So, as I was saying...
Saturday afternoon, I decided to have a nice relaxing stroll through Volunteer Park, and perhaps sun myself and read a book. To my surprise, I found the field I had in mind was already in use. There were fat white middle-aged Christian rappers about, rapping fatly and whitely and middle-agedly about Christ. And Satan, of course. They were not good rappers. Their rhymes were not tight. They looked like a bunch of frustrated domesticated guys who wanted to relive their youth and strike a blow for Jesus; the look in their poor, sad eyes was 'Yeah! This'll be so cool! Man, I'm in a band now. Bands are so cool.'
The climax, of what I saw at least, was a boxing match between Jesus and Satan. Needless to say, Jesus won, and this rang out across the assembled multitude (of twelve or so; the pudgy men's pudgy wives, and some poor brainwashed children): 'Jesus...is...the CHAMPION!'
The sad part is, they really thought they would connect with the youth that way. Or maybe the sad part is that they chose Volunteer Park on a Saturday, when that field is invariably filled with members of Capitol Hill's bountiful homosexual population sunbathing.
They did not win many converts.
There was lots of Satan. Such a juvenile concept, Satan. Satan is the ultimate 'get out of argument free' card. If you claim something is the work of Satan, or favoured by Satan, or pleasing to Satan, what, exactly, is any putative disputant supposed to say in reply? 'No, it isn't, actually' just doesn't cut it. There's nothing you can say. Invoking Satan is as irrational as voting for Bush's tax cuts. Like comparing all bad things to Hitler, mentioning Satan is a technique specifically intended to make any rational debate impossible, in the hopes that one's opponent, not wishing to throw in with Satan, or Hitler, or, in modern American politics, terrorists, won't mention any of the perfectly sensible arguments against one's position and will slink off wordlessly to the back of the Senate and just pout. People who try to frame arguments in such absolutist terms aren't worth talking to: everyone who disagrees with them is a bad person who gives blowjobs to Satan, or Hitler, or Osama bin Laden. Which is unfortunate, when they gain access to public fora.
ASIDE: Consider the War on Drugs. Remember those ads where drug use was linked to support for terrorism? Those were funny. Exactly the same phenomenon. Exactly as silly. Especially since so much, for example, marijuana is produced domestically, by the upstanding, salt-of-the-earth family farmer. In fact, the Guardian recently reported that a majority of Britain's cannabis is grown right in dear old Blighty, too. Drugs are very democratic.
Posted by aloysius at June 15, 2003 10:25 PM | TrackBack |