A Few Shiny Pebbles

On Powerline, one of the great blogs of the Internet, a post called “Columbia's disgrace” is a must-read. It begins:

There is a suicidal mania that grips elite opinion in the United States. It is exemplified nowhere better than in our elite educational institutions. Today, for example, Columbia University has issued the following statement to its alumni:

“On Monday, September 24th, 2007 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will speak and participate in a question and answer session with university faculty and students at Columbia University's World Leaders Forum. His appearance is sponsored by Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, which is initiating a year-long series of lectures and events on thirty years of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The SIPA lecture series will include academic experts as well as former officials and critics of the Islamic Republic.”

The last paragraph of the Powerline post is powerful:

Columbia and President Bollinger are a disgrace. They welcome to their campus a man who is a ringleader in the seizure of American hostages, a terrorist, the president of a terrorist regime, and the representative of a regime responsible at present for the deaths of American soldiers on the field of battle. Columbia's prattle about free speech may be a tale told by an idiot, but it signifies something. And President Bollinger is a fool who is not excused from the dishonor he brings to his institution and his fellow citizens by the fact that he doesn't know what he is doing.

It is appropriate for anyone who loves America and freedom to agree with this judgment. I was struck by the last sentence, that President Bollinger “doesn’t know what he is doing.” Powerline finds it incredible that, given the background of Ahmadinejad, Bollinger would invite him. That is certainly an important way that Bollinger doesn’t know what he is doing. But I’d like to suggest another way in which Bollinger is ignorant about what’s going on. This has to do with Ahmadinejad himself, with his point of view. I totally believe that Bollinger doesn’t have a clue about how the President of Iran looks at Bollinger and Columbia themselves.

President Bollinger, President Ahmadinejad is laughing at you. You think that he views you as an equal in some forum of power or intellect, but he actually views you as he would an ass that he might ride from point to point where there is no formal path or roadway for easy access. He has contempt for you. He’s only interested in you as a tool, and he’s laughing inside all the time because he truly believes that he will have you on your knees before him someday. This is not a metaphorical statement. He believes that you should be dead or converted to Islam.

Just as you, yourself, Lee Bollinger, frame your words carefully when you want to gull someone you consider inferior and illiterate, so Ahmadinejad will respond to your questions. To him you are not a hero, but a coward and a fool. He knows how he wants to use you, and he will view your ignorance of that as further evidence of your stupidity. He will view his manipulation of you to achieve his ends as further proof of your inferiority.

There was a movie a while ago, called Borat, which had a man humiliating people throughout this country, while looking as though he thought well of them. You are the "ordinary people" in that movie, Lee Bollinger, playing the part of the humiliated, and Ahmadinejad is playing the part of Borat, and you don’t even know it.

He sees you the way a tiger would see a stupid child who tries to pet him. At the moment he is interested in your help—he likes being petted. But soon, when he chooses to, he believes he will devour you. He thinks the values you hold are ways for him to exploit your gullibility. He will say the things he needs to say to scam you, and he’ll laugh to himself as he does it.

There will be no “debate”; he will lecture, and when he answers your questions his words will be enveloped by the Big Lie. His answers will be crafted either to dance around the point or to meet your secret beliefs about the world. He knows that he can be outrageous in certain areas of discourse because he knows you will accept anything that insults America, our President, our military, and so forth. He is arrogant, and so he will show a little of the contempt he feels for you, but you won’t notice it as contempt because you are arrogant, too. He knows you will be busy preening yourself and playing Voltaire, with the famous 'Écrasez l'infâme' (destroy religion) and the Artist’s 'Épater les bourgeois' (outrage the bourgeoisie) poses, picturing yourself as the Intelligentsia before the Philistines and barbaric warriors of the world.

While you are playing Voltaire, Ahmadinejad is playing you for the fool, couching what he says and does in ways guaranteed to show the Islamic world that you are stupid and ignorant of his true goals and methods.

It doesn’t occur to you that he considers the fact that Columbia doesn’t allow the ROTC to be a weakness. If anyone knows that a strong military is a sine qua non for power, it is Ahmadinejad of Iran. He looks out at his audience as infidels, deserving death or conquest. He thinks of homosexuals as sick, immoral deviants to be severely punished or executed, and he finds it immeasurably satisfying to know that you honor him but kicked out the ROTC for the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. He views women as weak and much as you would view a lesser being, like a chimpanzee. All of the women he will see at Columbia will be prostitutes or worse in his eyes, creatures that need to be punished and forced to submit. When he looks at a woman, he doesn’t think, “This woman is clever enough to get into Columbia University”, he thinks, “This woman letting herself dress and going out into the world this way is an abomination before everything I believe in.”

If Columbia became a university under his dominion he would tear it apart and make it into something that would shock you, President Bollinger. He would never allow someone like you anywhere near it. He is not impressed by you, by your position, or by your university. He is not saying “Wow! Look where I am speaking!” He is saying, “Wow! These ignorant fools can’t see that I am using them to gain more power, the better to destroy them when the time comes. I am sowing dragons teeth, which will come to life and shred them, and they will cry for mercy and they will find that I have none for fools.”

In Ahmadinejad’s eyes, President Bollinger, you are a contemptuous coward, you honor enemies who are aiding and abetting the murder of those who are trying to protect you and your country, and your university is a profane den of iniquity.

Not that you'll notice, of course.

Trackposted to Right Pundits, Outside the Beltway, Is It Just Me?, Rosemary's Thoughts, Big Dog's Weblog, Nuke's News & Views, Webloggin, Leaning Straight Up, Cao's Blog, Conservative Cat, Stageleft, The World According to Carl, Walls of the City, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, CommonSenseAmerica, Dumb Ox Daily News, OTB Sports, and Public Eye, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.