[theapportioner]

I don't reject cultures, or cultural differences. I don't deny that very many people believe that these polarizations exist. What I object to, and reject, is the assumption of intra-cultural homogeneity and stasis that goes into such generalizations. Saying Arabs are like this or that is just like someone in Iraq saying that Westerners are culturally depraved. Saying that those who support the war are racist rednecks, or that those who oppose the war are anti-American communists.

Differences, and similarities, are largely what you make of them. In America, Protestant versus Irish and Italian Catholic quickly became White versus Black. Now, it's Western versus Islamic. Same shit. Many American assume (and I doubt you do) that terrorists are anti-Western fanatical idiots. Of course the reality is that many of them are affluent and well-educated, even by Western academic institutions.

Not saying that what you say is untrue -- since a person in Jordan is exposed to a different cultural memory than I am, he or she will see the world through a different lens. Not disputing that. My beef is with the framing of the relationship of these two cultures as one or the other, with no in between, nuance, cross-fertilization, dynamism. What this does, I think, is make a person see things in a two-color perspective, and that's trouble.