Max,
Is this a serious theory, that Charlie's deep clinging to, for example, the preposterous definitions of the Left, Patriotism, Trump, and Believers in his last post is created by sharp confrontation? Or are you saying that it is only when you try to challenge the fabricated myths of ideologues (as opposed to less artificial myths along the lines of Cassirer's Myths of the State vs. those described in his early work) that you see their true inability to think without them? Or are you just saying this is a waste of time. I don't buy A. B is the only reason I have been trolling along. And C may in fact be the truth.
Charlie,
You may believe that the sheer size of the sheep pen you hunker in gives you the right to claim ownership of the religion you assume to speak for but I find more content in the "believing" done by individuals like Dorothy Day, Simone Wiel, Jacques Ellul, Romero, Berdyaev, and Heschel that is on the same trajectory as your founder than in all the sheerings of your more "faithful" masses combined. These are but a few names. I know personally hundreds of Christians who I have walked through all manners of tight spots that would find your views of both God and their own deeply active faiths repulsive even if so immature as to be comical.
Even C.S. Lewis had the sense to realize how far a patriotism like yours is from any defensible notion of love. As for your fascinating idea of what your text is and the equivalency of your reading with the intents of its many human authors all I can do is think of the many Christianities that would dissent from most of what you say above and wonder if you have ever actually looked at the politics and techniques that gave you the cannon you are so at ease in trusting. The authority you claim to speak for your texts seem based only in the strict limitations you put on any real questioning of their claims and manifestations, a blinder you confuse with Faith. I find it unlikely that you have studied any more of these texts, their possible meanings, and the history of the discussion around them than I have so I always find your claim to authority to speak for them with anymore at stake in the game or sense of pesonal consequence than I have, so you will forgive if I laugh at your strange explanation above about the Left (permutations of which you imagine even less of than of theologies).
As for "our" freedoms and "our" way of life and the so called progressive hate for them, I again appreciate the underlining of the resiliency your indoctrination into the Feed gives you against all evidence to the contrary.
The hatred of "our" foundations are another matter. If you mean the very real genocide manifest for our destiny, or the many other betrayals of the state principles of the documents then maybe so. If you mean everything from Thomas Paine to Shay's Rebellion than you are, as usual when you pretend to have any idea what my "Left" believes, deeply confused.
|