The Garbage Collection Theory of History

A must-read by George Will:

Some will interpret the Hamas victory in the benign light of the Garbage Collection Theory of History. On Sunday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told ABC: "My hope is that as a consequence of now being responsible for electricity and picking up garbage and basic services to the Palestinian people, that they recognize it's time to moderate their stance." Perhaps. But their stance - Israel must die - is, they say, the will of God, who has not authorized moderation in the name of sanitation.

Jimmy Carter suggested a way to evade the U.S. law against providing funds to terrorists: the U.S. could launder money destined for Hamas by passing it through the UN. This suggestion has a certain piquancy, coming as it does after the oil-for-food program in Iraq, which demonstrated the UN's financial aptitude.

Will doesn't emhasize it, but the people who believe this are almost all on the political left. The root of this thinking seems to stem from a single study, universally cited by liberals, that a teacher was once tricked into believing false IQ scores of her students. Allegedly, the numbers turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. In education, this translated into the self-esteem movement--simply tell all students they are brilliant and "can be anything they want" and it will turn out to be so. I was once at a professional discussion of illiteracy where the opinion was expressed that we need to stop viewing the problem in one-way terms, but that we need to approach illiterates as being able to teach us as much as we can educate them. No one laughed.

In politics, the continual insistence that Arafat was a statesman was supposed to trick him into bringing out the best in himself. Jesse Jackson hailed rap artists and gang members as moral visionaries for the same reason. The desire not to criticize bad behavior lest it lead to a poor self-image and therefore to bad behavior is so strong that reality must be reinterpreted.

This thinking is a convenient enabler of immaturity expressed as a political philosophy--the denial of reality and substitution of wishful thinking in its place. This is essentially a narcissistic projection of oneself on the world. I feel most comfortable believing reality to be as I will it, so therefore I will attack anyone who intrudes on my worldview with facts. This is why the mainstream media, which is nearly exclusively left-leaning, spikes many stories that can lead one to think negatively about Muslims. As a simple example, take this week's mantra--that the Hamas win was not an endorsement of anti-Semitism, only a reaction against PA corruption. Here is a jaw-dropper from the Los Angeles Times:

Most Palestinians, like most Israelis, want peace.

Here is one from the AP:

By all accounts, Palestinians didn't choose Hamas because they reject peace talks with Israel but rather because they were fed up with graft in the ruling Fatah Party. Hamas candidates ran on a platform of clean government, largely de-emphasizing their militant credentials.

Why was this corruption almost never reported before? The fact is that the greatest modern media scandal has been nearly unreported--a dozen major news sources were documented to have participated in fabricating Palestinian television news on a single day.

The cartoon attached to this entry amplifies this point in that Hamas victory was a surprise to Israel because the rise of Islamism in the wake of Israeli retreats was spiked by the leftist-dominated media.

While this thinking is fallacious to the core, the essential problem is that evil can only thrive among lies. This is why the historically greatest evil--genocidal anti-Semitism--has historically been marked by enormous lies. For example, Islamists and Muslim dictatorships routinely propagate the following:

-Jews use the blood of non-Jews in holiday food preparation
-The Holocaust never happened
-Israel contributed to the Holocaust
-Israel perpetrated 9/11 so the Jews were told to stay home
-Israel is an Nazi-like state
-Muslims have nothing to do with Islamist terror
-George Bush is the leading terrorist
-The Iraq war was about stealing oil and giving it to Americans to lower gas prices

See also:

Hamas Landslide Reveals More about Left than about "Palestinians", by Dennis Prager

It is true that in 1933, some Germans who voted for the Nazis did so out of anger at the Versailles Treaty and because of the economic chaos that engulfed their country. Indeed, it is widely agreed among historians that Hitler played down anti-Semitism in the Nazis' electoral campaigning. But every German voter was aware of the ferocity of the Nazis' Jew-hatred. And, whatever the case in 1933 Germany, in 2006 Palestine, Hamas has never played down its anti-Semitism or its support for continuing terrorism.

So the Palestinian vote reveals the falsity of the worldwide Left's view of the Palestinians as committed to peace.

Believe It: Hamas Target Is Israel, by Richard Cohen

If you would have asked a random German in 1932 if he was voting for the murder of Jews, he would have said, "Nein!" What he really wanted was an end to the brawling in the streets and a big thumbs-up to traditional German culture. In due course we will be told that what Hamas has been insisting on for years - the utter destruction of Israel - is not really a serious goal, and that Hamas will be forced to moderate by the reality of governing.

The leaders of Hamas brim with the word of God and the certainty of their cause. From here on they will lie about their ultimate aim and smilingly assure us that what they have always said they no longer mean. All over the world, people will believe them and urge the U.S. and Israel to do the same. Take my word for this. Anyone can see the future. It's all in the past.

Why Hamas Won - Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror

The Oslo accords brought a corrupt Palestinian group to power that did everything it could to get rich from the public purse. In hindsight, it was a terrible mistake to accept these people as partners in the diplomatic process and to impose them on the Palestinians. More than 80% of Palestinians believe Hamas and its terrorism forced Israel to withdraw from Gaza. What Israelis believe is "determination" is interpreted in Gaza as "weakness."

This is the time for Israel to signify, via its actions and behavior, the complete rejection of Hamas as a terrorist group and that no one will negotiate with it.