I was going to post a diary on the Dominionist infiltration of the US military - a process ongoing for quite some time. News from the field is not good.
But, I recalled some dim memory of my Christian past : today is Sunday, and my father was a preacher - from the left, yes : but Sunday feels to me an unseemly time to sound the siren of despair and feed more weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth by those who have come to the terrible, belated realization that they have lost their way, wandering amidst a wilderness of fantasy and introspection while a howling hurricane approached.
No.
So for me, today is a day for renewal of courage and hope.
I ask - you have been learning and grieving of the dark vision inhabiting the new American Right - where is your vision to counter that ? Don't grieve too long - in battle, you will need a guiding, transcendant vision for guidance and hope, yes, but your tears will only be a hindrance. Don't be a weepy trout :
What is your transcendant vision ?
And so :
There is a dark spirit animating the American Right now, yes. It is deeply a-rational and hateful, agreed. It is on the move in many ways and in many spheres. So let me assert - and this is a simple point of faith - that such a spirit can only be countered or neutralized by an equal or greater spirit and an equal or greater vision, a strategy coupled with a keen tactical acumen.
The time for weeping and wailing passes. The heat of battle is no time for tears......
And, where is your vision ? No, I'm not talking to some vague spirit of liberalism here. I'm talking to you.
Where is your vision ?
As I was sorting all my collected material on the transformation of elements of the US military into the crusading armies of a darker lord, not of Jesus but under the thumb of angry Yahweh - dark material, yes, and plentiful enough - something occured to me, as I was writing my strands of analysis - both sociological, historical, and also overtly religious or spiritual, on the terrible animus or anima that breathes life into and posseses the American religious right, that imbues the movement with the lust to seize power by any and all means possible, by secretive Christian power cults, vote rigging, violence and eliminationist rhetoric, the whole array of vicious and underhanded tactics....the notes went on and on. So much to say - I am Welsh, and I think about such things, dark things. What can I say ? My ancestors were prone to poetry and song, drink, and tossing boulders about - for reasons still rather unclear, except to the Welsh themselves, as their gift of explicatory gab inexplicably broke down concerning the boulder tossing.
I know this as a weakness of mine, my gesturing at darkness - but, something occured to me : that the courage of a stern but - in the end - optimistic pep talk was better than the whip of fear.
Oh, you raving secular atheists !
You are grieving - the World you lived in or thought you lived in has grotesquely changed before your eyes to something assuming grotesque, demonic proportions - all the more so for the inexplicable nature of the destructive energies coursing through the veins of American - from whence such hate, whither such madness ?
Your grieving is natural, yes, and healthy.
But, do not stay too long in your grief - history is on the march, and you would do well to buck up your fighting spirit lest you be swept aside. Battle is upon you, and battle is no time for timidity or tears. But rest assured - I know this to be literally true - there are indeed atheists in foxholes.
Still, you still need something like faith, some stronger medicine - call your faith, if you will, the God of Inquiry. If you are a secular atheist, is inquiry, and reason, your god - and does that god fill you with the necesary certitude of the Enlightenment, of the absolute conviction that you are on the winning side of history and that reason will prevail ? And - just as crucially - does your conviction move in tandem with a sober assessment that you must leave nothing to chance and of the need for a muscular expression of that spirit, that reason - as with Diderot and his Encyclopedistes following in the wake of Napoleon's vanguard - would not prevail without a struggle ? Or that your faith now compels a call to arms, to counter the forces arrayed against you ?
Think of it this way - you are up against irrational forces, hateful forces that would rub you and your kind out without hesitation - so, do you have the courage and conviction to articulate a vision as global, expansive, and loving as the vision of your enemy is pinched, xenophobic and hateful ?
You are up against forces both expressed overtly and also through Christian mystery-power cults, loose associations of those seeking Christian Dominion - who work in the shadows to advance their kingdom. So, do you have the tactical genius to build mystery power cults of your own, loose secret networks of those who believe in Science, reason, empirical truth ? You may feel that extreme, but let me advance this : The Dominionists are the New Romans, their Pax Americana the new, proposed hegemony. YOU, those who believe in reason, are the new early Christians hiding in the Catacombs. And do not misunderstand what I have to say : far from advocating retreat and hiding, I am proposing that you match the tactics of the right. You must both counter, in the public sphere and far, far more agressively, the hate speech of the new American right. But you must also learn the ways of the shadow war - both to understand the tactics arrayed against you and to rekindle the spirit of mystery that once infused rational inquiry. Reason was once heretical and is fast becoming so again, so plan for that day and fight against it. The wise lay plans within plans in expectation of all expected contingency.
In practical terms you must acquire a larger megaphone and - to do this - you will need allies. I have written of this here. Think : who are your natural allies, those who out of self interest - at least - but even from deeper altruistic motives - would aid your cause ? If you can articulate practical plans and build or propose hardheaded organizational efforts, there will be funders. And, look to the world. Look first to Europe, and think of it simply, at the least, as a Reverse Marshal Plan - even as Europe was once devastated by the fires of Fascism and war, so America now is caught in a conflagration of religious ideology that threatens to lay waste not merely to human minds or to North America but to the Mideast and to the World at large.
Ask Europe - in rememberance of this debt perhaps but also, more fundamentally, in it's own self interest - for help in extinguishing this cultish ideological conflagration that threatens to envelope America. For Europe, that would be nothing more than the simple prudence of self-preservation. Nothing less than the spirit of the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment is at stake - a new dark age masses at the castle gates of American reason. Those who can must light the warning beacons to call for aid.
[ I will post this now and then address those of religious faith, in a tandem diary banged out even as you read this ]
Oh, all ye of faith - great and small !
The raving atheists are your closest allies, but may work in different ways. Nonetheless, meet with them from time to times to reaffirm shared goals.
Here is your work...... [ to be continued ]