Friday, May 16, 2008

Crisis of Distinctions - California

Citizens of California may be scratching their heads today at their Supreme Court’s recent decision. Just as sure as Barrack Hussein Obama got John Edwards’ “blue-collar” endorsement immediately following Hillary Clinton’s victory in WV, Ellen DeGenerese announced her impeding “marriage” to “longtime love,” Portia de Rossi – surprise, surprise. (What happened to her “longer ago love” Anne Heche?)

Peter Sean Bradley, attorney-at-law in the once great state of California, says the following:
A few questions:

First, why not polygamy? Why is "two" a "magic number"? Could it be because we have two arms? Could it be because we have two eyes?

Or could it be because there are two sexes, and now that the idea that the complementarity of the different genders is now considered outmoded and irrelevant, why should "two" be a limitation any more than the idea that a "man" and a "woman" constitute a married couple?

Second, haven't we always known that this was going to happen? It didn't matter how often the voters stated their sovereign preference by wide margins that they wanted to structure their society around the idea that marriage was intrinsically and essentially connected to procreation, we've always known that gay marriage would make its march through the elite governance system.

And now it has happened.

What has happened to the ideal of democracy? The idea that citizens govern rather than are subjects of their governors seems to have died a silent, unlamented death.
Good questions, all. From the viewpoint of Girard's mimetic theory, we are seeing the dissolution of the structures put into place by means of the sacrificial mechanisms of the primitive Sacred: the so-called "crisis of distinctions" which is the harbinger of another sacrificial preparation. It is a breakdown of the rituals, myths, and prohibitions of the Sacred that is necessary for another culture-founding, culture-reviving spasm of violence.

Trouble is, another factor has been at work in the West; namely, the Gospel. In conventional cultures, when a crisis of distinctions reached its denouement, an "economic" apoplexy of violence would occur -- Nietzsche's Eternal Return -- and order would be restored, either through a carefully orchestrated ritual event performed by the priesthood or an actual new originary event of founding violence.

Now, however, the Gospel has given moral "qualms" about such events in the West (notice that in lands of the "Scimitar", no such qualms even cross the minds of street rabble - such matters are framed in terms of 'honor', 'disrespect', revenge as 'sacred duty,' etc.). Therefore, the prestige of sacrificial victims or the number of sacrificial victims has increased in an unconscious effort to surcharge the sacrificial mechanism: regicide or genocide.

Difficult times lie ahead for people of faith, people of peace, people who believe the Gospel.

No comments: