My (earnest, irate) thoughts

This started as a comment to an interesting post I read from awhile back about latte-sipping urbanites wearing Middle Eastern headwear to look cool. It makes me laugh, this hilarious thing Americans do of picking up the outward symbol (kaffiyeh) and not necessarily embracing or even being aware of its political interpretations (tribal affiliation, Palestinian solidarity, etc.) or functional purposes (desert heat/wind). America, so commercial. America, so reductionist.

America, so effing funny.

Like 30 people left comments on the post. It partially digressed into a discussion between commenters whether Americans, particularly non-Muslims, were ‘allowed’ to wear ‘Muslim’ clothing.

The Prophet, upon him be peace, tells us that an Arab is not superior to a non-Arab. Would it not follow that Arab attire is not better than non-Arab attire?

Seriously, ‘Muslim’ clothes? What are those?

It seems funny to me (and typically American) that American converts to Islam would choose to wear foreign getups, whether they do it because they think it looks cool, makes them appear more pious, or helps them fit in. American culture, if it can be defined, is a tangled mess, a boiling stew of folks picking and choosing from a world of choices what is appealing to them personally. Further reading: ‘Terrorist Chic’ and Beyond

It seems equally funny that non-Americans would be irate or even surprised about their attire being hijacked by Americans, whether they are Muslim or not. Is their culture ‘above’ imitation or reduction? Why?

Muslim culture, if it can be defined, is a mélange. How can individuals remain intact, unchanged? Why should they want to? Is it really necessary to decide whether what other people are wearing is what you would choose? As Muslims, should we not have so many self-improvement projects going on, so many acts of charity to our family and community, that we simply don’t have time for all this absurd conjecture? Is this not rejected in the Qur’an as zanna, the pitiful, puny alternative to knowledge?

It seems like many people feel compelled to endlessly define what is acceptable, what is orthodox, what are the boundaries. And that is dangerous. When Americans do it, decrying the kaffiyeh as an endorsement of terrorism, it smacks of racism. When Muslims do it, decrying Western clothing as makruh, it smacks of racism, too.

I read once that racism is most prevalent among the poor or disenfranchised because they are more likely to feel ‘encroached upon’. I think it may stem from this feeling inside, this feeling that ‘the other’ is going to invade us, to conquer us. And that afterwards, we will no longer be ourselves.

In much of the Muslim world, colonized and gutted and refilled with Starbucks, there’s an understandable feeling of resentment, of anxiety… that they’ve already lost everything. The real fear is that the enemy isn’t out there, but already lodged inside them in the deepest, darkest places. Muslims are no longer confident in their vision of the world.

And, it would seem, Americans aren’t either.

This “Muslim shopper experiment” by ABC News, sent to me by a dear friend, did seem to expose two very different Americas. For some, being American means being born here, regardless of what you believe or how you dress. For others, being American means believing certain things and dressing in certain ways.

“It is justice that binds us together. Any threat to that justice and fairness undermines the entire system.” Watching the people who stood up for a Muslim stranger, I am moved to tears, too, proud of my countrymen. I am thinking that America and Islam have more in common than either realize — meaning, that justice is at the core of both the American heart and the Muslim heart.

But what about the customers who said nothing at all? I wonder about them, too. What did they think? How did they feel? How would you feel… would you say anything?

Culture
www.yusufari.com Photos by Yusuf Ari: Pictures of all sorts of things (butterflies and other animals including baby ducks!, kids, flowers, landscapes and architecture) taken by my husband. At the top it reads, Don’t say: “It’s beautiful.” Say: “God made it beautiful.” Mashallah (It is God’s will) is what Muslims say for a beautiful creature, like a baby. Check it often, because we add more photos all the time.

Politics
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/simon_jenkins/article727080.ece These cartoons don’t defend free speech, they threaten it: Times columnist Simon Jenkins tells the real truth about the rights and responsibilities inherent in the Western “freedom of speech” — because, after all, “we do not go about punching people in the face to test their commitment to non-violence.”

Arabic
www.mounthira.com Mount Hira: To help us memorize God’s Final Testament, the Qur’an, several of the most famous verses are here, in Arabic with translation in English and transliteration using a Latin alphabet. The sound of the recitation is so beautiful!

