Tomorrow is super-sized Tuesday, or whatever it is they call it. A discussion in a recent comments thread has asked why I would be unwilling to vote for Romney or McCain in the general election if they were running against Obama or Hillary, why I would “throw my vote away” by voting for an obscure …
Nietzsche the Fusser
Chesterton gets Nietzsche right. He does this, not necessarily as a portrait painter, but as a brilliant caricaturist. Have you ever wondered how the great caricaturists do it — drawing a nose that is three feet long, and yet you recognize the person? “And then I thought of all that was brave and proud and …
Heaving a Dead Cat
I have two random thoughts on the circus maximus that we call presidential politics. First, the pagentry of modern politics is the pagentry of a false religion. In saying this I am of course not referring to the simple process of selecting a leader. That part of it is necessary and just fine. The problem …
Pressure Testing My Footings
We got six guys to come up to our house today to shovel off our deck, and it took them about an hour. We weren’t interested in finding out just how many feet of snow it would take to kick off some unplanned renovations at our house this summer. Many thanks to the guys, and …
Disnified
“When Disney turned to live-action films, he transferred the techniques and mythic patterns he had developed through animation . . . Far be it from us to carp at cleanliness, but the sanitizing urge is central to the power of Disney’s mythic artifacts, and even the most sophisticated minds have been willing to surrender themselves …
Panic and Prudence
Economics is theological. How we spend our money, both individually and collectively, reveals the true nature of the god we worship. Do we worship the God of the Bible or do we worship Mammon? For consistent Christians, it should make very little difference to them whether it is Mammonism of the right or Mammonism of …
Let’s Just Call It Cold, White Stuff
We should be getting somewhere between 5 inches to a foot of new snow on Thursday. And as it stands, we already have a little walkway shoveled up to our front door, with the current snow coming up to my knees. Nancy and I both have four-wheel drive, so we are still getting up the …
Catechism at the OK Corral
“Most viewers simply feel captured by a film like Death Wish or The Shootist. They are not aware of being ritually instructed, because myths derive from and appeal to the unconscious rather than the conscious mind. Although the process within an individual may be largely unconscious, the mythical paradigms of his culture have already been …
So It’s Division You Want?
Speaking of Matt. 24:49-51: “That evil servant who began to smite his fellow servants provoked his lord against him so as to come upon him with such severity as to cut him asunder and to appoint his portion with the hypocrites. He will ‘dichotomize’ him, divide him in two. He, by smiting his fellow servants, …
And Serves Him Right
“Beginning in 1868, Martha Farquarson developed the female redeemer figure in the Elsie Dinsmore series: Elsie was a pious heroine who redeemed others by bursting into tears at hardness of heart. She brought her irreligious father to repentance by fainting at the piano when he tried to force her to play secular music on Sunday” …