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There is indeed little daring in embracing a cultural trend and the fashion. What little there is does not rise to more than the petty rebellion of the self-involved adolescent and really answers little more than the personal self-aggrandization such internalization reveals.

I saw a cartoon recently showing 'Larry King' interviewing 'William Buckley' where 'Larry' asks him his greatest regret now he's retiring. 'Buckley' responds 'the infantilization of language'. 'You mean, ca ca and doo doo talk?' 'Larry' responds. To this there is no answer short of a slap but I too am fed up with highly articulate infantile talk. It is truly appalling to read someone throughly examine a pointless and destructive topic with $1 words that only prove the writer can contrive coined language from the roots of language to support what cannot bear simple statement.

So, I simply turn aside from such folk. Their premises are flawed, so unavoidably so will any thought or conclusion they try to draw be. I may try to point to the flaw in the premise, but the most I ever get is that I am being unrealistic (they say) and don't appreciate nuance. It's really a cruel joke because the concept I try to answer with came up by invention. A Wiccan named Robert Anton Wilson invented the 'fnord', the word in texts that people are trained to always consciously ignore but to always preconsciously internalize. The idea was that the 'fnord' would then work on the person to drive them to goals the society wants without having to obtain conscious assent. This would make the citizens subjects partly insane but also more pliable and useable. The concept was then plied to suggest that support for the war in Vietnam was foolish, for instance, or that abstinence from sex before marriage was overly fearful. You see where the idea would go.

Where it really went was to undermine any support for sensible religion or politics and has now produced a cadre in society partly insane and unable to ever examine their own premises or beliefs while simultaneously being convinced that they are the only social critics who actually DO any examination. Part of the delusion is that they do not see that they are examining everyone else's premises and resolutely never their own. There would be a Scripture verse about that, one remarks, snidely.

So, in a sense, I have stood aside and joined an Anglican communion of sure faith and proven Apostolicity. I would love to be able to help lead a crusade to re-evangelize the Episcopal Church. Part of the parody above is to note that it may well be a Screwtape plot to deflate the Church from within, ratcheting up the 'religiosity' while evacuating any real meaning from within. People don't long remain deluded about empty ritual, any more than they are confused by empty political rhetoric. So the pews empty. Sadly, they do not know where to go and so go away altogether. What I want to see is confident witness by the Fathers of the continuing Church.

But, I know what is preventing that: the Continuing Church is actually a congeries of competing churches, many more or less orthodox, but mutually antagonistic for any number of reasons, some of them reasonable. It's hard to assert authority with so many Pope-lets running about asserting vagante authority and confusing themselves and everyone else.

I think that's what we should all be praying for: that the Holy Spirit infuse us with the gift of prophecy.

In Christ,
-==Beleg==-+