Saturday, December 21, 2013

There is no Excuse for Your Life

Ć¢€˜Duck DynastyĆ¢€™ and Quackery - NYTimes.com:
It’s impossible to know if Robertson recognizes the historical resonance and logical improbability of his comments. But that’s not an excuse.
It may be impossible to know in the case of Robertson, but we can be absolutely certain that Blow has no clue. I think we are all ignorant, so I give him an excuse there. Eternally though, he doesn't have one, so I hope he is right on that front.

He provides a great example of the totalitarian viewpoint. You have no right to see things from your own perspective and life experience. Your life is invalid.  You MUST take the perspective that the State pounds into your head ... on gays, on race, on the environment, on guns, on religion, on EVERYTHING. What the hell part of "totalitarian" is that you are missing???  We are going to try VERY hard to get people to only think what they are told, but if we fail with the "kind way", it is clear that "other measures" will be needed.
Robertson’s comments conjure the insidious mythology of historical Southern fiction, that of contented slave and benevolent master, of the oppressed and the oppressors gleefully abiding the oppression, happily accepting their wildly variant social stations. This mythology posits that there were two waves of ruination for Southern culture, the Civil War and the civil rights movement, that made blacks get upset and things go downhill.
The world indeed is host to a number of "insidious mythologies". We are just scratching the surface on the fiction of the recent  "if you like your policy you can keep it" mythology. Our soaring debt shows the mythology of FICA and Medicare. It is a long list. Something like 90% of our country at least mostly believes in the "benevolent federal master", with the "contented ever nearer to slaves" willingly giving up more of their freedoms day by day for "security".

Humans live in myth ... the myth that we have control of our lives, that our loved ones will be there tomorrow, that we will get up in the morning, that we are somehow "secure" in this life. Our myths are always erased sooner or later, often only for us to attempt to reinstate a new myth to replace the old.

So we find some religion that we cling to, that we believe to be true by faith. In my case, it is Christianity, in other cases it is "social justice", or even the abiding faith that this is only a big random crap shoot with no meaning beyond pleasure. Christianity has the distinct advantage of not being disprovable until after death. "Social justice" is not happening in this mortal coil, and even the most excited adherent will eventually figure that out ... or as they lay dying, they will realize that their pursuit doesn't provide them much comfort. Likewise pleasure ... it gets tougher to get your "kicks" with a walker.  and on it goes.

Our world views, our "myths" are usually pretty easy to spot. Blow is certain that the current US tumble to totalitarian control of everything including our thoughts, to the exclusion of our personal life story is "reality", and having a personal viewpoint that might even include Christ, like Phil Robertson is "staggering ignorance", that "conjures insidious mythology".

The 2nd amendment is all that really remains to block Blow's myth coming true and guys like Phil and I being "re-educated" to think as he does -- or get an early entrance to eternity to find out the REAL big picture.




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