LIKE MOST SUCCESSFUL CULTS, IT LETS PEOPLE ACT LIKE DEMONS WHILE FEELING LIKE ANGELS: Virginia Postrel On The Glamour of the Islamic State.

Confronting Islamic State requires an exercise largely unfamiliar to the American military’s hardheaded pragmatists: thinking carefully about the elusive, seductive magic of glamour. Making that task all the more difficult, it also demands recognizing the allure of ideas and images that baffle, offend or horrify most Westerners. As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, glamour is in the mind of the audience.

Glamour is undermined by mockery. People steeped in multicultural respect will find that mockery difficult. The other thing that undermines glamour is crushing defeat. The Axis had glamour of its own, until Dresden and Hiroshima.