I have no idea what this thread is about.
I mean, not just Koontz’s post. I have no idea what any of y’all are talking about.
GIS for Koontz
Most of the responses were trolls… usually a safe assumption.
My post was a clarification of Fascism in current culture.
Fascism is poorly understood today, and its creating problems because among other things, people fear what they don’t understand. Fascism is a boogeyman when it really should just be seen as another political/cultural system.
Fascism in many ways is an attack on Christianity… it emerged out of “death of God” and hatred for Christian culture. As such, it worships strength, power, etc… its sort of a bastardization of Roman culture. One of the reasons Fascism has had as much success as its had is the power void left from the decline of Christianity. Fascism is seen as an opponent of Christianity, thus pulling political favor from people who support that.
While Christian culture focuses on “brotherhood of man”, Fascism supports “brotherhood of the strong”, where the strong band together for self-preservation (an irony apparently lost on them) and immunization from the weak.
The fun thing about Fascism though, is that since its goal is the destruction of Christian culture, it doesn’t really feel the need to define itself in any other way. Kind of a “death to Christianity, bring back Roman values, call it a day”. One fundamental weakness of Fascism is that no Fascist living today has shown any clear indication that they understand what Roman values are, but that’s beside the point because unlike Roman values that sought to expand themselves for Rome (which meant something), Fascists merely mean to expand themselves for nothing in particular (or to remove Christianity).
Also, this makes the Neocon/Fundamentalist alliance interesting, since you’d think these two groups would be sworn enemies (in association with the Fascism vs. Christianity theme). What happened is that Fundamentalists in the US are so afraid of Liberals/decay of Christianity that they have given up in thinking of God being relevant to culture, and are desperate for anything to regain that relevance… Fascists as servitors of power are the best suited at finding weak elements to dominate and serve their needs. The great downfall of Rome after all is attraction to the weak, and Fascism follows in those footsteps to the tee. The strong need the weak just as much as vice versa.
Its the “true believers”, the hopeful Christians, that logically would be against the Neocons most vehemently, but there are too few of them left to make a political difference.
If anything, the recent Neocon antics show just how corrupt, just how hopeless, Christianity stands today. That they would sell out to their sworn enemies is as low as a human being can go.
This illustration, logically enough, supports the Neocon position (in the long term). Christianity is being broken down.
So the Neocon idea is to cannibalize the Christians politically, using that very strange alliance to overcome the Liberal/Rationalist/Secularist position.
Its the old idea… create a war which dominates culture, and define everything in terms of that war. The passive yet brilliant way to overcome your enemy is to define what doesn’t want to fight you in terms of your ally or enemy. Draw him into a war by redefining his identity.
Think about the Rationalist position. Its not that dissimilar from Christianity, and in fact is based on that. Brotherhood of man, love of diversity, society of law and order, cosmopolitan, open-minded. Its like a pleasant mix of the best elements from Christianity and Science.
So then you have the Fascists, whose power base is Anti-Christianity and various radical progressive anti-rational elements. Why bother ATTACKING Christianity, what Fascism itself sees as a dying breed? Man… gotta raise the stakes! So use Christianity to strike at a greater target… Secularism itself.
Take a cold, very cold look at culture today. Compare it to culture 40 years ago, 50 years ago. Secularism isn’t doing so well. Anti-rational stocks are HOT, so to speak.
The “hipsters”… you might want to ask what exactly they are so eager to leave… you might not like the place they’re going.
Secularism is in good shape, don’t get me wrong. That the Fascists knew they’ve have to bring in Christianity just to take a shot at it should tell you that.
But arrogance about Secularism won’t help, and growing fascination with anti-rational positions really won’t help.
At some point you’ll have to draw the line, you won’t be able to play this identity game where you kinda like Secularism but kinda like anti-Secularism. This game has big consequences.
Prime Rib is the best!