I've been knee-deep in background reading for my dissertation, and I couldn't figure out how to turn any deep thoughts I had on, say, early medieval numismatics, into a pithy and enjoyable blog post. Did you know that once upon a time there was a pan-Mediterranean kerfuffle about a Frankish king who struck gold coins with his image on them? Gold, you see, was for Emperors. Mere kings should have to make do with silver.
But I went running this afternoon, and a dozen or so posts materialized in my head. So let's start with the lovely Christine O'Donnell, who, before she was the Tea Party darling of Delaware politics, was dancing with the devil in the pale moon light (the fun starts at the 55 second mark):
Now I saw this on CNN this morning, whose anchors didn't bother hiding their "She might be a Senator? WTF?!" thoughts behind a veil of impartiality. O'Donnell's my age, and what I was thinking while I watched this was, "God Almighty, I hope I didn't look, sound or act as childish as that chick did a decade ago."
What's even weirder than O'Donnell are the people for whom this video isn't a deal-breaker. I can imagine that for more than a few conservative evangelicals, this tape establishes her credibility as a candidate, rather than destroying it. To understand that, you have to get your head around their worldview:
For some of these people, evil is not just what you get as a result of bad parenting and less-than-optimal social conditions. Evil is personified in a being known as Satan, the devil, or Lucifer, and he is not one to be trifled with.
His minions are ubiquitous and too numerous to count. Customarily they do his bidding by stealth, for he is the Father of Lies, after all. Nevertheless you can count on them turning up in non-trivial numbers in the recording industry, in the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, the United Nations, in other religions and especially cults. Curiously, you don't run across many of his minions in the corporate world, with the major exception of Procter and Gamble, of course.
But there's one place where Satan's covert underlings go overt: and that is in the bizarre parody of Christian worship known as the occult. Witches and other bad guys and gals get together, get naked, have ritualized group sex, sacrifice animals and thousands of small children, and do other dirty deeds so improbable they've just gotta be true.
So along comes Christine O'Donnell who put her head in the lion's mouth, and then came to her senses and jerked it out. Evangelicals love a conversion story, and there's no going from sinner to saint like going from wearing pentagrams to wearing crosses. From dribbling blood on stones to the blood of Christ. Heck, Mary Magdalene herself couldn't have defeated O'Donnell in a GOP primary. She was just a hooker.
All this makes me sad because I, like conservative evangelicals, believe that Satan is a real and personal being. I believe that because, well, let's just say because I've met him. And he is not one to be trifled with.
Where we part ways is the fear and loathing of the occult. I think Milton got it right. Ol' Scratch would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. Satanism is the lust for power we see so nakedly on display in the ring into which O'Donnell has thrown her hat, and in the hearts of all the rest of us aspiring big fish in small ponds. But that kind of Satanism is oh-so-familiar to us, and familiarity breeds contempt. So we have to dream up some exotic and imaginary version of it to frighten us anew.
I don't know if O'Donnell will win the election or not, but I imagine that Christine O'Donnell will be around for a while. Like Maher says, she's nicer than Sarah Palin, and I think she's is equally intelligent and good-looking.
Welcome back! I'm looking forward to these dozens of posts. :)
Posted by: Lee | 20 September 2010 at 09:18 PM