Politics, ideology, worship

I don't know about you, but 2020 seems like it's already been a long year! The thought of an ever-increasing focus on the general election here in the U.S. exhausts me. I have to say, since around my birthday, which is on Veteran's Day, I have never adhered more to Vaclav Havel's "antipolitical" politics. What we have today, as has been the case in modern world at every time of upheaval, is not politics per se but ideology. Recently, a friend described ideology very succinctly and accurately: "the rationalization of sentiments and prejudices."

This same friend went on to note that very often we

confuse prejudices with "ideology." What we take to be prejudices are the ones that have been ideologically hardened. A "real" prejudice is unconscious and unrationalized. A taken for granted belief. When such belief can no longer be taken for granted, you either relax and be humble, realizing that belief is not science and even doubting yourself a little, or you dig in and find your way back not so much to a certainty that never existed, but to a state where what questions the prejudice is dealt with. Ideology is the way to deal with what threatens your prejudice by way of arguments

Ideology, therefore, is very prevalent in both religion and politics. This, it seems to me, is one of the main reasons we often try to avoid discussing either one, at least with people we know don't agree with us.

Culture is the instrument of antipolitical politics. Again, this has to be dealt rather carefully because culture, too, can become a vehicle of ideology.

Well, in any case, I continue not to identify as Democrat or a Republican. I am certainly not a communist. When you get right down to it, while I might land somewhere on the far right of the socialist spectrum relative to politics in the United States, I am really not a socialist either. I simply insist on determining what is a public good and what is a private good and then not subjecting the former to markets. Education and healthcare, it seems to me, are clearly public goods. Both higher education and healthcare, which are currently left to market forces, as anyone paying the slightest bit of attention can see, at the current rate are unsustainable for much longer. I think there should be no unregulated markets.

Anyway, that's a lot to think about on a Friday morning. Perhaps it's too much.

Despite the fact that it's still Christmas, today is a penitential Friday. I am going with Greg LaFollette's "Hosanna" from his lovely album Songs of Common Prayer as our second traditio for 2020. May God bless you with an epiphany his presence today.