Seeing the world in black and white
This latest post
adds to my collection of hysterical email shots I sometimes receive from the ultra-right-wing
magazine “Townhall”. Some of those emails in my collection can be seen
here:
The latest email
I publish below. As will be seen the usual melodrama, hyperbole and anti-superlatives are
laid on in buckets, in this case by the aptly named Michael Savage. So, what is their beef this time: “Horrific predictions for
2012”? The end of the Mayan calendar apocalypse? The one world government secret agenda? Obama’s
war on religion? No, this time it’s the coming civil war with Obama as “the driving
force behind it”!
Now, in normal politics
one might accuse the opposition of incompetence, ignorance, sleaze, pride and, if you have the evidence, even of corruption; after all, politicians are all epistemically
challenged sinners like the rest of us. But no, the extreme right wing like to
explain it all in terms of scheming evil intelligences who are intent on bringing
ruin, and apocalypse - perhaps they are even in league with Satan himself! To me this
is lunacy; in fact, even worse than that; it's the William
Tapley zone. It’s fanciful, demented, cranky and
insane; the world doesn't work in this baroque way except in the human imagination.
Savage is an
interesting case; he claims not to be particularly religious but his message
has the touch and feel of the apocalyptic. His vehement expressed belief in a
society divided between the dark forces of intentional Machiavellian subversion (all on the left,
of course) and those who stand for the plain truth (on the ultra-right, of
course) has a very fundamentalist flavor*. This suggests to me that “fundamentalism”
is part of a more general psychological complex than just religion. But religion
or not, fundamentalism of all shades has the finger prints of its epistemically and
morally flawed human origins all over it, Given that the generalized fundamentalists see the world through such a paranoiac vision, it is no surprise that when they are religious theirs is the God of judgement and wrath.
There is a section
of the population for whom this extreme apocalyptic thinking has a deep appeal;
they much prefer to see their woes, problems and angst caused by the machinations of a malign
intelligentsia, the schemes of all powerful conspirators, world take-over attempts, demons, and Satan. I suppose
it has the advantage of giving some dignity, meaning and significance to their struggles, as opposed to seeing those struggles apparently trivialized by their being the outcome of rather ordinary, rather squalid human sins…that and blockheaded stupidity!
Relevant Link:
Kennedy assassination: "Lone nut" or dark conspiracy?
http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-first-conspiracy-theory-kennedy.html
Footnote:
* Extreme Marxist "sects" invert this, of course. There are some points in common with ultra-left Marxism and the polarized fundamentalist world view. Viz: the polarized workers vs. owners divide with the owner class forming an undercurrent of conspiracy that supports ideas that obscure the existence of the class conflict. These Marxists also have a kind of "end time" eschatology involving judgment "when The Revolution comes",
Footnote:
* Extreme Marxist "sects" invert this, of course. There are some points in common with ultra-left Marxism and the polarized fundamentalist world view. Viz: the polarized workers vs. owners divide with the owner class forming an undercurrent of conspiracy that supports ideas that obscure the existence of the class conflict. These Marxists also have a kind of "end time" eschatology involving judgment "when The Revolution comes",
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