burn away your sins

[sabotabby]

The Afghanistan thing in my last (locked) post got me thinking. About a certain type of (not to beat a phrase into the ground) non-reality-based thinking.

The world -- or at least your part of it -- is going to hell.

You will suffer. Your children will be taken from you. Everything you own will go up in flames. A terrible war will be fought, and you'll have to choose your side very carefully. You may very well burn to death and your fate will seem very random -- except by those who know better than you do.

Your reward, at the end of this? Happiness/freedom/democracy.

Neoconservative foreign policy, or Left Behind-style apocalyptic Christianity?

*

Speaking of which, let's take a brilliant book series and bowdlerize the film versions so religious Americans won't hate us!

The entire trilogy is about religion and God, you morons.

Comments

[pretzelsalt.livejournal.com]

fucking crazy.

Those books are great - I need to re-read them.

[sabotabby]

Apparently they're actually about communism.

Le huh?

[pretzelsalt.livejournal.com]

dirty dirty red diaper doper baby books.

for shame.

[sabotabby]

That, or they'll be turned into an allegory about how Lyra (standing in for l'il Dubya), uses the power of her will and the friendship of her shapeshifting animal spirit Pan (loyal ol' Cheney) to triumph over the Authority (being Saddam, of course), overthrowing the established order of things to create the Republic of Halliburton.

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

Sounds like more movies that I will never see, especially because I liked the books.

[sabotabby]

Then again, we all had to put up with Columbus' crappy Harry Potter movies and were rewarded with Alfonso Cuarón for the third one. It sounds like this Weitz putz is doing all three, though.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

Actually, I am going to be writing about this soon. The Left Behind scenario -- the whole eschatology of conservative Christian end-of-the-world stuff -- imposes a frighteningly awful non-democratic dictatorship, one which is horribly out of line with American values.

--K

[sabotabby]

I really do want to read some of those books and see the movies (especially with gigglesnort Kirk Cameron!) because it's a look into the minds of many of the people with their hands on the strings. Only thing is that I don't want to give those people a single cent of my hard-earned pay. (Much the way I felt about The Passion; I ended up seeing that at my favourite local second-run cinema because at least I like the people who run it.) I found LB 2 in the discount bin at Blockbuster and almost bought it, but there didn't seem that much of a point without having seen the first one.

What's a left-wing Jew to do?

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

(previous attempts to write this reply have been eaten twice. The first one was much better written.)

My perspective on the books is that god's original sin (demanding worship from sentient beings) was supplanted by the much worse sin of a hierarchical stucture whose raison d'etre was to establish and preserve its own power for the sake of power. The effects of the church included draining all real power of god (by destroying the link between the worshipper and the worshipped) and creating a world in which no deed committed in pursuit of power became unthinkable.

One of the things I liked about the books was the ability of bad people to ultimately to do the right thing, the ability of good people to do horrible things out of belief that the ends justify the means, and the ability of people to do what needs to be done, regardless of the cost, for the good of the world and others. The world is a complex place - simplistic moral evaluation is almost always wrong.

[sabotabby]

Yes.

[lovableatheist.livejournal.com]

AH! What a piss-off! I loved that series and was praying (well, not actually pryaing, morelike hoping) that they wouldn't cut that out because, well, it basically makes the entire series.

[sabotabby]

I wonder if they'll change the title to something less Milton-ish, too.

::rolls eyes::

[seanmonster.livejournal.com]

"unviable financially".

Meaning, "If we piss off the right 'we have a mandate' wing, we won't make any money.

These books just made my readin' list...

[sabotabby]

You'll love 'em. They're some of the best kids' books I've read in ages. They made me wish I had children so that I could read them to the sproglets. They're like a progressive, atheist family's wet dream.

[seanmonster.livejournal.com]

How about a progressive, Wiccan/Agnostic family's wet dream?

[sabotabby]

That'll do, too.

[seanmonster.livejournal.com]

Let me guess, Hello Tarot?

[sabotabby]

Hell yeah.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to find an article I saw on LJ - can't remember where unfortunately - about a group of street children somewhere in the US south, who had developed their own semi-apocalyptic mythology, in which God had been kicked out of heaven and the demons and so forth were in control, basically a way of trying to make sense of their lives, of finding a mythology that fitted their situation. I found it at the same time fascninating and very sad. Sort of a converse of the neo-con mythologising of their warmongering. Wish I could find the article.

[sabotabby]

Myths Over Miami?

I have this saved to my hard drive, with the vague intention of writing a story based on it. (Well...I started a story vaguely based on it, actually -- about a child and his family in the projects forced into a fight with a housing developer who may want to steal their souls as well as turn their neighbourhood into condos.)

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that! I think this is a longer version than the one I saw. Possibly an older one too.

Hope you finish the story!

[sabotabby]

Eh, good characters, not much plot. I do need to write me some political urban fantasy, though.

[marquisdesod.livejournal.com]

For fundis, it's all about them. Them, them, them. Their narcissism is boundless. It is their reason for being.