Does death influence the politics of people?
Some people fear death and the process of dying to such a degree that it drives their every thought and action during their whole existence. Others accept the inevitable process and their death with great equanimity. Few of us want to talk about it, perhaps because it opens up fear again in stark terms, and sparks endless rants about religious and non-religious belief systems.
Christians and Muslims believe in heaven or life after death, while Atheists and Agnostics apparently believe in nothingness after death, or in heaven on earth, or both. Do you think this has something to do with the drives behind the issues and attitudes of Rightists -- heavily Christian -- versus the Leftists -- somewhat Christian plus Atheists, Agnostics, and other nihilists?
Salvation being a major aspect of Christianity, the comfort that brings to the people who have faith in Jesus is enormous. They can assign their worries to the dustbin, and simply believe – believe in a good life on earth and heaven after death. Christians need not debate endlessly about the meaning of life and the pseudo-moral imperatives of immediate change in the direction of Leftist ideals.
Shaky, dubious Christians, agnostics and atheists, however, are faced with believing in nothingness after death. Dust unto dust, and that is that. This could generate a huge push in their minds to try to make their own heaven on earth, since there is nothing else to look forward to but an infinitely long sleep. I suppose the older they get, the shriller they become to see something of their ideas of a collective utopia take root here in the US before it is too late.
But, frustrated by the unseemly need to convince a majority of the people, or at least a majority of the people’s representatives, that their utopian ideas make sense and should be made into law, Leftists turn to duplicity and conniving with sympathetic and left-leaning judges to thwart the will of the people, and make laws by fiat, without representation, and with little or no regard for the Constitution.
It would seem that most on the Left have not absorbed the fact that utopias are not possible to construct, either from scratch, or from where we are right now. What you get when you try is first a period of chaos, and then the ascension to power of a tyrant, supposedly to set things right again.
The problem is, no tyrant, no totalitarian regime, has ever worked towards giving power back to the people, nor has any actually done so. The honest, well-intentioned Leftists (whoever they are!) are then stuck in between the masses of people and the elite who seized power and now govern with an iron hand. The vocal dissenters, our well-intentioned Leftists, who rail against the new regime, along with the Rightists who survive the chaos, wind up in a gulag – or are put to the death in astronomical numbers.
But the Left still fears death today, wants its version of heaven on earth right now, and are certain that they will be one of the governing elite, and not one of the disappeared. Or, God forbid, they might become one with the oppressed masses, an ironic fate they richly deserve.
# posted by Mannning @ 5:01 PM
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