Anyway, middle strata retreating into the irrationality of religion to make sense out of nonsense,( and the nonesense is growing in leaps and bounds, the rationalizations are more and more irrational)is a sign of subjective crisis and a classic seeking of the capitalist world's universal basis of consolation and justification, seeking a heart in a heartless world, a soul in soulless conditions. The United States of America and fans around the world are in a cyclical increase in soullessness, so people must seek succour in the classic location, religion ? Maybe. Wouldn't be the first time.
When do we get to the situation where the ruled refuse to be ruled in the old way ?
On the one hand it doesn't matter that Bush plays the Fool. On the other hand, in people's hearts of hearts they have to feel crazy following a clown and self-professed ignoramus. He makes fools of them. This is an irrationality that must be soothed by religious, ecstatic escape, even anticipated ecstasy, as in looking forward to the Rapture, for example; or it is an irrationality that cannot even be taken into the mind without first bathing it in religious light, whatever. There are other intellecutal humiliations that masses of white people are forced to suffer , and they are greater in this period and growing.
Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Karl Marx in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, February, 1844
For Germany, the criticism of religion has been essentially completed, and the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.
The profane existence of error is compromised as soon as its heavenly oratio pro aris et focis [“speech for the altars and hearths”] has been refuted. Man, who has found only the reflection of himself in the fantastic reality of heaven, where he sought a superman, will no longer feel disposed to find the mere appearance of himself, the non-man [Unmensch], where he seeks and must seek his true reality.
The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.
Steven Gotzler wrote:
> But most interesting is that people I have known for many years, people
> with good educations, and better than average jobs are going to these
> things. I get the sense that they are a little embarrassed to tell me
> when they first have to. In conversation I often learn that they no
> longer know much about the news, although years ago they did. And they
> act, as in vote, by what they think they do know. We talk and if I can
> keep from getting to self-righteous I make serious headway in getting
> them back on track. Many of these people were people who were into new
> age sort of things in the past. Remember the "harmonic convergence"
> thing that never happened. People faded away from that stuff over
> time. I wonder if a lot of this middle class evangelical stuff won't
> pass when it turns out that it really doesn't deliver peace of mind?