Summary of text [comment] pages 61-62
[Rene Girard’s scenario of “the scapegoat mechanism yielding (through reversal) sovereign power” is echoed in chapter 14 of a totally unrelated book: Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How To Build the Future by Peter A. Theil with Blake Masters (2014).
The chapter is titled, The Founders.
It sounds just like Rene Girard.]
Summary of text [comment] pages 61-62
[Why Enlil?
Why not Enlil?
What attributes did Enlil have that fundamentally transformed “a growing town-chiefdom” into “the city-state of Nippur”? Was Enlil a trap? How was Enlil so beautiful, sublime and monstrous as to dignify the dehumanization and the scapegoating of others? Was Enlil sated by human sacrifice?
Maybe, a ruler arose from among those who were fated to be accused. The first king was already dehumanized, slated for sacrifice. But then, the tables turned, and the intended sacrifice rose in stature, accusing his accusers, and turning them into the scapegoats. This is what Rene Girard imagines.
The first king was a scapegoat who avoided his fate.
The wind god had found it’s voice.]
Summary of text [comment] pages 61-62
[Now, some speculation.
One of the first thinkgroups to successfully gain sovereign power promoted the wind God, Enlil, as the object organizing the ancient city of Nippur.
The party of Enlil promoted thinkpro-Enlil. They began to rule. Sovereign power magically appeared beneath their feet.
According to An Archaeology of the Fall, Enlil’s Public Cult ruled the city-state of Nippur by 3000 B.C. or 2800 U0′, 2800 years after the adoption of speech alone talk in southern Mesopotamia (0 Ubaid 0′).
[The question boils down to this:
How does one escape the trap sprung when a thinkgroup successfully gains sovereign power?]
[When a thinkgroup gains sovereign power, all must serve its idols in one way or another. All roads lead to perdition. Accusation, resistance and resentment meet at the same gate.
What gate?
You know, the one that proclaims in iron letters: “Our organizational object will make you free”.
This is the trap that the American Founders were trying to avoid in the first amendment. Today, their words stand as a prophecy. Progressive thinkgroups have already established their religions through sovereign power.
Who knows?
IF the federal government has established a religion,
THEN When will the little folk realize this?
When the federal government accuses them of anti-object pursuits at every turn?
When the federal government says, “Believe in thinkpro-object and you will be saved.”?]
Summary of text [comment] page 61-62
[“To resent” is “to enter into a world of conspiracies, where the idolatry of the (infra)sovereign religion plays havoc with one’s mind”.
According to Rene Girard, both resistance and resentment become sites for competitive mimesis, where “the one resenting” and “the one who is resented” become less and less distinguishable. “Getting even” becomes the sole organizational goal.
The accused accuses the accuser. The accused imitates the desire of the accuser.
Each party strives to grasp sovereign power in order to fundamentally transform society according to their resentments.
Satan casts out Satan.]
Summary of text [comment] page 61-62
[Are resistance and resentment the only paths?
“To resist” is “to carry the label of the anti-object and to feel the burden of iniquity projected upon you”.
Pro-object accusers want to presume that their idolatry is true. Resistance validates their object.
Most scapegoats do not even know this. They validate “the accusation as sensical” (even though the accusation is technically misleading or false) by expressing anger and protesting their innocence.
Christine O’Donnell in 2010 makes a good case study.
Her response to false accusations inadvertently assisted the true believers in her persecution.]
[Please, do not accuse me of thinkanti-object.
Thinkpro-object accuses “those who are not in the organization” of false ideologies (thinkanti-object) and bad conscience (conscienceanti-object).
These accusations ruin innocent lives.
These accusations bankrupt the accused.
How can the accused respond to these projections of power?]
Summary of text [comment] page 61-62
[This is the choice offered by Progressives:
Adopt our idolatries or feel the punishment of the sovereign.
How will they punish those who do not adopt their idolatries?
The sovereign powers will accuse the non-adopters of thinkanti-object.]
Summary of text [comment] page 61-62
[Whoever holds the trappings of power suffers a temptation to sin.
Moreover, they carry the burden of bearing a thing of power, laden with hope and change.
What hope? What change? For some organizational goals? Goals that divide the world? Goals that become the attractors for idolatry?
Amazingly, this is where America stood in 2008. Progressive and so-called liberal thinkgroups had already established their “objects that bring people into organization” (such as mandates for equality, tolerance, fairness, environmental protection, education, health, and many, many more) as bureaus within the central state. They had sovereign power.
They wanted more power. They needed to takeover the healthcare and financial markets. They got the opportunity in 2008.
Each of the bureau’s objectorgs demand submission by those outside the supporting organizations. All people (regardless of organizational affiliation) are expected to adopt so-called federal mandated goals. This requires citizens to surrender responsibility and freedom. Opposition appears either complicit or no longer relevant.
Why would Americans vote for this?
Why would they have voted to surrender the freedom of others, but apparently not their own?
Americans had already become less virtuous.]
