A few days after moving into my new home in the middle class Christian quarter of old Damascus, my landlady asked me whom I preferred between the two American presidential candidates. I replied, almost in passing, that of course I was voting for John Kerry. Besides being an Ivy League-educated New Englander and the son of extremely liberal parents, I was a foreigner and a guest in a country laboring under American economic sanctions. As a guest, surely I would be expected to distance myself from my own government, which had started a pre-emptive war against Syria's neighbor, denied considerable foreign investment to the Syrian economy and branded Damascus a "supporter of terrorism."
"I like Bush," she said, without a trace of irony. "He's a good man - a good Christian."
Okay, I thought. This is a Christian woman, representing a tiny and often overlooked minority in a predominantly Muslim region ...
Read the rest and see what revelation awaits this Kerry supporter. Go ahead. I'll wait here.
Back already? Well, here's my two yen on it.
I think it's true that Bush and religious Americans have more in common with many in the Middle East than Kerry and the non-religious do, and because of this, there is a greater chance that religious Americans will understand Middle Easterners better than non-religious Americans will.
Before some "reality-based community" members start flinging around the religious fanatic silliness, again, I'd like to point out that the average religious red stater is a couple orders of magnitude more liberal than the average Syrian. But since both are religious, they have some common ground and probably understand each other better, and so probably have a better chance of communicating and dealing with each other effectively. As the author of the article suggests, maybe the "reality-based community" needs to wake up to that reality.
Oh, and by the way, doesn't "reality-based community" sound a lot like "Ministry of Truth"?
Just sayin' ...
(Mug tip to Instapundit.)
No comments:
Post a Comment