Alan: Persuaded of their personal salvation and the protective immunity of their pending "rapture," "conservative" "Christians" cannot even conceive that the eyes of their own children will boil in their sockets, or that grand-kids' irradiated flesh will slough from the still living bone.
Prohibition, Noah, Ham And The Curse Of Canaan
Prohibition, Noah, Ham And The Curse Of Canaan
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2011/11/daily-dose-111111-prohibition-and-curse.html
White Christian Despair And Armageddon As A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
White Christian Despair And Armageddon As A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Dear F,
Thanks for your email.
Remember.
We are primates.
At our best we are extraordinary!
But at regular intervals, we regress to the jungle and "monkey around."
Of course, we cannot "play rough" too long before somebody gets hurt.
Then retaliation.
And escalation.
If we're lucky, the atavism fizzles and we get to be extraordinary again.
But for the foreseeable future, we will be "lead" by an ape who never aspired higher than alpha male dominance-submission hierarchies.
"The men with the largest of earthly fortunes and the smallest of earthly aims. There are two other odd and rather important things to be said about them. The first is this: that with this aristocracy we do not have the chance of a lucky variety in types which belongs to larger and looser aristocracies. The moderately rich include all kinds of people even good people. Even priests are sometimes saints; and even soldiers are sometimes heroes. Some doctors have really grown wealthy by curing their patients and not by flattering them; some brewers have been known to sell beer. But among the Very Rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it." G. K. Chesterton
The good news (perhaps) is that Donald is so evidently simian.
And many people want -- perhaps even need -- something more than pussy grabbing, animal posturing, and pretending bourgeoise religion is more than frightened-animal strategy to guarantee the essential self-centeredness of "personal salvation."
Of course, lunacy -- particularly in its collective forms -- has an unpredictable logic all its own.
Note this difference...
When individuals go crazy, it's the same tedious thing, day after day, year after year - often, decade after decade.
Personal madness is characterized by sameness, by repetition, by same old same old.
But when societies go crazy, it's just friggin' weird.
Hundred year wars.
Nuclear wars.
Flying planes into sky scrapers.
Burning children with napalm, an incendiary glue that cannot be scraped off one's frying flesh.
Driving trucks into Christmas markets while little kids wait to see Santa.
Byzantine intrigue in the heart of the Vatican.
What's most bizarre is that - mostly - we can't even talk about it.
Polarized families hunker down in twin trenches on opposite sides of the concertina wire.
And The Holiday Host carves The Roast Beast when in his heart-of-hearts he would like to carve the people who are not like him and his kin.
Fork their eyeballs as hors d'oeuvres.
Maybe Donald will do the forking for us!
And then! The most splendid of all possible outcomes!
Someone else does the dirty work -- stupid young bucks, testy with testosterone, undertake the drumbeat, the invasion, the carnage.
The climax.
The release.
And slowly the return to normalcy.
But no one really believes "the good Germans" didn't know.
Until we look back...
... and see...
that we...
were the good Germans.
Who?
Me?
I didn't know!
"Thomas Merton: Adolf Eichmann, Sanity and Normality"
"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”
"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton
Of course, this time we don't know if there will be anyone left to look back.
Or, what's more likely, will there be anyone not so consumed by the needs of post-apocalyptic survival to undertake the civilized act of writing history.
Conservatives are desparate for the good ol' days of male dominance and female submission. Chest-thumping rule wrought by superior upper body strength.
And by God, "Christian" "conservatives" might just get their dominance/submission back... even if they must resurrect The Neolithic to insure its return.
Love
A
"You Have NO Choice," A New Frame For George Carlin's Classic Shtick "The American Dream"
"Do War's Really Defend America's Freedom
(Homage To Marine Commandant, Major General Smedley Butler)
"Why We Fight," Excellent Documentary With Ike's "Military-Industrial Complex" As SpringboardScare The Sheep And They Will Applaud Military-Industrial Profiteering
"Why We Fight," Excellent Documentary With Ike's "Military-Industrial Complex" As Springboard
Scare The Sheep
And They Will Applaud Military-Industrial Profiteering
American "Patriotism": Why So Many Americans Are Fundamentally Violent And Paranoid
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/04/american-patriotism-why-so-many.html
There are two ways of lying, as there are two ways of deceiving customers. If the scale registers 15 ounces, you can say: "It's a pound." Your lie will remain relative to an invariable measure of the true. If customers check it, they can see that they are being robbed, and you know by how much you are robbing them: a truth remains as a judge between you. But if the demon induces you to tamper with the scale itself, it is the criterion of the true which is denatured, there is no longer any possible control. And little by little you will forget that you are cheating.
Republican Lawmaker From Nevada Sends Christmas Card Featuring Fully Armed Family
The Age-Old Normalization Of Warfare Through Stupidity, Ego And Religion
The Mistaken Concept That Reducing Cultures To Rubble Results In Peace
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-mistaken-concept-that-reducing.htmlFran Lebowitz: "People Love Their Hatred More Than They Care About Their Own Actual Lives"
"Dear White Conservative, I See You"
“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt: The Horror Of Normality
“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt: The Horror Of Normality
On Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 3:55 PM, FV wrote:
Dear AThere is a news tape on msnbc today with Francis saying he is meeting with severe resistance as he tries to reform the bureaucracy of the Vatican. Prelates who work for him must undergo a permanent purification to serve the Catholic Church since they are under the influence of the Devil.Alan, what is going on? What happened to the vow of obedience? How can we expect world order when we can't even have Church order? I hope he can clean out and strip power from the possessed.LoveF
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