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Politics : RAMTRONIAN's Cache Inn
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To: NightOwl who wrote (14272)11/10/2008 1:58:08 AM
From: NightOwl  Read Replies (2) of 14464
 
Isn't it remarkable how our brains are hard wired?

Here I am looking for a way to connect all the historical dots to make sense out of Obama's triumph of optimism... despite the rampant criminality of our vaunted Free Markets... the horrible waste of all that is Bushwarus... and the pitiable spiral of human interaction.

But dang if PBS didn't beat me to the punch:
God On Trial
pbs.org

To make a long story short, this admirable retelling of Job's biblical tale concludes with a verdict rendered against God for the obvious violation of the contract with his peeps. The arguments and evidence are evenly portrayed, but at best they are all now ancient, universal and unsurprising.

The "Judgement" rendered may suffer from these same weaknesses. But it has one characteristic which the adversarial positions at trial seem to lack... It is easily and frequently ignored.

How bad is it?

In the play it's obviously pretty damn bad. So bad in fact that... despite the court and jury ruling against God... in the end there is no viable alternative. Given death as a certainty, the choice to "curse God"... or "bow in prayer to God" is one with little distinction. In either case once the trial begins, Godness... or its absence... is always the focus of attention as we search for a way to cope.

This is not to say that Obama's election means we're on the brink of holocaust or that the financial world will end in January. All I'm suggesting is that Obama's very existence at this point in time suggests that things have gotten pretty bad. Bad enough for both "conservatives" and "progressives" to recognize the stakes and stop yelling at each other long enough to conduct a "trial" of their own.

I don't know how "bad" things will have to get for this trial to reach a verdict. But that's of less concern to me. More important is the fact that Obama's election may enable our current "trial" to openly focus on control of financial markets rather than armies. That would be a stark improvement over Bushwarus and the Boomers... at least I see reason for a glimmer of optimism in that regard.

Things may have to get a lot worse before we get to a verdict. But if the conservatives and progressives don't start openly debating the real problems and continue doing so for quite a while (instead of beating each other with irrelevant ideologies) soon the only choice we will have left is... cursing or praying.

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