Saturday, November 04, 2006
(2:52 PM) | Anonymous:
Haggard's a gay drug addict, so what?
It is a sign of desperation that liberals have been so absolutely giddy at the 'fall of Haggard'. Now of course I recognize the hypocrisy and of course this man and his ideology frighten me. I've known and dislike Haggard since High School, when I was a teenage liberal evangelical. But the giddiness represented in the mainstream liberal blog-o-pundit-o-sphere (Kos and Atrios, et al) seems to me no better than every other sensationalist news story. It may be highly entertaining, but it says nothing politically. In fact, I'm willing to say that if Republicans lose this up coming election because of moral issues than it only tells us that there is a disease still spreading in America. If someone votes for or against Bush based on moral issues of this kind (i.e. not actually moral) is is symptomatic of the lack of political intelligence and consciousness in America. It tell us that if and when the Democrats take control of Congress they will be not be pressured by a moral American populace to dismantle the Military Commissions Act or any other move towards fascism. While revealing in the entertainment of this we are missing the fact that the Democrats will not save us and may not even help us. Life for the left has been hell under Bush, but what if the more terrifying future is a Democratic government whose repression is more insidious with those same powers? I'm not saying it will happen, but I'm wondering why the left, especially those of us who claim to be critical of the liberal left, are not critical in this way. Why are we still pious?This is why I don't think many of my comrades on the Left understand the nature of religious phenomena. Often these arguments end up with the other person assuming I'm protecting some beautiful core of religious whatever, despite the overwhelming evidence that religion is destructive or irrational. But my point is different, my point is that we have not yet dealt with religion in an adequate manner. We have not yet understood it, much as we have not yet understood being. Nietzsche goes far in this uncovering of the essence of religion, in my view, when he recognizes both the plurality of types or sense of religion and the plurality of forces that may take control of it. These are both interesting and I think some have made some headway into these investigations, but the more interesting is asking, "What force is religion itself?" He finds this answer by looking at the forces which most accord with religion, ressentiment and bad conscience. Now, these are associated with reactive forces meaning that religion is at heart reactive, but I think at this point Nietzsche is mistaken. Can we not read religion rather as a vital impetus towards destruction, a will to nothingness that opens up the most fearful limit-experiences possible (if marriage isn't a will to nothingness or a destruction of self then I'm not in one)? But we can't read this morally, destruction is not always bad and can even accord with our nature, rather religion at its core is raw unmediated power expressed through things like liturgy and theology. And one can take control of that power, but it will always be in such a way as to express one's own nature. Haggard likes drugs and the kind of sex that will threaten everything normal about his life. Is this any different from what we already knew his religion to be? Why then are we surprised or happy when our attention should be with actual political projects?
