Salman Rushie Explains Trumpism

Natural disaster is here again, giving us a chance to look at the lunacy of cause-and-effect carried to the point of lunacy.  Jim Bakker, the former PTL tele-evangelist, now hawking the gospel and end-of-the-world survival food.  Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh is blathering on his latest conspiracy theory, that Hurricane Harvey is implicated in a plot to increase sales of bottled water and batteries.  (For Jim Bakker story, see:  (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jim-bakker-hurricane-doomsday-food_us_59af847be4b0354e440d93dd)

Cause-effect is important as otherwise the world as we know it would not exist.  There would be no possibility of a structured whole that facilitates human culture.  But when the spiritual dimension of life is missing, or at least ossified in meaninglessness, the cause-effect view of the world is devoid of perspective. This is very much related to the time-space continuum about which I pontificate often.

The time-space continuum, and its off-spring cause-and-effect, is basically the nuts and bolts of “reality.”  And I am certainly not against reality but I’m very much a proponent of another dimension of reality, which I will call it Reality, without which life will become meaningless.  This “Reality” is the domain of what some of us like to call “God” but unfortunately when the notion of God gets consumed by culture it too loses its value.  And I deliberately used the pronoun “it” for a deity that is confined to cultural conveniences, including language, is an “it.”

Let me put this phenomenon on personal terms.  It is easy to blame Trump and Trumpism for the ugliness that is abounding in my culture currently.  And, he certainly is a contributor to it.  But as Salman Rushie recently pointed out, Trump is only the symptom of the problem and when he takes his place in the dust bin of history the problem will still be with us.  For the problem is very much related to this notion of “Reality” that I proposed and the “god” intertwined in that dimension of human experience is not an absent, disembodied deity but one who lives in the very core of our being and, according to none other than Jesus, “is us” in a very critical fashion.  The problem is our intrinsic disavowal of that intrinsic dimension of our being, opting to focus on the external, one example being our hedonist consumerism. But as long as we continue to be externally oriented, given to blaming others…including God…we will not come to recognize and experience our own God-given human agency which would allow us to be better care-takers of this beautiful world we live in.  As Jesus told us, “The Kingdom is within.”  (Re Salman Rushie and Trump, see the following:  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/02/salman-rushdie-interview)

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Here is a list of my blogs.  I invite you to check out the other two sometime.

https://anerrantbaptistpreacher.wordpress.com/

https://literarylew.wordpress.com/

https://theonlytruthinpolitics.wordpress.com/

My “Objective” Observations about Objectivity

I’m one of those people who look at things from more than one perspective. Yes, at times I fear I catch myself looking at things from many, many different perspectives a tendency which, if carried too far, is merely an effort to be God and know everything! The “normal” thing to do is to look at life through the narrow little prism that one is accustomed to and never worry about “diversity.” Life is pretty simple to that person but I was never blessed with that simplicity.

Jonathan Haidt is a psychologist who has demonstrated a similar penchant for looking at things from multiple perspectives. He has made very astute observations about the political spectrum in our country and how that conservatives and liberals could learn from each other if they could ever lay aside their pig-headed assuredness that they are “right.” I include here a link to a review of one of his books last year which you might find worthwhile if the subject interests you. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/the-righteous-mind-by-jonathan-haidt.html?_r=0)

I’d like to share another observation on the subject of “objectivity” from the philosopher Karl Jaspers about the human tendency to absolutize himself, disregarding his finitude and the subjective nature of his grasp of the world:

If we think we have seized upon the total historic process as an object of knowledge, if we thank that thus we have visualized wherein and whereby we exist, we have lost the sense of the encompassing source from which we live…Whenever an observer thinks he knows what man is, what history is, what the self is as a whole, he loses his touch with the encompassing and thus is cut off from his origin and his essence

Yes, Chris Christie is Fat!!! So What?

Chris Christie is Fat!

Yes, he is fat! AND, he has the courage to live with that, hold his head high, do his job to the best of his ability, and be happy with himself. He does not know that his size is supposed to have shamed him into submission and that he is to crawl about meekly on this earth taking whatever scraps are offered him.

And then, he “knocked one out of the park” by “palling” around with the arch enemy of his Republican party, Barack O’Bama, deigning to lay aside political risks and working with the president to help his people deal with this horrible weather tragedy in New Jersey and the Northeast. I personally think he has fatally wounded himself with the conservative extreme as they are enraged that he would break ranks and fraternize with the enemy. Those extremists demand that everyone on their team march lock-step in their pursuit of their raison d’etre—defeat of Barack O’Bama. (If they would lay that aside, and merely promote their very legitimate political agenda and hope to win the election on its merits, they might discover that they could have a life!)

Now I am merely giving credit where credit is due. I’m a liberal Democrat and feel intently about its agenda and Christie is on the other side—he is one of the “bad guys.”! (wink, wink!) But I’m very impressed with his testosterone (I like to call it “male spheroids”), not merely in this example but on other occasions where he has not cow-towed to the party line. We need other people in both parties to demonstrate this kind of courage and merely “do the right thing” at times.

No, I do not think he is being “objective.” He has his motivations, whatever they might be and you can bet they are in part selfish. He is human. “Let him who is without guilt cast the first stone.” But, of course, here lies an essential problem in our political culture, there are so many people who know without a doubt that they are “without guilt” and therefore authorized to “cast the first stone.” Their capacity for self- awareness is greatly diminished, to say the least.

 

All Republicans are racist!!!!!!!

The Republican party is united against President O’Bama and O’Bama is a black man.  Ip so facto, all Republicans are racist.

Well, actually I don’t think this is so.  BUT, why not say that it is so, and say so with vehemence and self-assuredness, and do so on the “lame-street media”, and therefore make it so. For, most people do not watch or read the news with any discrimination and believe whatever is presented to them as fact.  This is particularly so with the right-wing of the conservative movement.  They live on a steady diet of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh (and his ilk), and conservative religion.  And they are now dug in at the heels.  And, they hate O’Bama and I do suspect that with the fringe element there is a racist dimension to their acrimony.

It is fascinating to watch what Limbaugh, Fox News, and Company have done with the “O’Bama is a Muslim” and “O’Bama in not an American” stuff.  There are millions of people who believe that non-sense and do so because that is what has been presented to them and because it feeds the poison that festers in their heart.   Sure, liberals are not objective either.  But they are much more likely to have a healthy self-doubt and be aware that they are not objective.  Such a perspective makes some allowance that other view points have some degree of validity.

The core issue here is, “What is real and what is unreal?”  Hermeneutical willingness is the issue.  Each of us interprets his/her world and does so on a daily, minute-by-minute basis.  The more conservative one is the less likely is it that he/she will grasp the flimsiness of his/her perspective and be willing to consider other interpretations of reality.  That is the reason I subscribe to my particular bias–liberal Democrat!  So don’t dare confront me with anything which might challenge this assumption!  And let me gravitate to a social context that has the same bias and then all will be well with the world.

(On the last note, I hope you are not ironically-challenged!)