In order for an ancient tribe to successfully eat or purge a
scapegoat, the community first had to scandalize their target with a lying
accusation—that the victim was guilty of high crimes against the very social
order of the land. This is what is behind the envious mobs and the media
priests’ daily work to tie Trump and any of his allies to rumors of “Russian
hacking of the election.” The election ritual is the life of the state and its
order.
The established media and political hegemony are trying to stab
as many pin pricks into Trump as possible with the goal of fashioning him into
an agent of an enemy Other who is disturbing the essential sacred ritual of
elections. This is all about setting him up for a great devouring to provide
orgasmic catharsis on the part of those who covet his power and the state of
being they perceive it providing.
One does not have to share Trump’s ideology to see this sorry
human anthropological fact and pity all parties involved.
My question is: when will we all stop playing this game of hate
and blame and realize how absolutely stupid the state makes us? I mean, not the
state itself as some alien entity foisted upon us. But the sacred love of power
we all tend to have and manifest into a monopoly on violence we call the state.
The mindlessness of the rumors are embarrassing. The millions of
leftists now constantly hallucinating about Russian specters in the reflections
of their socially aware soy lattes do not actually care about Russia all of a
sudden. They only know what the TV’s like what, six multinational corporations
and their Internet extensions tell them: Russia hates gays. Russia loves Trump.
Trump stands in the way of my vicarious identity avatar being in the highest
symbolic seat of power in the world. Therefore, denial, anger, paranoia, hate.
Similarly, the right’s newfound infatuation with Putin is not
based on any real knowledge of the man, only that their chosen avatar indicates
a friendly air towards him and that Putin foiled many of their past scapegoat
Obama’s machinations.
Do you realize we could pick any country on the map and with
enough time of media cookie cutter scandals and marketing words like “butcher,”
“threat to democracy,” “thug,” etc. we could get any of these tribes to support
violently sanctioning said country, and with another few rumors and
allegations, get popular support for violent meddling, a coup, or some other
intervention?
Don’t believe me. Ask Assad, he was just dining with Kerry and
his wife until his luck ran out in the face of our imperial cult’s financial
interests. The same goes for Gaddafi, Hussein, Mossadegh.
Most Americans knew very little why they should support the
murder of these individuals and the violent destruction of these foreign
rivals. They fell under a trance of groupthink. An ecstasy of oneness that
occurs when they are transported by their frustrated mundane lives to a higher
plain of justice and blood vengeance for national greatness.
Still, support for acts of war like airstrikes, no-fly zones,
and sanctions that starve millions of innocent families are always most fervent
and forbearing with the party that shares the same brand with the occupant of
the presidency. They imitate their avatar’s resolute righteousness often til
the bitter end even as the war high’s diminishing trip reveals itself with
photos of carnage coming in steadily with no accompanying tangible benefits
from the mission.
Trump, for all his many foreign policy faults, has so far
refused to play the standard bipartisan script on targeting a new scapegoat in
Putin. So it’s given the media and Washington order, who didn’t get the memo
that the script had changed, an occasion to scandalize him. Just think, what
would happen if a Rubio or Clinton was in office? Would any of the media
question or work hard to daily scrutinize challenge, and “fact check” the
standard script of Russian intervention both perform? Of course not. And would
much of the Republican base stand in opposition to increased sanctions against
Russia and no-fly zones in Syria? Hardly.
Do we see the insanity of this whole ruse? People’s passionate
opinions are not really their opinions. They are just copying their ideological
tribal peers so they can share the pleasure of hating and venting their
frustrations onto someone else. That is not a defect in our modern democratic
process. That is its masterful design working perfectly.
Humans have always found unity and satisfaction in finding a
common villain to scandalize. This ganging up and shaming and pouring every
ounce of wrath in oneself onto a common enemy is an ancient practice that dates
back to the very origin of human culture. Evidence of ritual human sacrifice is
as ubiquitous to archaic sites as tools and fire-making.
Far from being an odd quirk, sacrifice was the fundamental glue
that held these communities together. Tensions always build. Humans are always
bound by jealousy and paranoia from comparing themselves to their neighbors.
But that tendency to mirror our neighbor is also something that can spill out
into a righteous blaming of a common enemy for all of the strife, tension, and
fear that consumes our daily lives.
By declaring “It is finished” on human sacrifice and imitating
Jesus’s love of enemy, Christianity has slowly eroded the effectiveness and raw
brutality of human sacrifice. Western culture experienced the longest sustained
infection of Christianity’s anti-sacrificial leavening of strong sacred
structures and thus remains the only culture in the world today totally
obsessed with self-flagellation of its own ethnocentrism and unfair treatment
of minority interests in its history. The only one.
The problem is our culture’s guilt obsession with past mistakes
betrays the ultimate conceit: that our public decrying of others’ bad behavior
makes us immune. This is a means of gaining power and advantage over others by
using victims as a “human shield” of criticism. Jesus dealt with such Victimism
as such: “And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would
not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you
testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered
the prophets. Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started!” –
Matthew Chapter 23 NIV
Victimism is the dominant state religion of the west. It always
wails against its forefathers’ abuses as a means of gaming for more power. So
Trump can be torn apart by progressives, who marched by the millions in
2004-2006 against Iraq War lies, for daring to seek peace with Russia because
he refuses to imitate the cool speech, self-criticism, and solemnity of the
office the history book approved politicians of the system always provide.
In other words, he’s been cast in their favorite show—one that
provides the best opium for the masses money can buy. And he’s not playing it
right. He’s a bad actor for their sacred theater. He’s not speaking in
eloquent, sweet words. So his open self-obsession and Twitter rants sully the
sacredness of the state and thus “turns the lights on” to the barbarity and
ridiculousness of the whole enterprise.
People get enraged when you take their opium away.
By the way, why do I use “sacred” so much to describe the state,
elections, and politics? Because sacred is that which is unquestioned. It is
that which is not supposed to be seen or spoken. The sacredness of statecraft
is that it is the madness of crowds lusting after power. It is not needed to
order society. But do not bother telling its fervent participants that: they
need their obsessed rivalry with their enemy tribe, for, in them, they see
themselves.
It’s said we are not to discuss politics at dinner.
It’s said we are not to discuss religion at dinner.
But I repeat myself.
The only way to understand politics and its never-ending
scandals and hatred is to understand its religious structure.
In the meantime, that’s me in the corner. Losing my religion.
David
Gornoski [send
him mail] lives in central Florida where he runs an agricultural
start-up as well as public speaking and essays. His wife is a travel agent from
Russia. They have a very interesting angle as international contrarian
millennials with an interest in Christian nonviolence/voluntarism as a fresh
path for liberty to advance. He freelances commentary for WND.com, Jerry
Bowyer's AffluentInvestor.com,
Discovery Institute as well as other publications.
