Cosmophobia and the Third World War

Why are American Christians suddenly Christian Nationalists? What happened? The essential content of Christianity hasn't changed, nor the Declaration or Constitution, so what did change? The container, i.e., what Charles Taylor calls  

the immanent frame. Prior ages were characterized by a transcendent frame, a belief that the world stood under the authority of a reality that transcended its mere material existence (Trueman).

Such an immanent reality is a kind of self-referential, ontological tautology in which "this world is all there is, and so moral discourse cannot find its justification or root its authority in anything that lies beyond it." Because there is and can be nothing beyond it. 

Among other inconveniences, no civilization has ever maintained itself without reference to a transcendent order. A purely immanent civilizational order "is unprecedented in human history," and it looks like we won't be the first to make a success of it. 

Nevertheless, that's the plan, which, in order to succeed, must eliminate those of us who believe and live in the transcendent frame. 

Thus, what looks like a mere political dispute is really an ontological one, going to the very nature of reality. 

Nor is this one of those disagreements susceptible to compromise, at least from their side of the divide. This is because a transcendent frame allows for immanence, but the immanent frame denies -- cannot tolerate -- transcendence, precisely. 

In case you were wondering about the source of their rigid and shrill intolerance.

The denial and banishment of transcendence is "one of catastrophic cultural significance" resulting in "distinct and damaging cultural pathologies." 

Of course, in order for there to be pathology, there must be a transcendent or teleological norm. Which is again convenient for the soul-sick among us, since it renders their pathology normal. No one is better or worse than anyone else, except those of us who believe otherwise. Hence, we are the worst. 

This is also one of the sources of their hysteria, since they know they are being judged. Which is why you are not permitted to merely tolerate their pathology but must celebrate it: Bake the cake, deplorable!   

It is impossible to consistently maintain a strict immanent frame. Rather, any attempt to do so will always smuggle in the very transcendence it denies. Thus, it will always be inconsistent, contradictory, hypocritical, and ultimately absurd.   

Gödel.

Yes, if only they only understood that reality always transcends ideology, they might see the error of their ways. But they are responding to an alluring and powerful pull -- the pull of the demonic.  

Was that wrong? Was that uncalled for? I don't think so, for what is the diabolical but the flight from transcendence? Indeed, this is one of the classic definitions of fascism, i.e., the violent resistance to transcendence. Even if it isn't caused by the devil, it results -- you will have noticed -- in endless devilry.

The Devil, according to Schuon, is "the humanized personification -- humanized on contact with man -- of the subversive aspect of the centrifugal existential power." 

Being that man qua man is the being suspended between immanence and transcendence, this subversive movement proceeds downward into an intrinsically pneumopathological immamental illness.

Spiritual warfare:

This is the reason why society now often feels like a cultural battle zone: it consists of groups of people who simply think about the moral structure of the world in utterly incompatible ways (Trueman).

Trueman uses the terms "second world" and "third world" to describe the transcendent and immanent frames, respectively. Thus,

there is no common ground on which the denizens of third worlds can engage in meaningful dialogue with those of the first [pagan / mythic] or second.... 

More than that, third worlds are characterized by total opposition to any kind of sacred order and to those verticals in authority (religious institutions and authorities) that typically mediate that sacred order.

Thus the "complete breakdown of communication." And here we are, trying to talk sense into people who can speak only nonsense. This is not even an argument, for in "clashes with a representative of a third world there is no real argument taking place":

There is no common authority on which they might agree to the terms of debate in order to determine exactly what it is they are debating.

Not even the authority of reality, since that's just an oppressive social construct invented by white Christians to control the third worlders. 

Cosmophobia.

Yes, Petey, that's what it amounts to: a neurotic rejection of, and flight from, the total order of reality. 

Can't we just agree to disagree? No, because what is the compromise position between reality and its alternatives, or what is and what we wish it were? A little bit of delusion? A smattering of insanity? A moderately demented president?

This is nothing less than a struggle between culture and anti-culture, the latter "called such because of its iconoclastic, purely destructive attitude toward all that... second worlds hold dear."

The progressive travels around among literary works as the Puritan did among cathedrals: with hammer in hand.  

And not just literary works but artistic works in general, not to mention legal texts such as the Constitution.  

in the third world, crudity becomes the norm because the general interdict against such is seen as a tyrannical hangover from an outdated way of viewing the world.

Nor is history immune to the destruction:

The falsification of the past is how the left has sought to elaborate the future. 

A reminder that

Modern history is the dialogue between two men: one who believes in God and another who believes he is a god. 

Again, what is the compromise position between God and the anti-God? They cannot tolerate us, because doing so reveals them as the intolerant cosmophobes they are.