Draw Mohammad Day – Retrospective

For those of you unfamiliar with the event in question, which occurred at the start of the long weekend, Thunderfoot’s video will get you up to speed.

Standing up for free speech and pissing off religious zealots are always Epic Win in my book – I’m just sorry I didn’t get my drawing of Slayer, Alice Cooper, Satan, and Bon Jovi rescuing 6 year old Aysha done in time.  Guys like Thunderfoot are doing a great job of promoting Classical Liberal values in a society where Tolerance is far too often conflated with Respect, resulting in a black and vile mixture which labels Truth as Ugliness.

But at the end of the day, how much was really accomplished?

For starters let’s list the positives:

1. Pakistan confirmed it’s place on the list of Nations Run By Callow Circus Freaks.

2. Viacom is becoming recognized as one of the corporations run by Very Evil Men.

3. The Zeitgeist has shifted – what was decried as racism back in 2005, is now recognized as a necessary political statement.

But as good as this all is, it doesn’t change the fact that Australia bans A-Cups, Europe censors video games, Britain is under 24/7 surveillance, Canada has only the freedoms government permits us, and the US is preparing to unleash a pervasive and byzantine censorship law on the rest of the world, all in the name of copyright…

…and nobody gives a damn.

There’s two sets of score cards you gotta keep to understand what’s going on in this world.  First comes the Public score – what sort of issues are hitting the media, what are folks actually thinking, and when the next big war or economic meltdown is going to hit.  This was the battlefield where Draw Mohammad Day took place; and in that area we’re doing well.  Great, actually.  Between that and the Tea Parties you might actually think we have a fighting chance.

But it’s in the other arena that things are actually happening.  Deep in the halls of power, both in Washington and Islamabad, the Masters couldn’t care less about these loud clashes of ideology.  Radical Islam isn’t any real sort of ‘Thing’, after all – it’s just an accident of history, a blip, some random congruence as meaningless and short-lived as Right Wing Christianity is and will be.  Occasionally these things will become factors worth incorporating into The Plan – but for the most part they’re just verb-tense-modifiers for the speech writers to consider.

Fads come and go, and politics is no different than fashion.  If you want to understand this world go pick up a copy of Foreign Affairs, and analyze the mindset of these people – utterly pragmatic to the point of Sociopathy, as they plot new ways to keep 6 billion people Dumb and Happy.

Twenty years from now, you’ll be walking into the government office with your personalized Internet Protocol Card in hand, along with two pieces of ID, a State Recognized Credit Card, and a certified Police Background Check, so that the bureaucrats will grant you permission to have a politically themed blog on the internet – failure to comply by these standards could leave you subject to $50 000 in fines and up to six years in prison.  As you stand there in line with the other sweaty proles, there’s a 50/50 chance you’ll still remember where you were on May 20th, 2010 – but as for what you were doing when the set of legislation titled “Net Neutrality” was assembled by our benevolent UN overlords?  Chances are, the most you’ll remember is some elderly relative commenting that “Those 4chan guys had it coming.”

P.S. Because I certainly wouldn’t mind having a fatwa issued against me, let me share this particularly charming picture with the lot of you: