A Sound of Sheer Silence

“I recommend it to the Charity of all good People to look back, and reflect duly upon the Terrors of the Time; and whoever does so will see, that it is not an ordinary Strength that cou'd support it; it was not like appearing in the Head of an Army, or charging a Body of Horse in the Field; but it was charging Death itself on his pale Horse; to stay indeed was to die, and it could be esteemed nothing less.” --Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) I have about 75 pages written of a science fiction novel.  It is set about 50 years in the future, in the aftermath of a plague.  The plague killed off around half of the Earth's population.  But what the novel is really about is the ways in which that event changed our political and social life.  The origin of the book is in a thought experiment--what it really take to get people to do the work necessary to reverse climate change?  What would it take to allow for conditions of truly significant, radical economic refor

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and offer a prediction for what the Christian landscape will look like in the year 2100. In the year 2100, there will be loose alliance of Christian bodies and churches that we can call, for purposes of these predictions, Team Blue.  Team Blue consists of somewhere between one and at most a half dozen churches that see themselves as being heirs to the Apostolic, "high church" tradition--complete with bishops, liturgy, high Eucharistic theology, etc.  These entities will have meaningful differences in theology, but will view themselves as being united as part of a broader grouping, and might very well have agreements to share clergy, resources, etc.  Also on Team Blue will be a few, maybe a dozen or two dozen, networks of "low" churches and congregations.  Some of these networks will be more robust, in the sense that are more like what we think of today as "denominations," than others.  The differences between the h

"After all . . . I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her." - Anna Scott [played by Julia Roberts], Notting Hill 1. There is a story out there, widely believed by many folks, that goes something like this.  Once we had a society (either broader political society, church society, or both) that had a very clear set of rules about how men and women were supposed to interact.  These rules were good, because sexuality is powerful and dangerous and at least a little bit evil and shameful, and the rules worked to control those instincts in socially constructive ways.  We need clear structures, defined rules, a rather rigid superstructure to contain all of this stuff.  And, if you add in the religious dimension, this structure is ordained by God, so there is really no reason to question or even think too hard about any of it.  Yes, sure, isolated people violated these norms from time to time, but there were wise (if, perhaps, harsh) measures in p

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 Christian faith that I

Charlie has hit every major military target in Vietnam, and hit 'em hard. In Saigon, the United States Embassy has been overrun by suicide squads. Khe Sahn is standing by to be overrun. We also have reports that a division of N.V.A. has occupied all of the city of Hue south of the Perfume River. In strategic terms, Charlie's cut the country in half... the civilian press are about to wet their pants and we've heard even Cronkite's going to say the war is now unwinnable. In other words, it's a huge shit sandwich, and we're all gonna have to take a bite.   --Lt. Lockhart, Full Metal Jacket (1987). Everything is going to shit.  In your heart, you know I'm right. For my American readers, we are collectively living in Year 2 of the slow-motion car crash that is the Trump regime.  And, as I sit here on New Year's Eve, every indicator suggests that we are about to enter into some sort of new, more baroque version in Year 3, as the Mueller investigation clos