Civil Commotion

Northland Mall, the first modern shopping mall in Detroit, one of the first modern shopping malls in the entire country, is closing.

Macy’s — once home to Hudson’s — closed at the end of day on Sunday for good. Most of the shelves were empty. Fixtures were up for sale. Some folks were hunting for last minute bargains. Others were strolling around, soaking up the nostalgia.

[ … ]

In February, an Oakland County judge gave the green light for a court appointed receiver, who had asked for permission to shut the mall down. Ashkenazy Acquisition, which bought the mall in 2008, defaulted on a $31 million payment last year, and the mall continued to rack up losses monthly.

It says much about the failure of the Republican Party, about its cynical pandering to the most backward sector of American society, that Ted Cruz will formally announce today his candidacy for the presidency at — get ready — Liberty University.

Yes … Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell, who thought the Southern Baptists were a pack of simpering liberals until the serial indecencies of the Fundamentalist Takeover of that now-ridiculous denomination in the 1980s. The same Jerry Falwell about whom Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee just over 50-years ago, once said, “Every good Christian should line up and kick Jerry Falwell’s ass.”

Liberty University, home to something called the Center for Creation Studies, where uneducated yahoos “research, promote, and communicate a robust young-Earth creationist view of Earth history.” Where, in short, educated people who have done the hard work of actually understanding the science are … unwelcome.

That’s where Ted Cruz is going today, hat-in-hand — to embarrassing morons. It’s just too sad.

Sadder still is that Ted Cruz is not a fringe candidate that the rest of the world is laughing at.

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
I: Criticism of Religion

§252   Christianity should never be forgiven for having ruined such men as Pascal. This is precisely what should be combated in Christianity — namely, that it has the will to break the spirit of the strongest and noblest natures. One should take no rest until this one thing has been utterly destroyed: the ideal of mankind which Christianity advances, the demands it makes upon men and its Yes and No with regard to humanity. The whole of the remaining absurdities i.e. Christian fable, Christian cobweb-spinning in ideas and principles and Christian theology do not concern us; they might be a thousand times more absurd and we should not raise a finger to destroy them. But what we do stand up against is that ideal which, thanks to its morbid beauty and feminine seductiveness, thanks to its insidious and slanderous eloquence, appeals to all the cowardice and vanities of wearied souls — and the strongest have their moments of fatigue — as though all that which seems most useful and desirable at such moments — confidence, artlessness, modesty, patience, love of one’s fellows, resignation, submission to God and a sort of self-surrender — were useful and desirable per se; as the puny, modest abortion which in these creatures takes the place of a soul, this virtuous, mediocre animal and sheep of the flock which deigns to call itself man, were not only to take precedence over the stronger, more evil, more passionate, more defiant and more prodigal type of man, who by virtue of these very qualities is exposed to a hundred times more dangers than the former but were actually to stand as an ideal for man in general, as a goal, a measure the highest desideratum. The creation of this ideal was the most appalling temptation that had ever been put in the way of mankind, for with it the stronger and more successful exceptions, the lucky cases among men in which the will to power and to growth leads the whole type “man” one step farther forward, this type was threatened with disaster. With the values of this ideal the growth of these higher men, who, owing to their superior demands and duties readily accept a more dangerous life (speaking economically, it is a case of an increase in the costs of the undertaking coinciding with a greater chance of failure), this growth would be attacked at its roots. What is it we combat in Christianity? That it aims at destroying the strong, at breaking their spirit, at exploiting their moments of weariness and debility, at converting their proud assurance into anxiety and distress of conscience; that it knows how to poison the noblest instincts and to infect them with disease, until their strength, their will to power, turns inwards, against themselves — until the strong perish through their excessive self-contempt and self-immolation: that gruesome way of perishing, of which Pascal is the most famous example.

This concludes Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity; tomorrow begins his critique of morality.

If his language sometimes seems extravagant and harsh, consider this bizarre tweet issued just Friday by Mac Brunson, the pastor of First Baptist Church–Jacksonville.

Ask any engineer or scientist who has spent thousands of hours mastering the intricacies of his field, and who has felt the satisfaction and pride of watching a project mature to a product or building, whether “man has really created nothing.” Ask any doctor who has relied upon a new technology to save a life which, just a few years ago, would doubtless have perished. Ask any lawyer whether law, from Magna Carta to the United States Constitution, is not the creation of man.

Then ask yourself what could cause a pastor to libel those whose disciplined minds feed and shelter and heal and entertain him with a pronouncement so incomprehensibly stupid, and what are the values and knowledge of those who ‘favorite’ and ‘retweet’ his ignorance — and you will detect the justice of Nietzsche’s criticism. There is a lot of the malice of the second-rate against their betters at the bottom of Christian thought.

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
I: Criticism of Religion

§251   The attacks made upon Christianity, hitherto, have been not only timid but false. So long as Christian morality was not felt to be a capital crime against Life, its defenders have had it all their own way. The question concerning the mere “truth” of Christianity, whether in regard to the existence of its God, or to the legendary history of its origin, not to speak of its astronomy and natural science, is quite beside the point so long as no inquiry is made into the value of Christian morality. Are Christian morals worth anything or are they a profanation and an outrage, despite all the arts of holiness and seduction with which they are enforced? The question concerning the truth of the religion may be met by all sorts of subterfuges; and the most fervent believers can, in the end, avail themselves of the logic used by their opponents, in order to create a right for their side to assert that certain things are irrefutable — that is to say, they transcend the means employed to refute them (nowadays this trick of dialectics is called “Kantian Criticism”).

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
I: Criticism of Religion

§250   Let us see what the “genuine Christian” does with all the things which his instincts forbid: he sullies and suspects the beautiful, the splendid, the rich, the proud, the self-reliant, the knowledgeable, the powerful — in summa, the whole of culture: his object is to deprive it of a good conscience.

Remember the cultural anthropology of the Jesus movement, that it was born in the underclass, that it seethed amongst the losers, the failed, the ineffectual, the discarded — and that it recast their submissiveness and failures as virtues:

• It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. (Mark 10:25)

• But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. (Matthew 5:39)

Early Christianity was, in no small part, a vengeance cult animated by malice toward their betters — and if you pick-up any newspaper, it’s easy to see that it is still there.