Trump Agonistics

 "They say and do not." But the kingdom of God is not in word, but in Power. He talketh of prayer, of repentance, of faith, and of the new birth; but he knows but only to talk of them. I have been in his family, and have observed him both at home and abroad; and I know what I say of him is the truth. His house is as empty of religion as the white of an egg is of savour. There is there neither prayer nor sign of repentance for sin; yea, the brute in his kind serves God far better than he. He is the very stain, reproach, and shame of religion, to all that know him; it can hardly have a good word in all that end of the town where he dwells, through him. Thus say the common people that know him, A saint abroad, and a devil at home. His poor family finds it so; he is such a churl, such a railer at and so unreasonable with his servants, that they neither know how to do for or speak to him. Men that have any dealings with him say it is better to deal with a Turk than with him; for fairer dealing they shall have at their hands. This Talkative (if it be possible) will go beyond them, defraud, beguile, and overreach them. Besides, he brings up his sons to follow his steps; and if he findeth in any of them a foolish timorousness, (for so he calls the first appearance of a tender conscience,) he calls them fools and blockheads, and by no means will employ them in much, or speak to their commendations before others. For my part, I am of opinion, that he has, by his wicked life, caused many to stumble and fall; and will be, if God prevent not, the ruin of many more.... Paul calleth some men, yea, and those great talkers, too, sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.

John Bunyan, The Pilgrims Progress

 

Came across this while reading Bunyan. Not sure how I got into it but it's difficult to put down. The Pilgrims Progress is deep at the source of the evangelical stream of Christianity. Bunyan eschews human law, secular morality and government in favor of the Bible as written. He urges ignoring the visible in favor of the invisible, i.e., the Biblical God. Trump finds his support base among those immersed in this Pilgrim stream. And he's all Talkative.

Gods, Monsters and Americans

Was reading a book putting forward the theory of monistic idealism. The author notes an observation attributed to Mother Theresa that Americans are the most materialistically blessed but impoverished in spirit people on earth. This could actually be said about most of the people in the Western world but maybe of Americans the most.

The author (Amit Goswami, The Self-Aware Universe) attributes this to America’s unquestioned materialism. We have lost connection with the world of enchantment in which we felt connected to something greater and more mysterious. I won’t gainsay this. But it may not be the whole picture. To judge from American popular culture – especially in the movies and TV that we export to the whole world – we seem to yearn for what we are missing. Living far from the US for the past few years, I see the reflections of this American preoccupation with particular clarity. We flood the ether with vampires, superheroes, ghosts, wizards and witches, psychics, aliens, magic, lost dimensions, time travelers, alternate realities, undead, formerly dead, demons, angels, devils, gods, mythical beasts and monsters. And I have no doubt left some out. We seem to have an utter fascination with things and beings which we in our day-today life know do not – cannot – really exist. What are these if not expressions of something deep inside of us that we feel the loss of, something beyond what science and modernity have left us? (There are other manifestations of this as well that lay at the root of the various forms of fundamentalism, including the political ones.) Some seek this missing dimension in religion, many look for it on the Sci-Fi network and Beyond.

Freud called this sort of thing the return of the repressed. For Nietzsche, it was the eternal return. It almost certainly is a return, a deep echo, of the pagan gods buried in our walls so long ago. And those gods themselves a kind of short-hand for that sense of horror and magic human beings first experienced when, a few hundred thousand years ago, we woke into conscious awareness of who and where we were. Americans are not materialistic as much as just a long way from home and very unsure of how to get back. And from the appeal of what we broadcast to the rest of the world, we are not the only ones.