The Will To Believe Is So Strong That We Lose Contact With Reality

This November, exercise the only choice you really have:

DON'T VOTE!

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Bonhoeffer Co-Opted

The recent co-optation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by evangelical Christians on the political Right (e.g., Eric Metaxas) and the Nazi resister's re-invention as an evangelical warrior-saint is, for someone who has long admired Bonhoeffer, quite disturbing. Like every human being, there is enough ambiguity in the development of his political thinking and theology to paint a variety of portraits. But those on the Right who wish to claim Bonhoeffer's legacy should bethink themselves and the relationship of their own politics to the politics of the regime Bonhoeffer gave his life to defeat.

In a speech delivered on July 22, 1933, Adolph Hitler pledged that "The national government [of Germany] will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality. Today Christians stand at the very heart of our country. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press--in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past years."

Those words sound remarkably like Rush Limbaugh/Glenn Beck-speak. I am grateful to Jeffrey C. Pugh's 2008 study of Bonhoeffer Religionless Christianity for (1) its consistently moral voice and reflection and (2) complicating the picture of Bonhoeffer the man.

The above quote from Hitler may be found on page 27 of that book.

Bread and Circuses

The Democan-Republicrat Duopoly presents: its quadrennial production of American Marionette Theater! Yes, every four years the militarized corporatocracy that runs USA, Inc. puts on a show designed to create a little distracting drama with the hopes of drumming up public interest in its ongoing farce. Success is a game of numbers: if the corporatocracy can convince a majority of registered voters to return to the polls in order to ratify its choice of two puppets, one of those puppets will then be granted a four year term as "chief executive" and live in a mansion in Washington, D.C.

Why should the American public bother with participating in this quadrennial farce? Because, for most people, what William James so rightly named the "will to believe" is tantamount to the will to live. If the American people were ever to admit to themselves that the story they tell about themselves (their sacred narrative) is a fiction and that they do not possess a government of, by, and for the people, the onus would be upon them to take action against the existing regime. That would require much personal courage and sacrifice.

Better to content oneself with bread and circuses in this, the Empire of the Evening Lands.

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