30 Days of propaganda

Channel-surfing late at night, I’ve stumbled across “30 Days,” the new reality show on the FX network. I saw a bit of its “Muslims & America,” episode, and a bit more of its “Straight man in a gay world” episode.

To get a flavor of what the show is about, here are verbatim summaries from the episode guide:

***QUOTE***

Muslims & America

A Christian agrees to uproot his life among his like-minded family and friends and live for 30 Days in a large Muslim community in Dearborn Michigan. As he befriends his Muslim host family and adopts their customs, he struggles deeply with his bias against a belief-system that does not recognize Christ as the Son of God and his even stronger prejudice against a religion that is closely associated in many American’s minds with Osama Bin Laden and the terrorist activity of 9-11.

Straight man in a gay world

A God-fearing 24-year-old conservative homophobe from red state American travels to San Francisco’s Castro district to live in what is notoriously known as one of the gayest areas in the country. As he joins a gay sports team, works a job that caters to gay clientele, and attends gay-friendly church services and lives with a gay roommate, he gets an inside view of what it is like to live as a minority that still elicits strong feelings of hatred among many Americans.

***END-QUOTE***

This is a classic example, in its very own words, of liberal bias. Nothing could be more prejudicial than the way it has chosen here to describe the Christian character and frame the terms of the debate. Liberals are quick to see bigotry in others, but blind to their own.

For example, the association between Islam and 9/11 isn’t a Christian characterization of the event. Rather, it is Bin Laden himself who described this event in jihadist terms. And he is hardly alone. Why should we not form our opinion of the event based on how the Muslim participants explain their own motivations?

The plausibility of the show rests entirely upon a half-truth. The operating premise is that personal experience is, or ought to be, the standard by which we judge truth and falsity, right and wrong.

If a Christian disproves of sodomy or Islam, that’s due to his prejudicial experience living among fundamentalists, and due also, to his inexperience with Muslims or sodomites. If only he got a chance to know them, he’d see that they’re just like us.

So it’s all a matter of feeling. A Christian couldn’t possibly have a reasoned objection to sodomy or Islam. No, disapproval automatically equates with fear and loathing.

Now, as I say, this is predicated on a half-truth. For, as a practical matter, we are social creatures, and so we live to please others. We have a need for social acceptance.

If, then, you take someone out of his own social environment, and plop him down another social environment, where he’s the minority, and where he is dependent on the majority, there is an enormous temptation to adapt and blend in.

This is reinforced by the fact that the Christian lab rats whom the producers choose for their social experiment are not intellectuals, and so they are ill-equipped to present a reasoned basis for their disapproval.

The insinuation is that Christians disapprove of Muslims and sodomites because they dehumanize them. And they dehumanize them because they don’t know any better. The “other” is just an abstraction.

And if only they got to know them, they would discover that Muslims and sodomites are human too. Have the same emotional needs and desires as normal folk.

Of course, this is a total straw man argument. Christian opposition is not based on sheer ignorance and demonization-at-a-distance. To the contrary, it is quite possible to disapprove of something because you do have a well-informed judgment of the situation.

Indeed, the show itself is highly selective it how it presents the homosexual lifestyle and Muslim piety. We don’t see sodomites “fisting” each other or ingesting scat or seducing boys. We don’t see Muslims beheading hostages or stoning rape-victims.

In addition to liberal bias is liberal hypocrisy. Notice that the producers choose to put a Christian with a Muslim family and a Christian with a homosexual roommate.

What the producers don’t to is to put a Muslim with a homosexual roommate or a homosexual in a Muslim community or a Muslim or homosexual in a Christian community.

So, for the liberal producers, enlightenment is a one-way street. The social experiment is not reversible.

And this also goes to the central incoherence of the show. For, as a practical matter, it isn’t possible to be equally tolerant of opposing groups. For example, Muslims are intolerant of sodomites. Indeed, if American society were governed by the Sharia social code, sodomy would be a capital offense.

So it’s just a charade for the producers to suppose that we can and should be equally tolerant of everyone. If Muslims were in the majority, and sodomites were in the minority, the Muslims would “persecute” the sodomites—as well as the Jews, and the Christians, and the liberals.