"a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany ... and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama"
The title of this post is the title of a blog that is documenting instances of Obamamania. Check it out.
2 comments:
I've been listening to John Cleese's audiobook of "The Screwtape Letters." Letter 25 has a great deal to do with a campaign slogan of "change."
But since He [Screwtape's enemy, i.e, Christ] does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. ... But the greatest triumph of all [on our side] is to elevate his horror of the Same Old Thing into a philosophy so that nonsense in the intellect may reinforce corruption in the will. It is here that the general Evolutionary or Historical character of modern European thought (partly our work) comes in so useful. The Enemy loves platitudes. Of a proposed course of action He wants men, so far as I can see, to ask very simple questions; is it righteous? is it prudent? is it possible? Now if we can keep men asking "Is it in accordance with the general movement of our time? Is it progressive or reactionary? Is this the way that History is going?" they will neglect the relevant questions. And the questions they do ask are, of course, unanswerable; for they do not know the future, and what the future will be depends very largely on just those choices which they now invoke the future to help them to make. As a result, while their minds are buzzing in this vacuum, we have the better chance to slip in and bend them to the action we have decided on.
That's a very good point about the utility of change as an end in itself as a weapon with which to bludgeon existing social institutions. And Lewis I know and I know about Screwtape, but who is John Cleese that we should listen to his voice instead of our own as we reread the book?
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