Revisionism's Reservoir Host

"So what are you waiting for?
You got what you asked for
Did it fix what was wrong with you?"

 

NIN - Less Than

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"The important thing to note is that the aboriginal believed the present world, as a natural and cultural environment, was and should be simply a detailed reproduction of the world of the ancestors. He believed that the entire universe “is now as it was in the beginning” when it was established as left by the ancestors.

[...]

But when we are informed that [Dog–chases–iguana–up–a–tree–and–barks–at–him–all–night–long]* had two wives from the Spear Black Duck Clan and one from the Native Companion Clan, one of them being blind, that he had four children with such and such names, that he had a broken wrist and was left handed, all because his ancestor had exactly these same attributes, then we know [though he apparently didn’t] that the present has influenced the past, that the mythical world has been somewhat adjusted to meet the exigencies and accidents of the inescapably real present.

There was thus in Yir Yoront ideology a nice balance in which the mythical was adjusted in part to the real world, the real world in part to the ideal pre–existing mythical world, the adjustments occurring to maintain a fundamental tenet of native faith that the present must be a mirror of the past."

 

Lauriston Sharp - Steel Axes for Stone-Age Australians, 1952

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Growing up, I always thought the jokes about Jamaicans lovin' tha ganja a bit too much were just comedic exagerration... until I discovered they based their homegrown Christianity on an Ethiopian king from the mid-20th century. Don't get me wrong, he sounds a decent enough king as kings go, but he also doesn't seem to have done anything particularly supernatural in the course of his usual monarchin' routine. On the other hand, the fact that Rastafarians continue to worship him as The Messiah despite croaking in perfectly mundane fashion fifty-one years ago murdered by a military junta like endless millions around the world, well that's, by this point in history, par for the course for any brand of religious insanity. I'm guessing they must just work the martyrdom back into the divinity angle somehow, and keep going. Makes good ad copy. Maybe he'll come back from the dead. I guess by this point, what's one more Osiris on the pile?

 

Now look North a bit. Whatever else Trumpism is, it's also a religious movement. Whether or not they consciously believe him supernaturally imbued, the vast majority of his voters have no inkling of just how exactly demolishing their government will make it work better. He's spewed so many nonsensical campaign promises they don't even bother remembering his constant babble. But they are utterly assured their gestures of obeisance, wearing the hats and chanting the slogans, will induce favor from above. If the rites are observed with due performative fervor, then surely some higher power will shine down upon the faithful! They offered their votes to the booth like blood on the altar, not as a choice but as a grand radical gesture, as a tantrum, as an auto da fe.

 

Whatever its many roots, you don't get to ignore the pot and fertilizer for such madness. Sure it made little sense for Jamaicans to expect much from some rando' king on another continent, but they were sick of their white anglo-saxon protestant preachers and wanted a black messiah. And as for trumpists, even when not painting their charlatan king as best buds with Jesus**, the symbolism and rhetoric employed throughout his crackpot movements like QAnon is explicitly religious, rallying against perceived demonic influence with claims to occult secrets and prescience.

 

But more important than overt dogma, it's the underlying mentality, the recurring etiology of such mental infection, which begs the search for its reservoir host. Imagine doctors' offices start reporting epidemic levels of facial trauma. Black eyes, broken noses, cracked cheekbones, the works, everywhere you look. And one day you suddenly notice you're living next to the University of Punching-Yourself-in-the-Face complete with courses in splitting your own lip and whole departments dedicated to recursive fist angling and tooth-cracking self-chin interactions. Would you imagine the trend to be unrelated to the institution? Those who expect miracles from Trump-as-Jesus have been socially obligated all their lives to treat as true the blatant nonsense spewing from preachers' mouths: that Jesus pirouetted on water and had a Star Trek replicator in his pocket, that snakes peddle apples and some schmuck spent a long weekend camping in on a whale's liver. Why do you throw your hands up in despair at each passing fad in irrationalism while ignoring the entrenched institutions championing irrationalism as a core value? Religion not just is insane, but foments insanity.

 

Now, the interesting question is what comes next, because like any messiah, Trump will not fulfill whatever expectations the imbecile masses might hold of His Holiness. Failed prophecies always prompt a flurry of dogmatic backfilling to continue propping up the delusion. So he tossed a bunch of latinos over the border but you're still waiting for an invitation to your dream job, and the fraudulent department of "government efficiency" has already cost taxpayers more money than it'll ever save*** and His Orange Imbecility has been backpedalling away in panic from his trade war with the entire world... so what now? Well, just like Dog-chases-iguana-etc., trumpists must constantly revise their mythology to ignore the sting of reality, and we know they're very, very good at make-believe. Remember, the loser didn't lose the 2020 election, it was "stolen" instead. So every failure and mistake gets reinterpreted as part of some master plan on the swindler's part.

 

I'm sorry, did I say "master" - I meant "divine" plan. I was curious how rastafarians handled the death of their immortal. Predictably, how every other sect handles the failure of their divinities: pretending that's what they meant to say all along. Selassie's not really dead. Or he lives in spirit. He plans to return. Jesus always meant to die on the cross, standard stuff. Is this a rerun, a spin-off, a sequel? Misery on Earth is just a test to get into Heaven, fossils were deliberately planted to test your faith, drowning everything on the planet was way more efficient than just sending humans a viral infection, there's no evidence of jews leaving Egypt but believe it anyway... meanwhile please try to ignore the price hikes 'cuz "trade wars are easy to win" and try to eat around the salmonella because companies don't need government supervision. Trump's not really failing every single thing he promised, he's just playing fifteen-dimensional chess with visions of the future! It's all part of the divine plan.

 

The magical thinking fostered, legitimized and glorified by religion does not conveniently stop at the church door.

 

To reiterate an observation from five years ago:

"Ever notice the people on Star Trek tended to be smart? The redneck hero with a shotgun doesn't play well in that setting. We know, intuitively, that retards wouldn't live long on their own in a century when half the mundane devices surrounding you can disintegrate you in an instant, when even your pants can teleport you straight into the nearest solar corona in retaliation for passing a wet fart. Modern humans can barely handle automobiles and electric ovens... and you want to give them teleporter-armed spaceships?"

It jumped to mind when reaching this statement in the story of steel axes:

"The totemic ideology can no longer support the inrushing mass of foreign culture traits, and the myth–making process in its native form breaks down completely."

Except those "foreign culture traits" are quite often facts. Metallurgy and geography and actual, provable medicine instead of some wrinkled old hag rubbing you with spit and chanting psalms. Technological advance and realism go hand in hand. They must, because every new technology is a force multiplier for stupidity, and the more interlocking elements in a society, the less room for pretending something works instead of understanding how it works and fixing it.

 

When 99% of the populace did nothing through its short, miserable life but hit dirt with a stick hoping it'll turn into food, pacifying the rabble with delusions may have seemed the lesser evil. But there's a reason we use "voodoo economist" and "cargo cult science" as slurs. Even if you're not religious, you may have fallen back in the past on the apologia that others around you have a psychological need for supernatural belief. But we're now awash in the vomit resulting from imbibing such poison, and you may just have to admit that if we wanted society to survive, believers should long have been left to go the way of those monkeys that ate the red berries.

 

 

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* and that was just one of the guy's names!

** Seriously, just search for "trump jesus painting" and prepare to be amazed.

*** But that's ok, DOGE's real purpose was always not to save money but to destroy the agencies preventing corporations from eating you alive. Hint: if you really want to save some serious cash, look to military contractors!