Joan Didion is in the news, having died at age 87. She means nothing to me except another elite who didn’t get what was happening. Maybe a few weeks or months after 9/11, someone recommended her as a writer who had good insights and who was a contrarian thinker, so I took a look at what she said about that dreadful event, but what I found was nothing other than what other elites were saying. “It’s all our fault.” “Why do you think they hate us?” Etc. At least, that’s my memory. Andrew Sullivan was more insightful. Sheesh.
Anyway, here is what I wish she would have said:
There are two kinds of Muslim immigrants, and we need to find a way to distinguish them. One kind likes the West and is coming here to escape oppressive conditions. The other kind hates the West and wants to impose oppressive conditions on us. We should allow the first kind in, but we absolutely must keep the second kind out. The second kind hates democracy, which they view as merely rule by humans, while they view Islamic law as rule by Allah. (Any secularist should be able to smash that kind of thinking to smithereens.) Like I said, we need to keep this latter kind out, for obvious reasons.
Unfortunately, I never saw anyone among our elites say anything like this. The idea that any Muslim wanted to destroy our democracy was simply something they never imagined. No, those poor Muslims were nothing but helpless victims of American imperialism.
Getting back to Joan Didion, I see that she seems to be most regarded for things she wrote about America in the 60s and 70s, so maybe I’m being too harsh on her, but I don’t think she knew much about foreigners, especially in the Muslim world.
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