Clash with Global Manichean Phraseology
My friend Jeff has an essay in 3 A.M. Magazine called "Star Wars, Episode 7: Clash of Civilisations." In it, he writes about our unfortunate tendency to subscribe to the "us vs. them" rhetoric of a global struggle between the west and Islam. He talks about his recent trip to Turkey and "the multiethnic milieu of Boston" where he lives. Interesting that the bio lists him as an "expat Southern writer" as if he, in exile in the Yankee north, is also part of an oversimplified dualism of red state south vs. blue state north.