Yes, Obama, There Is a Jihad

Note: The original "Is There a Santa Claus?" reprinted from the September 21, 1897, number of The New York Sun.

 

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author created this blog:

Dear Editor—
I am the president of the United States of America. Most of my progressive friends say there is no jihad. My wife says, "If you don't see it reported in the New York Times, it isn't so." Please tell me the truth, is there a jihad? 

Barack Obama, 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue

Mr. President, your progressive friends are wrong. They have been afflicted by the myopia of a myopic age. They do not believe what they see right before their eyes. Their "modern," progressive minds cannot comprehend that there is true belief in violent Medieval religious doctrines, and that they have bequeathed the jihad to the world.  Not all minds, Mr. President, whether they be men's or women's or those belonging to more "fluid" genders, are progressive. In this great universe of ours, say the jihadis, man is a mere insect, an ant (except, of course, for "the Jews," who as every jihadi knows, are "apes and pigs"), and the only thing that matters is submitting to the boundless power, truth and knowledge of Allah.
 
Yes, Obama, there is a jihad. It exists as certainly as hate and mean-spiritness and the desire to dominate the entire planet exist, and you know that they abound and present your presidency with its greatest challenge. Huzzuh! how wonderful it would be were there no jihad! It would be as wonderful as if there had been no President Obama to screw things up so badly. But wishing it won't make it so, and our entire future existence may depend on you opening your eyes to the intolerable savagery that the jihadi supremacists have unleashed on civilians.
 
Should the jihadis win, we should have no enjoyment, and those of us who remain alive shall become their dhimmis. The external light of freedom, democracy and American exceptionalism which fills the world would be extinguished forever.
 
Not believe in jihad! You might as well profess a belief in, say, "global climate change," "Islamophobia" and pixies. You might try to forget that your papa, and your step-papa, were both Muslims, and that that predisposed you to have tender-hearted feelings towards Islam. You might, for once in life, set aside your ridiculous narcissism and see that what's happening in this world is much bigger than you and your powers to remedy them via your own overwhelming influence, which you believe should be immediately apparent to all. And just because you refuse to say the "j" word, and in the aftermath of domestic terrorist attacks, call Americans bigots and focus on dispelling a "backlash" that never seems to come, that doesn't mean that there is no jihad; just because you can't or won't see it, or insist on mischaracterizing it as "violent extremism," that doesn't mean it isn't there. The most real things in the world are often downplayed or ignored by the foolish and the craven. For, as the wise poet once observed, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality."
 
You could easily tear apart Islamic doctrine and see the jihad inside, but there is a blindfold covering your eyes, and neither the San Bernardino terrorist attack nor an another one on a much larger scale would likely be enough to remove it. Only a sudden epiphany--a veritable bolt from the blue--that allows you to see your "progressive" ideology for what it really is--a clapped-out, pathetic fraud--offers any chance of, yes, hope and change. But is it realistic to wish for such an eventuality? Well, if Ebenezer Scrooge, for all his crabbed, narcissistic inflexibility, could open his eyes to that which was real and abiding, then maybe, just maybe, this season of light and lovingkindness gives us reason to cling to the hope--albeit, an extremely faint one--that you, too, could see the light.
 
No jihad! "Halevai," as my late Yiddish-speaking Bubbie, a woman much wiser than you, Mr. President, might have said. A thousand years from now, Mr. Obama, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, the world will be thoroughly scrooged--and screwed--if we do not do what must be done to stop the jihad--which, yea, verily, does exist--dead in its tracks right now.