I met up with a friend recently. We were going to go to a bar but when we got there it was closed. Instead, we bought some convenience store booze and sat on the side of the Rio Grande. We talked a lot about theological mechanics and their role in the modern political climate. He's very well read on this subject, so, not knowing what was going on most of the time, I played the skeptic. I guess that's my role in these kinds of things. It's hard for me to read material my heart isn't invested in... I wish this wasn't the case. Any fallacy has to be recognized by intuition alone; but that being said, I couldn't help but feel that the sentiment being expressed towards right-wing figures was itself based on a feeling, and was being retrospectively vouched for.
American exceptionalism is a plague on intellectual pursuit. The idea of the school as a market and as a tool for bolstering the market implies that the ideology of the school must be in-line with the market. There is no room for the humanities in this equation, unless it is as another supplement to the market. This is why there is no money in these fields, and this is why someone pursuing these fields cannot make their own money without towing the line with a more marketable field.
Religion is permitted to exist in this environment because of it's ability to be used as a rallying agent for the market. Why are we in Iraq? Because God told us to. Why are so many Palestinian civilians being slain? Because it is our God-given right to do so. It is my firm belief that demons, or their mechanically identical secular counterparts, pervey every corner of this land, deeper than we could ever know.
Now, with my friend knowing these things, it baffles me that he's still willing to give such obviously self-interested figures the benefit of the doubt... when they are proponents to an ideology that keeps him, a humanities academic, broke, broken, and discarded, as well as purveyors of a community of suffering-perpetuators who hijack the aesthetics and iconography of religion in the pursuit of what can only be described as an appeal to immediate wealth and power, which is brazenly sacrilegious and could even be attributed to the work of the devil itself if you're willing to look at the market as an extension of demonic sentiment, which again we have talked about.
I've thought long and hard about what the underlying motive could be, and I have two potential explanations. Engaging in these discussions, I've often found myself completely enraptured by the scope of the current question at hand... somtimes even letting these debates-of-definition derail previously held trains of thought. I could only attribute this feeling to being lost, and maybe it's because I'm a big-ol' dumdum but I could imagine a scenario in which these kinds of questions and modes of thoughts begin to reshade your perception in a sort of water-color haziness, unable to make out some of the bigger details in the midst of the canvas' texture. The other explanation is that he just does not like trans people. I've omitted his name and any kind of identifying information up until this point for this reason. A concerning level of thought, I believe, has been attributed towards finding different angles with which to invalidate trans people, who are victims of the very same demonic entities as him, and who exist in a world of truly great evils. It breaks my heart a little.
Aside from this, I respect this friend very much, and I think he has many great ideas. I just think I could use some clarification on these ends.
Pray for him and I'll pray for you.