One of the definitions of the word “state” is the particular condition that someone or something is in at a specific time. Skip that definition for now. Let’s move on to another one.
STATE: a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government.
Robert Owen Paxton (1932 -) is an American historian who specializes in Vichy France, fascism and Europe during the WWII era. He wrote that fascism is:
“… a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
What is the definition of Islamic State when there is no nation under one government? For that matter, why is state capitalized at all? There is no “State.” Instead of IS or ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) or ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), what should we call this group of butchers? They are savages, indeed, straight out of the 7th century; save their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has expensive tastes in modern-day accoutrements like watches, and sports dazzlingly white, perfectly-formed teeth (for an otherwise third-world slaughterer.) Or is he? Most are hypocrites at best. Yes, his followers are pretty high-tech, but they rape, murder and pillage at will. Very low-class. They force themselves upon their own version of disbelievers. If they don’t like you, you’re an infidel. Naked women. Young children. Men dropped to their knees. Off with their heads! That’s what they capitalize on. TOTAL FEAR. Annihilation. Devastation. Their goal is violent cleansing and expansion throughout the world. They want total domination of the world in the name of religion. I suggest calling them islamifascists. No capitalization because the majority of Muslims disagree with what they do in the name of their god - I think; however, no one in Syria, Iraq or Turkey has ever lived under a democracy and most Muslims remain quiet. Is it out of fear for their lives or is al-Baghdadi the one true caliph, a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad as he claims, and they don’t know what to believe?
Whatever. These islamifascists want their convoluted religious law to spread like cockroach infestations and beyond. We will never rid ourselves of their kind, but we must contain them by any and all means possible. Except palling around with Sayyid Ali Khamenei. He’s a fire ant. Bashar al-Assad is a killer bee. I am a most passive man, but these are two men we should never trust.
Like the islamifascists, Saudi Arabia likes beheadings, too, yet when the kingdom drops its cost per barrel of oil (is it due to cheap black market IS oil?) and our gas price goes down at the pump, we’re happy. Just in time for America’s Thanksgiving and the Christian world’s most commercialized holiday! Praise the..! Oh my… I’m most definitely in a STATE OF CONFUSION! All capital letters! Will any good ever come of this? Why are conservatives still so up in arms over alternative energy sources?
Cross-posted at Daily Kos