Islam
www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/misc/Jesus_and_Muhammad.htm Jesus and Muhammad: Brothers in faith and the challenge of walking in their footsteps in a secular world: Though the puppeteers would have us believe that Christianity and Islam are diametrically opposed, in reality Islam is the only other religion that respects Jesus as a messenger of Divine truth. “If you would trust in God as is His right to be trusted He would give you your provision as He gives it to the birds, they leave their roosts hungry and return satiated,” said Muhammad. Similarly the author of the Gospel of Matthew has Jesus saying to the crowds around him, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” Who can say these messages don’t come from the same Source?

Hearts in Atlantis: The story of a young boy without a father, and his friendship with an old man with psychic abilities. It’s a people movie: nothing blows up and no one shows off their private bits, but somehow it seemed very adult, anyway. And it’s full of great insights from Anthony Hopkins, like “Sometimes when you’re young, you have moments of such happiness, you think you’re living in someplace magical, like Atlantis must have been. Then we grow up and our hearts break in two.”

In the Valley of Elah: Precisely because it is from the perspective of a typical military family, this is a fantastic anti-war movie. The soldiers, the cops — they are so ordinary that it makes the film’s conclusion more horrifying. There is one scene where Tommy Lee Jones tells the story of David and Goliath to Charlize Theron’s son. Afterward, she says, “You know that story isn’t true.” He responds, “Of course it is.” And, almost as an afterthought, “It’s even in the Qur’an.” (Warning: there is a lot of nudity in this movie, probably because of its attempt to be accurate in detailing a soldier’s life: topless dancing, etc.)

Guns, Germs and Steel: A documentary about the world’s inequality and why it exists. Anthropologist Jared Diamond poses that it’s because of a people’s proximity or lack thereof to the three things in the title. It’s a must-watch because it kind of gently unravels this American assumption that the Western world has been successful financially because its people are smarter or more deserving than others. (There’s nudity, but it’s the National Geographic kind.)

Who are the people behind the MPAA? I picture them as being old, lecherous white men with no souls. Of course, that’s pretty much the same way I picture the richest producers in Hollywood.

Most people seem to hate the MPAA for ‘prudishly’ equating sex with violence by giving films with a little of either the same R rating. More on that in a minute. But here’s a survey, because I’m curious. One: which R-rated movie is more harmful to an impressionable 17-year-old teen: the bloody Gladiator starring Russell Crowe or the sexy Unfaithful starring Diane Lane, and why? Two: what exactly in the big-screen graphic novel Sin City is more damaging to the same kid — its gory forcefulness or its take on female sexuality, and why?

On the other hand, *I* hate the MPAA for demonizing coarse language and drug use, which are nowhere near either sex/nudity or gore/violence. What bothers me is that R-rated films are so diverse in their offerings that the rating itself has become meaningless. Important films like North Country and The Joy Luck Club get the same rating as bloodbaths like Kill Bill and 300. Even worse, charming ‘people’ movies like Love for Rent and Billy Elliott get the same rating as lewd nonsense like American Pie.

How can curse words (which, looking at the etymology of the English language, are often the original English words that were made ‘low-class’ and then ‘dirty’ by the Norman French aristocrats) be in the same class as watching people kill each other? How can drug use, which doesn’t make the viewer actually use mind-altering substances, be in the same class as nudity, which does make the viewer actually partake in a woman’s objectification?

When my hilarious Turkish husband accidentally rented some pretty bawdy comedies, he started to avoid R ratings. But at the library, he felt cornered into bringing home boring, dated ‘family’ films that feature talking pets (as though all people who shy away from sex and death simulation are, by definition, stupid). So he started checking why the films were R, searching for the tiny box that said it all (R-Language or R-Nudity or R-Graphic War Violence). But of course it doesn’t explain the context. So the nudity and violence of Schindler’s List or Braveheart is ‘equivalent’ to the nudity and violence of a Rob Zombie flick.

Basically, there’s no way to see a movie without seeing a movie. (Though we try to fast-forward through the sexy bits.) But if we’ve seen it, we’ve already bothered ourselves. Wild scenes that I saw literally years ago still pop into my head sometimes and I doubt that I learned anything from the film that made the lasting visceral imagery ‘worth it’.

