1. Gilded Travesty? Does Piers Morgan’s disgusting display of exorcism show us the level of journalism the public may expect of his new show? The alleged “evil spirit” possession of a middle-aged mother, augmented by a priest who intoned Latin prayers, commands and imprecations, aided by another gentleman who editorially assured Piers and the viewers that his careful examination had excluded all possibilities of fraud or earthly causation for that lady’s weird behavior, could be convincing only to the callow minded who suffer from possession by catholic doctrine and the prehistoric metaphysics of unnatural, conceptual bifurcation.
The poor woman was shown strapped into a chair with only her forearms and neck free to wave about and gesticulate wildly while voicing coarse growls and ambiguous noises which the exorcist seemed able to interpret as responses to his questions. He claimed she reported nine spirits involved in her disturbance, though her answer may have been in German (nein = no), for if a “spirit” had the neurological equipment to understand English or Latin, it could as well know German, Swahili or Japanese.
We are not without the usual “experts” in possession events who, according to themselves, discern between spiritual turbulence and mere extremes of psychological uproar that many of us have experienced in people around us. My poor, late second wife seemed at times possessed by demons, but I never supposed the “spirit” to be other than 86-proof bourbon whisky or equivalent, which took her away before her time. Piers Morgan’s audience was told, of course, by the attending exponent of religious superstition in church vestments, that neither drugs nor alcohol were involved in the “possessed” lady’s seeming dementia and outbursts of strength. Who among us has not known cases of profoundly secret drinking by alcoholics who ferret away bottled resource in unlikely places around their homes, and who cover the evidence of bad breath and poor coordination in various clever ways?
Fie upon you, Mr. Morgan, for kow-towing to people still vulnerable to (or purveying) the superstitious rot that infects mentally underdeveloped victims of antique ideas suggestively planted through images ornately framed in gilded travesty.
2. Far Right Fearfulness? It seems that conservatives worry a lot. There may be an instability at the core of the conservative personality that shows up as a scarcely conscious sense of insecurity in the background of experience. It manifests as an uneasiness which must be ignored or compensated for by pretended personal confidence and certitude in expressed views.
A case in point lies in the outcome expected for Egypt’s popular overthrow of Mubarak. Far right Republicans have been fearful of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, worrying that its hard-shelled minority of Islamicist fanatics will highjack the coming election and produce an Iranian-style theocracy that pretends to democratic statehood. But, though the Brotherhood is large and well organized, it is not highly popular with Egyptians because the Egyptian public is among the most cosmopolitan-minded set of people outside Europe and America, especially in the cities where preponderant numbers of Egyptian voters live. Egyptians are relatively educated and secular as well as fairly advanced and connected, technologically. They are well aware of conditions in other countries around the world. Their majority wants sharia law no more than we do.
Given this fact, the only sense one can make of conservative fear is that the Far Right wishes to increase uncertainty and apprehension here at home for political effect. Worry makes unsure folks vote more conservatively. Keep people uneasy, they will tend to regress and reject change. Perhaps more troublesome is the possibility that Egypt will develop a polity of too many parties and face the problems Italy has in forming strong enough majorities to govern itself effectively. It is also possible that, in place of Mubarak’s army-backed monarchy, a military oligarchy will result which, in civilian dress, will conduct a regime of sufficiently populist policies.
3. Unaccountable Oddity? An ecclesiastical gentleman writing in Tuesday’s Forum (Benicia Herald 2-15-11) puts forward ideas which most liberals will accept and support, pertaining to the rights and standing of homosexuals in American society both military and civil. This clerical gentleman writes in behalf of enlightened outlook toward lesbians and gays. Yet, a niggling thought arises: could he have been giggling with each paragraph he wrote? For what he gives with one hand he seems to take back with the other. By emphasizing the word “queer” — from theology to behavior and character — he taints his presentation with negativity. Why? Because from time immemorial, people have used that word to convey disgust, antipathy, hatred, distance, distrust, alienation and condemnation.
With these accretions, one must wonder why he picks this particular word with which to present his case. One has to wonder what his own attitude really is, or indeed what the nature of his own relationship to homosexual identity and conduct may be. There are several nicer, less intrinsically pejorative words he could have used. If he is trying to knock the negative associations away from the word “queer”, it is seems clear that he has gone about it in a way diametrically opposed both to success and to our current understanding of neural connectability and associational exitation. You risk rousing and strengthening (reinforcing) whatever you attack. The public mind is patterned in webs of systemic metaphor and conceptual relation. Attitudes are like bombs. You do not combat them. You defuse them. Kick an attitude, it hardens up and kicks back. An attitude has to be analyzed and dismantled, absorbed into other, better configurations of thought and feeling.
This clerical writer has a deeper conceptual problem. He says he subscribes to the notion that “God is a verb and not a noun.” If he means merely that God is less a discrete, thing-like entity than a potential energy or feelable force, well and good. But, then, why does he not see that God must be beyond any syntactical part of speech? Or, in fact, beyond all human categorization and description? Perhaps he would like God to be queer. After all, what can be more queer than the Catholic Church and its doctrines? Honestly, whatever good the church accomplishes in the world is no greater than that accomplished by the other religions, while the enslavement of hearts and minds to forms that mix blessing s with evil is a doubtful legacy of them all.
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