Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Mormonism by Spengler
In the race to the bottom between black liberation theology and Jos Smith, we've been concentrating on the former. Here Spengler brings us an account of Mormonism
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13 comments:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But how your boy, Mr. Know-it-All when it comes to all things strategic and military, cannot tell the Shia from the Sunni, or AQ from Iran? He's just thrown a softball to Obama, who, sure enough, whacked it over the Green Monster. Better concentrate on basics, JJ, than those musty, fuddy-duddy stories about Joe Smith and the Angel Moroni.
AQ=terrorists, AI. 6=12/2
Just what is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, commonly called the Mormons? Joseph Smith Jr, the forger, treasure-hunter, magician, polygamist and self-styled priest-king of the American continent, invented an American version of Europe's ethnically-founded idolatry. Each European tribe that rebelled against Christianity styled itself the Chosen People. Smith concocted a tale in which Americans actually were the Chosen People, and America was the Promised Land of the ancient Hebrews and Jesus Christ. In short, Smith took to the extremes of fantasy and forgery an impulse towards national self-worship that always lurks somewhere in American Christianity.
This is a departure from what I'm reading in Darwin's Descent of Man.
Currently I'm on chapter 2, and this deals with human cognition, and the notion of memory. If we were to theoretically deconstruct AI's Romney infatuation — which we won't — but if we would, an example of this would be how AI chooses to remember his interpretation of Mormons, their creed, and additionally how the Old and New Testaments can't be looked at as literature. There's some deeper meaning in there about the survival of the species through this type of human adaptability, notions of environmental determinism and free will and such, but I'll save that energy for an essay — likely to go un-read — somewhere down the line.
Both Joseph Smith and Chuck composed their disparate works in the same century, though. Interesting.
...and here's another astute line by Spengler: The trouble is that people don't want to be an "almost chosen people", pilgrims on this Earth hoping for the Kingdom of Heaven. They want the kingdom in a suburban subdivision with a shopping mall, and they want to be chosen, by which they mean they want these comforts as an eternal grant. They want to build Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land, or in a pinch, in Utah's barren and forbidding one.
MFT: I'm not at all infatuated with Mormonism -- it's more a question of defending the underdog. As for Mitt Romney, he seemed the less bad of the crowd, so that's why I was (mildly) rooting for him. The one and only time I really was ecstatic about a US politician was Ronald Reagan, in the 1980s. No one has come close to him since.
Okay, okay.
How much longer do we have to wait for Ronnie's second coming?
Turning former politicians into demigods isn't how this Republic has survived for so long.
Demigod is a big word. Let's just say a towering figure, especially to his epigones.
Okay, okay.
Wow AI! In order to worship your apostle of Temple of the 7-11, you shat on McCain for telling the truth.
Did you ever work for the New York Times?
What's the "Temple of the 7-11"? And who is the apostle thereof? I dunno, JJ, you make no sense. Try linear logic, for a change.
...and so the JJ-AI exchange continues...
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