I think it’s obvious that the gore and violence in films is harmful psychologically, slowly desensitizing us to forceful death and war and making human life utterly expendable, and allowing us to find the evening news totally bland compared to a Martin Scorsese film. And I’ve read many comparisons between American and Roman bloodlust (the Romans had the coliseum, we have the action movie). It’s interesting how the more heinous American films get, so goes American foreign policy, as we look on disinterestedly.

But I, too, used to parrot oh-so-chic idea that the sex and nudity in films is harmless, though I was annoyed that the nudity in question is 99 percent female. How hypocritical to say ‘we’re equal’ and then turn women into sex objects. But when we’re all being honest, and not trying to sound more enlightened and modern than our parents, we can admit that watching people writhe around with feigned passion, sans clothing, is embarrassing — deep inside in that old-fashioned place we like to pretend we’ve conquered. I’m not talking about the more utilitarian nudity in a National Geographic special, but the gratuitous nudity in a film. Maybe it’s just human to be a little embarrassed by that kind of nudity, not because it’s dirty but because it’s lovely — and none of our business.

Even before I was Muslim, I began to hate the panopticon of the male gaze. After converting, I began to cover my body to privatize the public sphere. Now that I feel more at home in feminism than ever before — because I have dropped out of the society that deems that my assets are in my ass, and because male strangers don’t harrass me anymore, which always made me feel worthless — the film industry seems more blatantly misogynistic than ever before. Pretending to ‘liberate’ women from ‘patriarchal’ ideas about sexuality, pretending to embrace a woman’s ‘freedom’ to bare all, they have effectively imprisoned them — their bodies are currency, their attractiveness is their worth. They are their bodies, and that is all.

I’m sure most Hollywood actresses think Muslim women are oppressed. I wonder if they know that Muslim women think Hollywood actresses are oppressed. Think about it. Who is held to an impossible standard of beauty? Who spends hours grooming? Who is gossiped about and judged for gaining or losing a few pounds? Who is discarded the minute she becomes old or ugly or fat?

I know I just talked about how evil TV is, but here is a short, soon-to-be-updated list of movies that you need to watch immediately (if not sooner).

Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet is one of just a handful of movies that actually seeks out articulate spokespeople for Islam. This PBS documentary presents an imminently watchable, entertaining look at both the life of the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, and the varied lives of modern-day American Muslims. (Unfortunately, most movies that claim to “tell the truth about Islam” first begin by retelling all the lies already being told, and then putting a camera in front of a few uneducated, dirty Muslims with atypical opinions. Muslims, e.g., should have been called Muslim Problems.) But Legacy of a Prophet is full of touching scenes — a congressional aide washing himself for ritual prayer, a nurse comforting a dying man — mixed with flashbacks of how the revelation of the Qur’an profoundly affected the Prophet’s otherwise ordinary life. It is beautiful, and western scholar Karen Armstrong is especially enjoyable to watch.

Blood and Oil: A History of the Middle East in World War I is interesting only to a history nerd like myself for the first 90 percent of it. But after the Ottoman Empire surrenders to the Allied powers, and the war “ends” — the true desert storm begins. Several historians call that time the “peace to end all peace” because it created a situation that is inherently unstable, and rife with enough conflict to spark centuries of war. This movie uses snobby British historians, and never even comes close to being pro-Turk or pro-Arab — and the Anglocentric viewpoint makes a sordid history even more so… The Arabs, persuaded by Britain to fight for “independence” from the Turks, were doubly betrayed: A secret treaty between Britain and France, the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, meant the two countries would divide the Middle East between them, carving up the Muslim empire into arbitrary “nations” and “peoples.” Then Zionist sympathies spawned the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which meant the British would guarantee a Jewish homeland in Palestine — the site of the ancient kingdom of Israel where Arabs had lived for more than a thousand years. This movie only begins to explain why the last century has meant only horror for Middle Easterners of every tongue, creed and color. I wish only that people would watch this movie, and perhaps begin to remove the veil that allows people to confuse these 20th-century political conflicts with a 1,400-year-old religion that preaches only peace.

