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The Intellectually Damaged Society

Comment by Larry Ross, December 15, 2004

This is a 16 page essay, and a bit tedious to start, where the author establishes his credentials. However the sensational analysis is damning and well worth the effort. There are many analysis that come to similar conclusions, often bringing in other solid criteria.

Stasi establishes and documents the religious deterioration and subjugation of the American psyche. America is in the hands of a band of dedicated criminal religious nutters. They are daily becoming more powerful and entrenched. They use queer religious doctrines to justify any act, any risk or any crime. It's all done for the lord you see, for his greater glory and to fulfil his heavenly promise. Everything and anything can be justified and excused.

So killing 100,000 innocent Iraqis, imprisoning and torturing thousands more, and destroying their country for no legitimate reason are not crimes. It's heavenly ordained and guided by our ever-loving god. We are God's chosen people. He inspires us to do what we do.

What we are seeing in America today, is a real-life enactment of a delusional set of beliefs - a script that is very similar to George Orwell's 1984.

And what about New Zealand? We and the whole world will suffer the effects of Bush's crusade. It could be crippling, if not planet-killing, particularly if Bush uses nuclear weapons in one of his wars. He has lowered the nuclear barrier against usage and has proclaimed new pre-emptive doctrines, which license him to use nuclear weapons against any nation. He will justify this, with any 'reason' he may invent. It won't matter if it's a lie. New lies will work, like the lies about Iraq still work. Enough people will believe it, and the others will do little to expose or oppose it.

In New Zealand we have the Destiny church to push the same kind of claptrap as the Bush fundamentalists. They confidently claim they will have power to govern New Zealand in 10 years. Naturally I believe they'd never sell their Dominionism nonsense to New Zealanders, enough to win an election. Would they?

Like the US right wing churches, Destiny people are dedicated and united. They know how to tithe and how to work for their beliefs.

The more rational part of humanity, the majority, are not dedicated. They're divided. Few bother to work for their beliefs. Their own legitimate interests, TV and sport, rule. Generally they don't give much support to what they believe in, or support attempts to defend their beliefs against what they definitely don't believe in. They are apathetic, laid back, a bit smug, and like to deny the obvious.

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Moral Victory

Religious Exploitation, and the New American Creed

“Our moral perils are not those of conscious malice or the explicit lust for power. They are the perils which can be understood only if we realize the ironic tendency of virtues to turn into vices when too complacently relied upon; and of power to become vexatious if the wisdom which directs it is trusted too confidently.” – Reinhold Neibuhr

By Dom Stasi, November 2, 2004 "ICH"

IN THE BEGINNING…
I remember it as though it were yesterday. I was a young engineer fresh from a successful and heady seven years in the manned lunar expedition program called Project Apollo.

Along with thousands of other American engineers, scientists, pilots, and technicians, people accustomed to working in relative obscurity, we had found ourselves suddenly at the center of the universe. And though Albert Einstein had already proven that everything and anything can rightfully be considered the center of the universe, I’m speaking less prosaically. For a young man in the morning of his career, or an old man at its dusk, and today I can speak with knowledge of both circumstances, Project Apollo was that something we would remember the rest of our days. Physics aside, Apollo simply was for a time the center of the universe of men. Anyone who had the great good fortune and talent to be a part of it, would be changed for the experience, and changed for the better. Such harmless vanity is simply human nature. We are all of us creatures who delight in success however small might be our part in its achievement. Self esteem is critical to our well being as humans. On Apollo it made us all work harder and with more passion than any work I’ve known since. Contributing to Project Apollo, and earning the trust and respect of project engineers older and wiser than I, and ultimately that of the astronauts themselves, gave this and so many other young Americans a special kind of self-confidence. Few have had such an opportunity so early in their lives and careers. Fewer still might have accepted it, for failure would have haunted all our days, and with each new moonrise, our nights as well. It’s been said that experience doesn’t change a person, but make him more of what he already is. Perhaps that is so. Think of the challenges you have faced in your own life. Think of how your responses to them tempered or softened you, contributed to, or somehow affected your social, intellectual, and perhaps, spiritual growth and attitudes. Reflecting upon ones life can be a rewarding or a painful exercise. Yet it is a thing from which we cannot hide. As Socrates observed, “An unconsidered life is not worth living.” Extreme? Perhaps. But keep these concepts of self top of mind. Remain mindful of self-confidence, self-esteem, and, not incidentally, self-worth as you read on. http://informationclearinghouse.info/article7462.htm