in New York City can recite. Bernard Lewis, the retired Princeton scholar of Near East studies, often alluded to the fact that Arabs and Muslims are very savvy about their past.

It seems only nations or peoples that feel oppressed or victimized are that highly concerned with their history. And such places and persons also seem upon examination prone to being unsettled, conspiratorial, jingoistic, chauvinistic, and exist, or are drifting into, or sending others into, a Hobbesian state (Leftist intellectuals appear to pick up on the danger of fixation with the history of one's nation as a latent possibility in Glenn Beck and the Tea Party Movement; yet, somehow fail to see the explicit reality of it in Islamic nations.)

To adduce, consider that Nazi Germany, wounded by the Versailles Treaty and ignominy of defeat, was very well aware of their past glory as spoken of by Tacitus in the book Germania and tried to recreate that glory. The Serbian Christians and Milosevic used the defeat at the Field of the Blackbirds by the Ottomans, during the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, as a rallying call, six hundred years later – to the day – in 1989 to kill all Muslims in the region. And let us not forget that bin Laden attacked on September 11th, the exact date that Ottoman forces were stayed at the "Gates of Vienna."

True, the people of the Midwest are aware of 1776 and vaguely of some other American history, but since they are happy and content in the present moment, reliving the past glory of the United States, is currently not a psychological necessity. (And that's certainly what makes Beck and the Tea Party starkly different and enormously less danger - if dangerous at all - than these other realms) Again, what a great day in human history it will be when the Middle East is less historically knowledgeable and cares little about politics – it will probably mean they are freer, more tolerant and flourishing economically.

To some, the Midwest may appear to be similar to the Mideast in one disreputable respect: both seem to share distaste for nuance and gradation. There are very simple dualisms that each live by. For example, most any farmer of the Midwest will tell you that terrorists deserve to be killed and the American military deserve to be honored.

Now this analysis is simple, accurate, and wise even if not intellectual.

In the Middle East, they also live by this split between good and evil; however, they, like some of their unwitting intellectual counterparts in the West, invert the good and evil. And that's when dualisms become deadly dangerous. For instance, to many in the Middle East, Islamic terrorists are heroes/freedom-fighters and the American military evil.

The way to disabuse this philosophical error is for the Mideast to divorce themselves from the Koranic way of life (which often sanctions evil and prohibits good), and align with a philosophical system that has both a rationally-deduced value set as well as contains spiritual common sense (i.e. "all men are endowed with their Creator with certain inalienable rights…" – not religious but spiritual. The Koran does, at many parts, contain such common sense - the parts which do not must be removed or reinterpreted to pacify them - just as the Western world did and continues to do to the Bible.)

While on my travels, I also noticed how rich the "poor," economically bombed, Midwest of America still is. It truly is a land of have and have-mores. Consider my father, a construction worker in a state without much construction going on. He has four televisions (one of them a large flat screen), two cars (one a truck with 400,000 miles on it), two refrigerators, three sets of golf clubs, a pond, three acres of land, a computer, VCR, DVD players, surround sound system, a black Labrador dog, hundreds of CDs, a small weight room, a nice bath tub with jets, two bathrooms, he and his wife both have iPhones (which they got for $50 each), satellite radio, satellite television, Internet, health insurance, and he is slightly overweight - he eats well. My father is not "rich." My father is rich. Nearly everyone in Middle America has the same sort of standard of living (even in neighborhoods like the South Bronx, Harlem and East Harlem - all places I have lived). This is beauty of America – it is something that should not be denigrated but praised. The Middle East has a long way to go before they enjoy the same type of lifestyles.

A few more observations: First, none of the women in the Midwest are veiled or covered and - gasp - they are not whores, adulterers and the men are not rapists. There are female cops, judges, lawyers, doctors and more. For those Muslims in the Middle East (and elsewhere) who think God does not condone such behavior, it would seem that in fact, He does: take notice of America's global standing. Second, the Midwest is thoroughly and quietly religious - and spiritual - without religious political parties or theocracy. Here it seems that, contrary to many in the Middle East who believe different, God is quite content not to be a head of state. In their day to day actions, the people of the Midwest are more like the Deistic founding fathers than the caricatures of them as "religulous." True, most believe in Jesus Christ but without any question they are supremely tolerant of a wide variety of beliefs: Atheist, New-Age, Catholic, Methodist, and Amish establishments are found within miles of each other. Other religions such as Judaism and even a Hindu temple are found in many cities in the Midwest. My father lives somewhat near Dearborn, Michigan for instance, and many stores in Southern Michigan are owned and operated by Muslim families without harassment.

As I drove the back roads of the country and through the streets of small towns and villages, I found myself asking what would my life be like had I been born, not in the Midwest of America, but the Middle East of the world? I shuddered at the thought.

But I suppose if I had first seen light in that land; well, at least I would have a chance to fight to change it. And I would also hopefully be wise enough to study the other land of the "middle" and try to copy its success.

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