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price is very important to me personally. Every day I hear people, good people who are trying to raise thoughtful children, mention “When I got it at Wal-Mart…” and inwardly I startle, a bit surprised by how many good, God-fearing folks I know who shop there, blind to the inherent contradiction between goodness and supporting the largest, foulest, most ruthless behemoth in the world today. Watch it if you want to serve God, and if you believe Jesus meant it when he said that our faith is measured by how we treat “the least of these…” Watch it if you’re a humanist who believes in an egalitarian playing field. Watch it if you started boycotting Wal-Mart long ago, or if you still shop there. This documentary by Robert Greenwald will make you feel ashamed of yourself, and vow never to support Wal-Mart, or “Mao-Mart” as my brother calls it, with your hard-earned money ever again. And be honest: you’re not giving up a thing. Wal-Mart goods are inferior, Wal-Mart staff is overworked and prevented at every turn from unionizing, and the nickels you save were taken directly from the “least of these” — the impoverished Chinese.

I just found an article that explains, with a better vocabulary, how I feel about television.

Historically, I’ve tended to see TV as a morally neutral entity; its good (necessity) or evil (uselessness) depended on what a person decides to watch. PBS = good, Lifetime Television for Women = bad, for example.

But I recall that sometimes (in sporadic, enlightened moments) I had no patience even for “educational” television. I looked at the television and saw only a talking box, and it seemed eerily insane to look into it at the fantasy being sold inside. A fantasy of glorified romance or violence amidst buy-this-truck-to-feel-better-about-your-place-in-the-world reminders. In those moments, it seemed spooky and crazy that with two people in a room, we preferred to look forward and be entertained by a machine rather than talk with each other.

In this world people sit transfixed by what is essentially an electronic box emanating coloured lights, at the cost of living in the reality around them, face to face with other people. In short, television fosters a consumerist society and creates a society of people detached from their own real world.

For millennia people told each other stories, in their own languages, that reflected their own cultural mores and values. Now, even in remote corners of the world, the stories people are hearing reinforce solely Western notions of death and sexuality… as if the hands behind the media are trying to create a streamlined, homogenous culture. As our detachment and disillusionment grows, so rise the suicide rates in America and Europe. And everywhere, there is a desire for American consumer goods that, like a thirst for sea water, increases steadily until you die, still thirsty.

When I was working as a freelance writer in Colorado and living right at at the poverty line, I learned how to entertain myself cheaply. That’s when I learned to appreciate my computer, long walks and the many wonders of a public library. And partly because it’s so expensive and partly because it’s so unnecessary, my husband and I have never gotten the cable hooked up. To be fair, I’ve heard DVR and TiVo lessen the effects of commercials, and therefore, on someone being driven unheeding toward mindless consumerism. But that’s more money, and I remain unconvinced that there’s anything I could learn from television that I can’t learn on the (much cheaper) Internet.

Out of everyone at my office, I am the only one who has never seen “that commercial with the…” or “that episode of…” and who isn’t trying to engage others in meaningless dialogues about our shared “culture” of television. And I like that. I even like that I am not as well-informed about current events. The truly important sound bytes make it into my brain via my co-workers — the mental QB who tortures dogs, for example — and all the zionist infotainment and/or celebrity news is pretty much avoided.

But the problem lies in how to replace the gaping hole left by the lack of “input” from the television. It’s not hard… one just has to have someone knowledgeable to talk with. Yusuf and I sometimes talk all night about Islam. One day, I asked if he knows what happens when we die.

There are two questions that secular Western civilization is unable to answer. And these two questions are on all our minds… whether we spend our lives trying to avoid them, or answer them. One, what is the meaning of life; and two, what happens to us when we die? Islam answers both questions.

The meaning of life is a test, a trial from Allah. How we react to the things that happen to us determines the nature of afterlife for each individual. Do we seek the permanence of God, or do we seek the transient nature of the joys of this world? Both poverty and affluence are tests, the latter arguably being the greater one. Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Muhammad said, “Two wolves entering a flock of sheep will do less harm than greed and wealth will do to a man’s religion.” Peace and blessings of Allah be upon them both.

“Every soul shall have a taste of death: and We test you by evil and by good by way of trial. To Us must ye return.” Qur’an 21:35

Death is the separation of the soul from the body, but it is not the annihilation of either. When death comes, the angel Azrael seizes your soul and each of us goes to our grave alone. The soul is returned after we are inside the grave, when two angels, Munkar and Nakir, ask us several questions: Who is your Creator? What is your religion? Who is your prophet? What is your book? Then they will ask your age and what caused your death, and about your property: how you earned it and on what did you spend it. As Muslims, we feel hopeful when we think of death; we believe we will be able to answer the questions, and we believe in the all-encompassing compassion of Allah to forgive us for our shortcomings.

