There are no opposition political parties because they are all believers, shared values, immune to facts, immune to the world. Political campaigns are just a recitation of the catechism.
Reason only exists within the pre-assigned boundaries of this catechism as a hermeneutic artifice. And it is this peculiar artificiality of reason that strikes me as so similar to the weirdness of arguing over the status of the holy ghost.
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Which is one reason - one immense reason, as gigantic as Jupiter must appear from the tortured surface of one of its moons - political debate in the United States is undead.
The thing walks in the moonlight like a wraith; it has the appearance of life (see the many television shouting contest shows between talking heads of the "left" and "right") but is a dead as old Socrates.
And the most poignant aspect of the thing's undead state is its nearly complete unawareness of its bloodless condition. Of course, there are fiery speeches - within acceptable parameters - of the 'problem of campaign money' or the 'culture of accusation and scandal' but these are only the noisy rattlings of dried bones in creaky motion.
...
Chuck: "Reason only exists within the pre-assigned boundaries of this catechism as a hermeneutic artifice."
And so it is.
While driving to work I listened to a radio show segment about believers
struggling with the two, apparently contradictory facts of god being love and yet allowing a terrible tsunami to kill tens of thousands.
A Catholic bishop was dragged out of bed to offer his wisdom. "It is a great mystery" he said, "a great mystery." An alternative explanation - such as there not being a deity to debate about - had zero chance it seemed of being put out there.
And so a 'debate', of sorts, was launched. It was of about as much value as debating whether Superman or The Mighty Thor would win a contest of strength.
.d.
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