I told my Jamaican friend the truth. I have very little interest left in commenting on the US political scene which has taken up so much more than its fair share of oxygen and attention, especially when so much noteworthy is happening all round the globe in former hinterlands of global focus. To concentrate attention on a decadent system’s last death throes and the macabre machinations of its political and religious leaders is to have become infected with the same perversity of spirit which allows one to enjoy Friday 13th, Halloween or some other horror movie over an educational or inspirational documentary or piece.
What little remaining interest was stirred however upon observing unfolding events among a key group of Americans in whom I have retained some residual but fast diminishing interest – American Evangelicals…and of course I refer to the recent stir created by Christianity Today’s call for Trump’s removal from office and the immediate repudiation of the CT editorial by its founding family (but no longer at the controls) the Grahams, in Franklin’s public revelation of Billy’s last vote (which was for Trump) proffered as a justifiable rebuttal of the magazine’s ‘liberal’ political commentary, which Franklin thinks would embarrass his father were he alive. (Although the argument seems fallacious in that Trump would not be first on the list of ‘Kings’ ‘appointed by God’ but later rejected.)
The one dry comment worthy of being emphasized in this atmosphere of toxic political polarization before the Games begin, is the slogans of the sides revealing what they might about the nature of the conflict and what is central in the minds of the combatants.
One striking and obvious revelation as one examines the source codes and unravels the programming language of the rhetoric on both sides – one side emotes around morality terms and the other around political terminology. In other words, one group resonates more strongly with the terms ‘Left’ or ‘Right’ than with the terms ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.
Otherwise explain articles like this.
In terms of affectation, the Left has been more demonized and the Right more justified as a group, regardless of truth or Justice claims of either on whichever subject. In short we have a trumped up political divide because where politics and morality are divorced, there is no rational discussion on political decision making, only manipulative sentiment stroking and mental conditioning as the will of the people are connected to emotional strings controlled by puppeteers. (Perhaps revisiting my article on Pulpiteers might be illuminating…..or not)
If politics is the art of the possible, morality is the map of the desirable. The two cannot be divorced without plunging the group into existential crisis. They are made for dialogue and that conversation is the balance or homeostasis of a group.
My past commentary on the greatly feared and ironically greatly invoked-by-fear Regulation of Religion in such a circumstance bears no repetition. The show must go on. Let the games begin!
YeKengalé 