Almost 50 years ago – more than half a lifetime – I began the study of the Bible seriously. When I first read: Judges 21:25 King James Version (KJV)
25- In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes. – my mind recoiled! Why?
The context of that verse was not written in a favorable light.
What is wrong with every man doing what he thought was right? After all, as an American public school graduate, I was totally immersed in my individual rights and privileges. Furthermore, my faith in the American tradition of our collective wisdom as a democratic republic was absolute. In a sense, I worshipped the wisdom of WeDaPeople! Therefore, the conflict of faiths arose – in essence, I also worshipped DaConstitution and DaState!
At this point you might want to read: The Myth of Democracy and the Downfall of America - By Gary D. Barnett
How do you correlate all this with the Bible? That is a subject all to itself. I will simply say that the church does not exactly have a stellar record on losing our country or culture.
This presupposition that America was the exceptional nation, always fighting for truth, justice and the American way stayed with me for decades. A presupposition is something that you assume to be true. It didn’t dawn on me until recently – after extensive reading and research – that I had acted upon presuppositions and binary thinking which had no fundamental or factual basis. Binary thinking denotes a system of thought that predominantly considers things in an "either, or", "right, wrong", "black, white" way, ignoring any subtleties or consideration of third or more alternatives.
I believed a narrative! A well delivered story!
As late as 2003, I firmly believed we were bringing democracy to Iraq and it was NOT about oil.
Ouch!
As has often been noted here, Man is a rationalizing animal. And what I have increasingly noted of late is that most people devote most of their intelligence to rationalizing what they already think to be true than they do to figuring out what they think is not true. This desire to rationalize rather than learn is, quite possibly, the intelligent individual's biggest intellectual weakness. – Vox Day
American exceptionalism? A motherlode – read for a week - HERE!
How about this insightful item I posted a few days ago: The disturbing fact of the matter is that if you ignore election dates and just look at the numbers and raw data of US government behavior over the years, you can’t really tell who is president or which political party is in power at any given point in time. – from The Establishment Doesn’t Fear Trump, And It Doesn’t Fear Bernie. It Fears You -By Caitlin Johnstone
Some might have concluded from this that we shouldn’t vote because it doesn’t matter. I prefer this concluding paragraph from CJ: The reason the propagandists work so hard to manufacture the consent of the governed is because they absolutely do require that consent. If enough people decide that the status quo isn’t working for them and begin rising up to force it to change, there’s not really anything the establishment can do to stop them. Right now the only thing keeping people from rising up in this way is the fact that they’ve been successfully propagandized not to, and the propagandists intend to keep it that way.
But eyes are beginning to open. If real change is coming, it will come from there. Not from electing anyone president, but from a large-scale awakening to the reality of our situation. The only thing standing in the way is a thin layer of narrative fluff.
Ingrained Presuppositions and Binary Thinking + Ignorance = Believing narrative fluff!
Get rid of it!