“And among His signs is this: you see the earth barren and desolate, but when We send down rain to it, it is stirred to life and yields increase. Truly, He who gives life to the (dead) earth can surely give life to (men) who are dead. For He has power over all things.” Qur’an 41:39

…was convincing the world he didn’t exist. Do you find it as fascinating as I do… how far regular people will go, how completely they will give up their soul, in order to have a steady income?

I take for instance a recent experience with my insurance company, UnitedHealthcare, and specifically its pharmaceutical division, Medco. I had the pleasure of speaking to Maria.

Some background: I have been battling a pretty severe chest cold for about two weeks (my own fault for not listening to my husband and getting more sleep, wearing socks, wrapping my neck with a dry towel, eating yogurt and drinking hot tea when it was just a little cold — thus, there blossomed thick phlegm and a heaving, hacking, awake-all-night cough). After a few days of the really bad symptoms, I went to my doctor. He listened to my lungs and peered into my throat and called it “bronchitis.” He wrote prescriptions for a powerful antibiotic, and a cough suppressant/expectorant that was supposed to loosen the mucous in my lungs allowing me to have “productive” coughs, but also suppress my body’s urge to have dry (unproductive) coughs.

When I took these two prescriptions to CVS, I was charged $97. For exactly 28 antibiotic pills, and 14 cough pills. For 42 pills over 7 days, $97. That’s like $2.30 per pill. I asked twice if they had run my insurance. The pharmacy tech assured me they had. But over the next seven days, in the swirling delirium of illness — including the fact that after all my pills were gone, I was still coughing violently, albeit productively — I became incensed. Righteous indignation is my usual state of mind, so it’s natural I would return to it when I was feeling better, kind of.

First, I was angry at the doctor for prescribing me this exorbitant medicine that clearly didn’t work. I went to him after 10 days had passed and told him I’d had to drop $100 on his last two prescriptions, and could he please find something cheaper this time. He was horrified. He didn’t come right out and say the pharmacy hadn’t run my insurance, but he seemed so shocked that I started to suspect just that. (Plus, my mom had spoken to a friend who is a nurse practitioner, and she outright said the pharmacy couldn’t have run my insurance.) He wrote me a prescription for a generic Z-pack, which meant five more days of even more powerful antibiotics — and instructions to eat yogurt to replace the good bacteria, and drink tea with honey — and thrust several free samples of prescription cough syrup and nasal spray at me.

By then I was thrilled with my doctor, and filled the ($10) prescription at Walgreens. Naturally I became convinced that CVS had stolen from me by charging me full price for the medications. I went back there and huffily demanded they check and see. A different pharmacy tech typed for about 10 minutes on the computer and then printed out the prescription labels again. He pointed out where “UnitedH” had paid for their part of the medicine. He said my co-pay was $60 for each medicine, which is why I’d had to pay $60 for a $100 antibiotic, and full price ($37) for the cough pills. I asked, “Is that normal?” He said, “No, a $60 co-pay is pretty outrageous.”

By then my fury toward the pharmacy faded, and got channeled into my insurance company. This is when I had the chance to speak with the lovely Maria. I won’t call her a dolt, but I will quote her below:

Me: Maria, could you be a dear and explain to me exactly why I had to pay $100 to cure my bronchitis?
Maria: Well these prescriptions are Tier 3, and that’s why—
Me: Tier 3? I’m sorry? Could you explain to me in regular English exactly what that means?
Maria: All prescriptions are divided into different tiers. Yours are Tier 3.
Me: Yes, but what does Tier 3 mean?
Maria: Prescriptions that fall under the Tier 3 category are Tier 3 if prescriptions are single-source prescriptions with no generic. (Yes, this is exactly how she talked.)
Me: Augmentin Rx doesn’t have a generic, so it’s Tier 3.
Maria: Yes. Tier 3 medications only have one manufacturer. So Augmentin Rx is a Tier 3 medication, and Tier 3 medications have a co-pay of $60.
Me: So if a medicine is new or hasn’t been copied by someone else, it’s considered Tier 3. And the co-pay for Tier 3 is $60.
Maria: Yes, that’s right.
Me (after a pause): Maria, doesn’t it strike you as slightly outrageous that a person would have to pay $100 to cure bronchitis?
Maria: Well, Tier 3 medications have a co-pay of $60. So with Augmentin, which costs more, you had to pay $60. But with your other medication, the price was $37, so you had to pay $37, not the co-pay. Because we can’t charge you more than the medicine costs.

