A Sound of Sheer Silence

What do you think tap water is? It's a gay bomb, baby. And I'm not saying people didn't naturally have homosexual feelings. I'm not even getting into it, quite frankly. I mean, give me a break. Do you think I'm like, oh, shocked by it, so I'm up here bashing it because I don't like gay people? I don't like 'em putting chemicals in the water that turn the freakin' frogs gay! Do you understand that? I'm sick of being social engineered, it's not funny!           — Alex Jones, October 2015 Shit like “flat earth” and “chemtrails” are metaphorical expressions of alienation from a educational economy that huge chunks of the population have no access to. And that’s the tea. — Matt Christman (@cushbomb) January 18, 2019 There are a group of people On Here who are very, very concerned about "the Discourse."  This tends to be people of a liberal (as distinguished from "the left") bent, but every once in a while moderate ...

" If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. "--Barack Obama. "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." --Lyndon Johnson. 1. It seems pretty clear to me now that the beginning of the political apocalypse in the United States can be dated to November 4, 2008, in Chicago's Grant Park.  On that night, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States.  It may seem idiotic to have to say, but that evening is significant because Obama was the first non-white person to be elected President, and more specifically the first black person...

Growing up in the 90s in the South, the idea of the End Times was sort of in the wind, primarily in the evangelical world and the infamous Left Behind books, which then leaked into the rest of the culture.  That vision of the End Times is nonsensical and idiotic, and in fact actively pernicious in many ways ( one of which I went into at some length here ).  But I didn’t really have any other framework to talk about or think about apocalypticism, and so I had to park it in the netherrealm of “Christian doctrines we pretend aren’t there.”  Because the New Testament is almost entirely apocalyptic in tone and emphasis—it’s not just the Book of Revelation—so by excluding apocalypticism you are excluding much of the Biblical witness. If you have been reading this site for any length of time, you know I am a fan of the work of Rene Girard.  There are many reasons why this is, but one of the main reasons is that provides a different way of talking about concepts in the Chr...