Antichrist Update #9: The Core Assumption of the Morally Inverted Left (3.24.10)

The problem with the word "antichrist" is that you can't use it without people getting the wrong idea. But when I use the word, I am again trying to be quite precise, for if there is a metacosmic dimension we call "Christ," then surely there is a realm of the antichristic. I'm not really interested in mythological uses of the term, nor in locating "the" antichrist per se.

In my mind, it should be as uncontroversial as pointing out that there is a realm of science, and therefore anti-science, e.g., "climate change," metaphysical Darwinism, etc. However, in the case of the antichristic, we are not just dealing with negation or opposition, but inversion -- inversion of the good, true, and beautiful, among other transcendental categories.

Now, I do believe in all sincerity that the left is antichristic. This is not just my opinion, but theirs, since they are obviously deeply opposed to the transcendent -- i.e., the "permanent real" -- in general.

But as it pertains to Obama, the really frightening thing about him is his "superior ignorance" of that which he opposes (for example, his long-time membership in that racist, anti-American sect must make him believe that such views are normative for Christianity -- or even Christianity at all). What I mean by this is that Obama is our first postmodern president. True, Presidents Clinton and Bush were ivy league educated, but this was when it still meant something -- before the leftist takeover of higher education. This transformation began in the late '60s but was only complete by the 1980s.

Thus, by the time Obama attended college in the 1980s, it was possible -- even likely -- that one could pass through one's higher education without once encountering any serious conservative (i.e., liberal) oppostion -- like one of those subatomic particles that can pass through the earth without touching matter. Dennis Prager often mentions that when he speaks on college campuses, students routinely approach him and tell him that they have never heard conservative ideas in any of their classrooms, except perhaps in a caricatured, straw-man way.

As a result, the postmodern leftist lives in a kind of hermetically sealed ignorance that they call "education" or "sophistication." And this is why they feel no need to condescend to the level of those who disagree with them, since we are not just a priori wrong, but evil, misguided, and malevolent as well. Look at Miss Califiornia -- she is not just wrong for believing in traditional marriage, she is not even wrong. She is not to be argued with, nor even tolerated, but condemned. The only hope for her redemption would be in "reeducation," perhaps followed by volunteering at an AIDS hospice.

The whole thing is an interesting spectacle, because the last time I checked up on the leftist Truth of the Day, beauty pageants were intrinsically sexist, since they objectified the female form. But I guess it's now okay to do that, so long as the form in question has the correct politics inside. It's like saying to men: "Don't worry. It's still okay to be straight, so long as you're kind of homo about it." In other words, you can still objectify women, so long as you respect their leftism. But a conservative beauty queen is a different matter. She is just a whore by another name.

The point is that when we see Obama -- what's the opposite of strutting? Slinking? -- around the world stage, apologizing to all and sundry for the existence of the United States, it may make you or me want to vomit, but that's probably only because you either didn't attend an elite university, or else went to college prior to the leftist takeover. This is why Obama can be so simultaneously craven and grandiose, because by submitting to the abuse of the international left, he is demonstrating his moral superiority. In this context, crawling like Obama is strutting (while strutting like George Bush or Ronald Reagan is slinking like a snake).

It's the same with the "torture" debate. People who oppose enhanced interrogation techniques demonstrate their moral superiority over those of us who value innocent human life over making terrorists comfortable. But if they actually had strong arguments, they surely wouldn't have to lie about its effectiveness in saving thousands of innocent lives. The same people would no doubt be opposed to the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, irrespective of how many tens of thousands of American and Japanese lives were spared as a result.

It's very easy to play this game with other people's lives. What these people have to ask themselves is whether they would waterboard a terrorist to save their own life, or their child's life. If they wouldn't, then they are just crazy. It's their choice, but they cannot be allowed to impose their madness on the rest of us. The vast majority of Americans do not hold radical left views on enhanced interrogation.

As Dennis Prager was saying the other day, I have no problem with crazy ideas, since one could no more eliminate them than one can eliminate all disease. My only complaint is when they try to impose their ideas on the rest of us -- especially when they declare evil good, lies truth, and relative absolute.

That latter one, of course, is the root of the spiritual pathology of the left, the "master key." For once you absolutize the relative, then everything else falls into place. Isn't this what the anti-enhanced interrogation people are doing, elevating a relative good to an absolute, so that we obscure the real absolute, which is the protection of innocent human life?

Indeed, isn't the protection of innocent life what justified airing out the skulls of the three Somalian pirates? As Walter Sobchak teaches us, there are consequences. Very simple consequences: This! Is! What! Happens! When! You! F*ck! A! Stranger! In! The! A**!

(Apologies for rolling out the profanity on Shabbos.)

I don't care if they release photos of the interrogations, so long as they show them side by side with people jumping from the top of the Twin Towers, or terrorists beheading Nick Berg, or Israeli convalescent homes for people brain damaged by Palestinian homicide bombs.

Last night I was reading in the Theo-Drama about how everything is either pre-Christian, Christian, or post-Christian. The post-Christians can imagine that they are free of the taint of Christianity, but you will always find it lurking somewhere in their metaphysic. Once you've heard the story, you cannot forget it, try as you might. For example, from where does the concern for victims come? From Darwin? Hardly. Consider what Keith Olbermann said the other night on Clowndown:

"The searing truth: that the moment of torture automatically makes the presumed bad guy recipient the victim, and makes the torturer into the evildoer."

This lunatic sentiment can only be understood as an inversion of Christianity. It would be as if Christ were a terrorist with the blood of thousands on his hands, instead of a sinless victim with the guilt of millions on his back.

Now Olbermann wants to pay Sean Hannity a thousand dollars for every second he undergoes waterboarding. One way -- among others -- we can know he doesn't believe what he is saying, is that it would be deeply immoral for him to pay to have someone tortured if it were actually torture -- for example, raping a child in front of its parents, or putting someone through a plastic shredder, or cutting them apart piece by piece, or crucifixion. (Although I do believe that this angry lunatic would actually like to see Hannity tortured, which is the unconscious point of the offer. Then again, by his own moral reasoning, it would automatically make Hannity the victim and Olbermann the evildoer.)

So, this is the realm of the antichristic. The appropriation and inversion of Christian values in the name of the Absolutely Relative.