I listened to a book and then watched a movie called Horse Boy. It’s about the parents of a pretty severely autistic boy who has an innate connection with animals. They decide that shamanistic healing will heal him and head off to Mongolia and take a long horseback trek to a remote region. The boy is of course helped.
The parents are teachers at a TX college.
I would bet a large amount that within 10 miles of their home they could have found a “Christian” faith healer. Mr. Spock or another objective observer of human behavior would not be able to see any logical or scientific difference between the rituals performed by the Mongolian shaman and the Texas faith healer.
What I thought was hilarious is that all their friends would nod along with agreement when they would talk about shamanistic healing, but would be appalled if they took the kid to the faith healer. Which of course, being modern liberals, they probably never even considered.
You'd figure that even if liberals would never go to a "redneck" healing service they'd at least go to a Black one. After all, they regard American Blacks, fundamentalist worship services and all, as the new Hegelian "thesis of history," replacing the "working class." And they certainly don't seem to see any connection between Black fundamentalist churches and white ones.
So why do they ignore local Blacks and go to Mongolia? What are they . . . racists?