A few years back, I talked about
a branch of philosophy called Pragmatism, the only major philosophical school
of thought to cross from the US to Europe, in the context of this analysis of Saul
Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Quoting (briefly) from that piece:
“by ‘pragmatic,’ I don’t just mean ‘practical.’
For according to the cornerstone principle of Pragmatism (the so-called ‘Pragmatist Maxim),
reality itself is defined, and thus changeable, by human action in the real
world.
… consider a canonical example of Pragmatic
thinking: why a knife should be considered sharp. According to the
Pragmatist, the knife is sharp NOT because it possesses (or partakes in) some
metaphysical form of “sharpness,” nor because the notion of sharpness can be
measured empirically (through some combination of blade width and hardness, for
example). Rather, a knife is sharp because any rational person seeing one
sitting next to a stick of butter would use the knife to cut the butter, rather
than vice versa. And an irrational person who tried to do the opposite
would necessarily fail.”
While many aspects of reality are dictated by
things beyond human agency (the existence of the sun and mortality, for
example), not everything falls into this category. As just mentioned “sharpness” might not be an
actual thing without the act of human beings interacting with objects in the
world. Similarly, human political agency
creates, rather than just describes,
things and the meaning behind them.
As a simple example, those of you who dislike
manufactured pop music as much as I probably consider the Eurovision Song
Contest (presuming you consider it at all) as a punchline or musical freak show. And, as proud as I am of the Jewish state’s
many, many accomplishments, the victory of a
chicken-warbling circus act at Eurovision ’18 would normally not get onto my shortlist of Israeli gifts to the
world.
But once BDS got into the act, spreading their
bile throughout the Interwebs in hope that they could rally the world to vote
down Netta – Israel’s ultimately successful entrant into this year’s Eurovision
contest – suddenly Eurovision became something it wasn’t before: a global
political referendum on the Jewish state’s place in the world.
Keep in mind that this was not what Eurovision
was created to be, nor were the performers – including Netta – interested in
turning the event into a global vote for or against the their countries. But by making votes against Netta a political act of condemnation, BDS simultaneously
(if inadvertently) turned votes for
her into a political act of support.
Moving onto a more serious example, think about
the impending opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem. Under normal circumstances, this would be an
unremarkable event, one that should have occurred decades ago.
For as long nations have established diplomatic
ties, the location of embassies was not even a point of discussion. If you want to establish diplomatic presence
in the US, the UK or France, for example, your only option would be to build an
embassy in Washington, London or Paris.
The same rule applies to every other state in the world, large and
small: you build your embassy in the other guy’s capital.
But because this normal situation was denied in
one special case, the idea of opening or not opening an embassy in Jerusalem city
became more and more politically significant with each passing year.
If Israel’s foes had not raised this price sky
high, building or moving an embassy in Jerusalem would be as un-newsworthy as
every routine embassy opening in the world.
But this decades-long denial of Israel’s legitimate rights turned the
final, reasonable, and appropriate acceptance of those rights into a new game-changing,
Pragmatic reality.