Religio-Politics 2015: Capitalist Kabbalah, Dial ‘F’ for ‘Freedom’…

I don’t know why there is such hatred from mostly-Christian Westerners toward Middle Eastern cultures generally and Islamic religion specifically, any more than I know why there is such racism toward black people from those same Westerners. I suspect it’s because we’re so similar, and historically so close geographically, so competing for the same turf, really, physically and psychologically. They’re violent; we’re violent. They’ve had great cultures; we’ve had great cultures. They’re stubbornly opinionated; we’re stubbornly opinionated. They had slavery; we had slavery. So why all the animosity?

Despite all the historic animosity over the Crusades, which was mostly an act of European aggression, there is the case of modern Israel, once again mostly an act of Western aggression, as Israel re-invents itself as a modern European-style alcohol-based republic, situated in the heart of the Mideast, after centuries of being ghettoized in Europe itself and largely protected in the Mideast itself.

That’s brilliant—and our cross to bear, somehow, all puns intended. The current fad of ‘Christian Zionism’ is ample proof of that. Other than that, the only real difference is that we—and Israel—are free-for-all devil-may-care capitalist consumerist economies, while most of the oil-based Mideast is not. Hmmm… No surprise there, as Jewish banking funded Portugal, then Spain, then northern Europe in their Age of Discovery, after the expulsion from Spain along with fellow Muslims. They never looked back, at their former life as Middle Easterners—until now. It gets worse.

For all the good it’s done, runaway capitalism today is the number-one problem facing the world, not terrorism IMHO. Enough is enough. Terrorists aren’t destroying the planet with global warming. We Westerners (Americans especially) are, we and our precious freedoms: freedom to drive our cars, mostly, around and around, uptown and downtown, whatever is left of our hollowed-out cities, existing for little more than ceremonial purposes (i.e. entertainment) now.

The Big Lie in America is that ‘they covet our freedoms’, but the truth is far from the narrative. We said that first about Communists, and now about ‘jihadis’, and neither one was true, not necessarily because they don’t want more freedom, but because we’re hardly the paradigm for it. The communists waited in line for bread; we wait in line for Apple watches. “From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.” Both have failed miserably. So what’s the big difference? Desire selects accordingly. The prostitute picks her trick.

We’ve legislated our cities out of existence, and they weren’t much to begin with, most now little more than hollow shells. This is what our freedoms get us, lives without life, cities without people. Then there’s the freedom to impose our will, and our culture, upon ‘lesser’ ones around the world as if that were the natural order in God’s universe. I would say that we shoot black people down like dogs in the street, but that’s not true. We treat our dogs better than that, and cats are king—queen, that is. Racism rules, subliminally but not sublimely, our vast subconscious and our vast police-state empire. R.I.P. Amerika.

As long as all cultures had plenty of space to rise and fall seemingly at will and on their own, the implicit inter-dependence was easy to ignore and its importance easily downplayed. But that was then; this is now. Things are so interwoven now that if any one culture falls, they will all likely fall, so far have we evolved into one vast consumer-culture. The results could be catastrophic, BUT… they don’t have to be. Culturally the human race is about twenty-seven years old, in dog years, I figure. That is the age at which many a fine young man self-destructs—or not. Fortunately I’m not a betting man…

Advertisement