By far, the best thing that Vox has done is to bring Max Fisher to my attention. He covers the Middle East for the website and he often takes on the tone of a patient parent, “Stop doing that; it’s racist.” I’ve written about his work a number of times, most notably in, The Bigoted “Muslims Condemn” Ritual. Well, Fisher was back a couple days ago with another article where you can almost hear him sigh before the first word, US Media Coverage of Michelle Obama’s Saudi Arabia Trip Isn’t Just Wrong — It’s Racist.

There is a very real and casual racism in this country — not just against Arabs but against Persians, Indians, and pretty much any other group you could name. If it hadn’t been for the Nazis and the Holocaust, Israelis would be included in that group. I still commonly hear people refer to “towel heads” and “those people” who attacked us on 9/11. It is the most naked form of racism. Race itself is a racist construct and you can see it clearly here. Muslims are commonly equated with Hindus and Sikhs, even though there is far more relationship between Muslims and Christians and Jews. But they are all the same to most Americans, not because they are, but simply because Americans are some of the most ignorant and parochial people on the planet.

Fisher made nine points in his article, but it all comes down to one thing: the American media coverage shows a shocking lack of understanding of Saudi Arabia. The supposed kerfuffle is that Michelle Obama didn’t wear a headscarf to the funeral of King Abdullah. This has been portrayed as some kind of major statement about the terrible treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. I’ve also heard it claimed that her dressing in blue instead of black was some big deal, but even I know that white is a traditional funeral color in many regions.

The main issue is that the elites of Saudi Arabia would be freaked out by seeing a woman who wasn’t enclosed in a portable tent. Fisher wrote, “Saudi royals are comfortable with the West and with Western customs; many spend long parts of the year in Europe and a number were educated in American boarding schools or colleges.” Of course they are. It reminds me of Mike Huckabee running around the nation claiming that those backwoods morals are so superior to the terrible morals of those New York and Los Angeles elites. As if he isn’t perfectly comfortable with elites, as he’s shown time and again. Just because elites here and in Saudi Arabia demagogue with religious fundamentalism doesn’t mean they fall for it.

It is one thing for the masses to have no idea that a Jain, unwilling to swat a fly, is quite different from a radical political Muslim suicide bomber or a Christian sniper who was proud of his 160 confirmed kills. But when the media can’t tell the difference, we are doomed. And I really do think that is the case and that they aren’t just pretending to generate clicks. Similarly, what are we to make of Ted Cruz’s tweet, “Kudos to @FLOTUS for standing up for women & refusing to wear Sharia-mandated head-scarf in Saudi Arabia”? I suspect he actually thinks that — and he is a smart and educated guy. But once you build a worldview based upon the idea that America is better than all other countries, this is the kind of blind stupidity that results. And that’s not just Ted Cruz — that’s America writ large.

Afterword

For the record, Saudi Arabia really is an awful place.

Conventional wisdom is a pox on our society. The problem isn’t that it is wrong — often times it is not. The problem is that it is invisible. I noted a great example of this a couple days ago in an otherwise good article by Jonathan Chait, Why Benjamin Netanyahu Lost His Mind. It is about how the Israeli leader is really screwing up by alienating Obama and thus the entire Democratic Party. It is quite possible that Democrats will control the White House for the next decade. Is he really looking out for the best interests of his country? I doubt it. But craven politicians are not something unique to the United States.

But in discussing the issue, Chait wrote, “One obvious cause of the Zionist right’s deepening millennialism is Iran’s quest to obtain a nuclear weapon.” So it isn’t the belief of the Zionist right, it is the fact that Iran is in a quest for a nuclear weapon. How it is that Chait “knows” this is not a mystery: it is what everyone “knows”! But it is not based upon evidence. It just seems right. Of course Iran would want a nuclear weapon! What fundamentalist theocracy wouldn’t want a nuclear weapon?!

I know that people may scoff and my having a problem with this, but I have a good reason. In the lead up to the Iraq war, it was just taken as a fact that of course Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. And the fact that Hussein repeatedly said that he didn’t have these weapons only made people think that he must. This culminated in unintentional high comedy when Scott Pelley (but there were many others saying the same thing), “So why keep the secret [that he had no WMDS]?” There was, of course, no secret keeping. In fact, the very news outlets that claimed Hussein kept this secret had previously reported his denials. For example, before the invasion, Bob Schieffer reported, “Saddam Hussein says he has no weapons of mass destruction, but should we believe him?” The answer was: of course not! Iraq was our enemy, so it wasn’t necessary to find evidence.

With regard to Iran, all the actual evidence indicates that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. After the Iranian revolution, the government shut down the Shah’s nuclear weapons program. Much later, the Iranian government seemed to do some fairly trivial research toward nuclear weapons. But for at least 12 years, there does not seem to have been any Iranian nuclear weapons program. But there could be. Just as with the teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars, we can’t prove the negative.

The casual assumption that of course Iran has a nuclear weapons program is very dangerous. There are many powerful people in the United States who want to go to war with Iran for the very purpose of stopping its nuclear weapons program. Because they “know” that Iran has one and that it would be the end of the world if Iran got such a weapon. And these people are part of a larger delusion that we know that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.

But we don’t. And if we invaded Iran, I’m pretty sure that we would find that Iran did not, in fact, have a nuclear weapons program. And we would doubtless hear from many mainstream commentators the burning question, “So why keep the secret that Iran had no nuclear weapons program?” We have the perfect media system — for a fascist state.

Afterword

While looking for images to go with this article, I came upon a lot of political cartoons. They were almost without exception mocking the idea that Iran didn’t have nuclear weapons. What good is a free press when even the political cartoonists all repeat the government line?