She had me there.

Me (with a hint of sarcasm): I should hope not… Listen, Maria, can I ask you an honest question?
Maria: Yes, ma’am.
Me: What can I do to avoid this in the future? I mean, what do you suggest I do to avoid Tier 3 medications and $60 co-pays? Will my doctor know what ‘Tier 3′ is?
Maria: Well, you can call us when you’re at the pharmacy and we can tell you what your co-pay is.
Me: I think my pharmacy can handle telling me the price I’m responsible for. What I’m talking about is avoiding the problem of being prescribed something expensive in the first place. Do you understand my point?
Maria: Oh.
Me: Do you have a list of Tier 3 medications or something?
Maria: Oh! Yes, we can send you a guide in the mail.

I’m not even going to get into how stupid it is that we allow insurance personnel without medical degrees to dictate health care decisions.

And despite how this may seem, I’m really not trying to single out Maria as like, the most offensive company-policy apologist ever to work the phones. For me, Maria is just the latest in a long line, part of a much larger trend that I’ve noticed whenever I have a problem with anything — from a credit card bill, bank statement or cell phone bill with a mysterious “fee,” to health and dental insurance companies having myriad “reasons” for not covering something.

American capitalism has devolved into outright thievery. Sure, they call it a “maintenance fee” and it’s only $1.50, but my $1.50, times 2 million customers, equals $3 million. Three Million Dollars in nonsense “fees” that, correct me if I’m wrong, have no basis in real services and amount to stealing. And it works, and it works well, because it’s over the phone or it’s in the mail, there’s no face-to-face interaction or accountability.

So it’s easy to understand the mindset of the company. What I’m trying to understand is the perspective of the person who’s actually talking to me, and how they can sleep at night, knowing they are aiding and ebetting theft from regular folks like themselves. Do they justify it with the corporate rhetoric they hear in the orientation video and company memos? Are they brainwashed into thinking their company is actually fulfilling the needs of its customers?

Probably they are just average folks, reading off a little sheet Scotch-taped to the wall of their cubicle that explains all the appropriate non-response responses for every situation. When customer says: ‘Why do I have this maintenance fee on my bill?’ You say: ‘Company policy blah blah blah…’ They don’t think about it too much, justifying it with how they have kids and a mortgage and how answering phones is better than working outside in the heat. But at least bricklaying, or whatever, is honest. It’s a respectable and decent way to support a family, doing something tangible to justify the bread on one’s table. What do these corporate parrots actually do to earn the bread they eat and the roof over their heads? Less than nothing, because they attempt to justify the insatiable greed of the insanely wealthy. To me, their actions are about as bad as those of the insanely wealthy themselves, who are undoubtedly deeply unhappy and probably suicidal because they’re all-too-aware of what they actually are. Their wealth is its own punishment, because it’s empty, and they’re empty, and they know it.

But what about the middle-class automatrons who help the rich get richer, and call it “working for an insurance company” while they steal pennies from their friends and place it directly into the hands of the greedy pigs at the top? I’m not pretending to be horrified that this happens. I mean, people have been stealing from each other since the beginning of time. What bothers me is that regular people choose to work for corporations who pay them a pittance to say that what those companies are doing isn’t theft, and that we who are stolen from often don’t understand what just happened.

If this were Medieval Europe, these people would be one of the king’s men, the guys on the horses who rode around collecting the “taxes,” which mysteriously went up every time there was a war that had to be funded. And they terrorized the feudal peasants, burning their thatched roofs, stealing their cows, and worse. But at least they knew they were thieves, and those they stole from knew they were thieves. But now, because it’s all done in a very pleasant tone of voice, and it happens over the phone or with a politely worded, vaguely confusing letter in the mail, we don’t call it stealing? Hogwash.