The militarization of life requires a binary mind, one prepared by ignorance for fascism. Black and white. Good and Evil. Us and Them. Terrorism and Patriotism Mine (Not Yours). This is the mind grown thoughtless via the Image. This is devotion. This is technology.* This is nations. This is possession. Possession is 9/10 of the [...]
Tag Archives: religion
The Jesus-Prop–The State at War and the Lie of Humanitarianism
You’ve read rant upon rant about the topics in the title of this post if you’ve stopped here for any length of time or visited now and then over the months. One runs down. But there are other voices, better, and stronger. Melville’s, for one, who’s book, White Jacket, is, in the main, about the [...]
The Seeming Banality
Besides, this Bland, the master-at-arms, was no vulgar, dirty knave. In him—to modify Burke’s phrase—vice seemed, but only seemed, to lose half its seeming evil by losing all its apparent grossness. (Melville, White Jacket) No doubt evil can be normalized, institutionalized, and even made socially just and proper in its place. Does Arendt hold Eichmann to [...]
A Gospel Truth
It’s nothing new, but we must keep these things in front of us…recall when we found out that the US Military had infused (was it already) Christian War Theology as a way to influence (brainwash) its members (men and women with guns encouraged to use them to kill people) in what has been presented to [...]
Breaching the Sound
Breaching the Sound Born upon speculation only the gamble for the ground Anchored against the past our foundling fathers founder us Pledged to declarations constitutive bodies come unmoored Gauged between self and state owing all to each as purchased Sounding the breach
The Money Virtue As American Rational Religion
The most virtuous and honest character in Dickens’ Hard Times, Stephen Blackpool, often confronts the confusion, ambiguity, paradox, and unfairness of “interests” with an aggrieved and exasperated cry that “it’s all such a muddle.” Even his virtuous acts of self-protection are disallowed by law, but the law is one that restricts the impoverished while it [...]
Walking and Talking: Wilco’s One Sunday Morning
Yesterday, Wednesday morning, I walked the dogs, as usual, uphill on 1st street (east) around 8 a.m. It seemed a perfect morning. A chill air balanced by a warming sun; a blue sky with long intermittent clouds; no traffic (spring break in a college town). I thought, Here is a possible eternity. Here is a [...]
Hate and Death and Education: Or, D. H. Lawrence in Love
Some time ago I posted that men, on the whole, hate women. I meant that. I meant it in this way, from D. H. Lawrence who was a good hater, in Women in Love. But it seemed to him, woman was always so horrible and clutching, she had such a lust for possession, a greed [...]
Master and Commander: Can a Mormon Be Man Enough for the Murder Machine?
Today I opened my morning paper to discover a very large headline in the “Neighbors/Religion” section (we don’t have time to discuss this formatting decision, focus!): “Would Monroe County vote for a Mormon?” This was an unfortunate piece to say the least, and I said more in comments and I’d like to share both the [...]
Politics + Interest = Liberty?
Can you discover your own mind in the below from George Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. I’m pretty sure we’re all in there somewhere. From Chapter 51 of Middlemarch. Politics and self-interest in 1871 and 2012. Party is Nature too, and you shall see By force of Logic how they both agree: The Many in [...]
Articles
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The Chaos of Monoculture
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The Custom House: Louis Agassiz with Christoph Irmscher
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The Errant Goes Audible: The Custom House on WFHB
