An apt symbol of Britain

I’ve had the text of the letter by Faye Turney of the British Royal Navy to her “mum and dad,” reproduced in the March 29 New York Post, sitting on my desk for a few days now, as I’ve tried to come up with some witty yet appropriately shocked and disgusted way to describe it. But I can’t. The awfulness of it defies language.

Some believe that Turney did not write it herself, that her Iranian captors wrote it. Normally that would be a reasonable assumption. But I don’t think it’s true, because I don’t think any Iranian Muslim apparatchik could conceivably have conjured up this:

I want you all to know that I am well and safe. I am being well looked after. I am fed three meals a day and have a constant supply of fluids.

It’s that business about “a constant supply of fluids” that is the key. In the last several years, Western liberal people have become obsessed with having a constant supply of fluids. The idea must have spread among the politically correct that if you are not imbibing water every minute throughout the day, your free radicals might make you age prematurely or you’d get some dread disease. That’s why one of the most common sights in contemporary New York City (though the fashion seems to have declined in the last couple of years, as such fashions do) has been of people, preponderantly female, carrying a bottle of Poland Spring water in their hand wherever they go. They don’t put the bottle in their shoulder bag and stop and take it out to drink from time to time, oh no, that would fail to convey the importance of constantly drinking water, on the sidewalk, crossing a busy street; they have to have that continual supply of fluids. As though existence itself were a threat from which one could protect oneself only by the incessant consumption of water, or at least by the totemic act of carrying a bottle of Poland Spring like a weapon in one’s hand at all times.

And that’s why I think this letter was written at least in part by Faye herself, this symbol of the degradation of Britain and the West—miserable cowardly Britain that places aboard a Royal Navy ship this soft young woman, who looks so becomingly sweet and feminine and passive in the head scarf and robe in which her captors dressed her, in which she seems, well, entirely at home and herself.

Meanwhile, Investor’s Business Daily (the first mainstream publication that has adopted VFR’s view that the only solution to the Islam problem is to separate Islam from the West) writes:

Time was, the HMS Cornwall or any other British warship would have simply blown the Iranian motorboats that seized 15 British sailors out of the water. But these are the days when Western leaders run to the United Nations seeking meaningless resolutions of condemnation.

I do not agree that the Cornwall should simply have fired on the Iranians. One, Britain and Iran are not at war. Two, according to the Wikipedia account of the incident, the sailors and marines, who had just done an inspection of a commercial barge for contraband automobiles and were moving away from it in their inflatable rigid-hulled craft, were seized out of sight of the Cornwall. Three, if the Cornwall had seen the kidnapping, and had “blown the motorboats out of the water,” the British captives would have been killed too.

At the same time, IBD is correct about the utter spinelessness of the British government and military authorities, under whose rules of engagement the commander of the Cornwall was acting, or rather not acting. Short of simply destroying the motorboats and killing both captors and captives, surely more decisive action was possible than doing nothing at all.

The IBD editorial continues:

The problem with the West is we never get it. We never grasp the fact that appeasement, conciliation and endless negotiation do not work and that the only time documents achieve peace is when the words at the top read “unconditional surrender.”

I think it’s worse than IBD suggests. The phrase, “we never get it,” implies that “we” are ready, willing, and able to protect our countries from aggression, but foolishly imagine that appeasement can accomplish that end. It’s gone way beyond that now. The problem is no longer a Chamberlain-like naivete or a recoiling from the horrors of war; the problem is the death of Britain as a nation. Britain doesn’t react to aggression, because reaction is the attribute of a living being.

- end of initial entry -

Robert C. writes:

Regarding the ever-present water bottle of the modern woman, in most instances it might not be motivated by something so lofty as a totemic act to thwart the peril of existence. An older, but slim and athletic, woman I used to work with revealed to me that the constant sipping of water was to keep the stomach filled to stave off the pangs of hunger induced by the relentless dieting needed to achieve and maintain said slenderness. So, while arguably a matter of base vanity, it shouldn’t necessarily be credited as stemming from anything like a philosophical impulse.

LA replies:

Haha, that’s interesting. I’ll have to check that out. However, I don’t agree with calling vanity “base,” especially with regard to women. Wanting to be beautiful is part of their essence, though of course like any normal instinct it can be carried to extremes.

Also, I have some doubts about your theory because it does not explain why they carry the bottle in their hand for extended periods of time when they are not drinking from it at all. If they needed to drink for a pragmatic reason, they would put the bottle away when not using it. The fact that they brandish the bottle everywhere they go, even inconveniencing themselves because their hand is no longer free, suggests that the bottle has a symbolic rather than a practical significance for them. Also, carrying that bottle around in their hand like a weapon does not exactly make women look attractive, graceful, and feminine; yet according to you the underlying reason they’re carrying it is for the sake of attractiveness.

Robert C. replies:

True, it may also have a symbolic significance, just as women wearing sporting gear even when not going to the gym might be of symbolic significance. Most men wouldn’t view that as being graceful or attractive either, but women may see it as a declaration of a healthful lifestyle. I suspect both the water bottle and the warm-up suit might not be for the benefit of men at all, but part of the intra-female game of one-upsmanship, like the infatuation with shoes, another arena of which most men certainly don’t give a hoot about.

Mark A. writes:

Humans are status seeking creatures. I believe there is “good” and “bad” status seeking behavior. Good status seeking behavior is that which is internal and helps pulls ourselves up closer to universal truth and makes us look towards the heavens. For example: Being a good person, helpful to society, a protective father, a nuturing mother, a good Christian, an intellectual, etc. “Bad” status seeking behavior involves merely taking pleasure in how your perceive yourself towards your fellow man, whom, naturally, the Liberal holds in contempt.

Since the Liberal does not believe in universal truth, such as moral absolutes, his sense of status is only derived by how he perceives himself towards his fellow man. The Water Bottle is a permissible status symbol as it relates to food. (Having a more expensive cigarette or a foreign bottle of Vodka are no longer permissible public status symbols—except perhaps among heavy drinkers, but not in public.)

Thus, how the liberal eats or drinks defines his sense of status and his sense of self worth. Look at how the Left has attacked the fast food industry. McDonald’s is not attacked because it is unhealthy. It is attacked because it considered a low-class, low-status eatery. A Liberal will gladly eat a 1,500 calorie meal at Panera Bread, but that same Liberal will not be caught dead eating a 700 calorie Big Mac in a McDonald’s.

The Poland Spring Water Bottle does for liquids what Panera Bread does for solids: it is the liberal saying, “I am healthier than you. I know how to take care of my body better than you do. I am high status. I am better than you.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 01, 2007 11:29 PM | Send