Civil Commotion

The all-important takeaway here is, whether the perspective is divine or Satanic, you’re weak and no damn good. So STFU and do as you’re told.

“A guy basically went mad, right there on the stage in front of you, and you cheered and booed right on cue because you’re sheep and because he directed his insanity at all the scapegoats that your favorite radio and TV personalities have been creating for you over the past three decades.”

Charles Pierce

Nobody who sat through last night’s speech, and who is sane, could have failed to understand that Trump is not sane, that his hatred of the press is real and goes all the way into his bones, or that he is an actual existential threat to the country itself.

Albert Mohler devoted the greatest part of today’s radio broadcast to the solar eclipse.

This is where Christians understand, for just one example, that the predictability of this kind of eclipse is only made possible because God to his glory fine-tuned the universe in such a way that there are predictable laws and principles whereby the movement of celestial and heavenly bodies can not only be measured, but also predicted.

[ … ]

But going back to all those explanations offered, especially in theological terms by ancient cultures, I simply have to say at the end of the day its more plausible that the demon dog ate the sun than that it just happened. But the sun wasn’t eaten by a demon dog and the sun and the moon weren’t fighting and it wasn’t just an accident. Once again, as we have seen from the moment of creation until the dawn of the new creation, the heavens are telling the glory of God.

But, of course, for most of the world nothing whatever happened. Nothing. Only some of us in the United States got to see it.

Really, it did “just happen,” and for only some of us. If you really want to understand what Mohler is up to here you need to acquaint yourself with Nietzsche’s The Antichrist.

With severity and pedantry, the priest formulated once and for all, down to the large and small taxes he was to be paid (not to forget the tastiest pieces of meat, for the priest is a steak eater), what he wants to have, “what the will of God is.” From now on all things in life are so ordered that the priest is indispensable — marriage, sickness, death, not to speak of “sacrifices” (meals), the holy parasite appears in order to denature them — in his language: to “consecrate.”

For one must understand this: every natural custom, every natural institution (state, judicial order, marriage, care of the sick and the poor), every demand inspired by the instinct of life — in short, everything that contains its value in itself is made altogether valueless, anti-valuable by the parasitism of the priest (or the “moral world order”): now it requires a sanction after the event — a value-conferring power is needed to negate what is natural in it and to create a value by so doing. The priest devalues, desecrates nature: this is the price of his existence.

I, and probably scientists and engineers everywhere, felt a thrill of pride at the extraordinary precision of the predictions. Human minds reached an understanding of what was once a terrifying event and, after a lifetime devoted to holding men in the bondage of ignorance, Mohler wants to annex the credit for his Invisible Friend. Nice try, Holy Man, but no cigar.

There is no nice way to say it: This evening’s speech in Phoenix was unhinged. And the escalation of his attacks on the press is scary. I’ve wondered for a long time whether his pro forma hostility toward the media is something genuine, or if it’s merely theater for the bleachers; this evening’s obsessive vehemence convinced me it’s real, that he feels genuinely aggrieved and means to use his presidential power to destroy them.

He will fail, but there is going to be a lot of ugliness along the way.