Post #4023913

2026-07-23 01:25 UTC

There's an immense practical value in this deliberate mystification of U.S. politics and daily life: turning EVERYTHING into an omen of some sort, a hint about the underlying nature of reality, gives the right wing a supremely simple way of sorting through current events and teaching people what they should believe about them. Omens can be Good[tm] or Bad[tm]. Good omens teach the faithful that their leaders have divine guidance on their side; bad omens feed into their End-Times obsession. Everything has an explanation. Everything fits into a neat simple model, almost a fable that explains everything one needs to know about the Cosmos and human purpose on Earth. As a result of this process, which has been going on quite a while but accelerating in the 1800s thanks to conservative Christian reaction to revolutionary upheavals, "Western Civilization" has become positively haunted by its own mysticism. (cont'd)

Replies (1)

@mxchara@seattle.pink 2026-07-23 01:28

Magical thinking is everywhere. It's invaded every crevice of modern life, not the least because mysticism and belief in magic flourishes in hard times (Frank Herbert's Dune alludes to how easily mystical beliefs can be seeded into tyrannies) and because they're like an emotional bolthole, a way that people can dump their pent-up frustrations and emotions that otherwise have no socially acceptable outlet. Inevitably this has had an encroaching, corrupting effective on "Western" scientific understanding and even engineering because more and more people make load-bearing decisions backed up by little more than feelings and emotional maxims. Certain substances have come to be imbued with magic powers in "Western" thought. There's a strong tendency to look for one-shot cures and treatments, i.e. "magic bullets". (cont'd)

Open ##4023912