The theme of self-referentiality appears so often in scientific debates that I have declared it the mother of all debates, the image of God in man, the essence of holiness. We saw in a previous post how one can believe a falsehood if one merely inserts buffer layers with self-reference so that the connection between the fact and the lie cannot be pursued. When Aristotle posited a terminus to his chain of purpose, to his chain of causality, that inexplicable First Mover had all the attributes of divinity. When we insert self-reference into our logic to terminate the chain of reasoning, we are likewise invoking divinity. Since it seems a little overblown to connect an abstract logical problem with God, it is perhaps better to call such mathematical singularities "the Holy" (or the un-Holy, as application warrants). Therefore when the Enlightenment claims that "Man is the Measure of All Things", which includes Man himself, then it is making Man-as-meter-stick Holy. When Turing posits that artificial intelligence will require computer software to be "self-aware", he is making Man-as-mind Holy. When Darwin says that "survival of the fittest" requires Man to improve his "fitness coefficient" (and then farmed the unpopular eugenics movement off on his cousin Galton), he is making Man-as-procreator Holy.

Now you may think this is, well, blasphemous, but do not forget what a great improvement it was over Democritus' Materialism. Democritus and Epicurus had claimed that atoms were eternal, indestructible, and accountable to no one, making atoms the "Prime Movers" of an anti-Aristotelean universe. At least in the Enlightenment we were given something slightly more, what shall we say, flexible?

Thus it is of more than bemused interest that we see a series of self-referential defenses of Materialism. We begin with the ad hominem defense mentioned earlier. CS Lewis called it "Bulverism", in honor of the imaginary Ezekial Bulver whose wife had just told him "Oh you say that because you are a man." Since the defense assumes that all defenses are useless, it is in effect, making (Wo)Man Holy. It is therefore a mere baby step to the Psychological version of the ad hominem, "Oh you say that because you are in denial."  What is most delicious, is that there is no external indicator that separates the accused and the accuser, one might as well as be standing in front of a mirror. It becomes the ultimate self-referential spiral into solipsistic nothingness. But get a grip, I'll give you some hand rails and we might escape the whirlpool below.

Let us begin with the simple observation that we critique those things we understand best. If I am a farmer, then I might object to Chuck E. Cheese's representation of farmers as people who wear their feed caps backward. If I am a physicist, then I might object to extrapolation of climate models ten decades into the future when interpolation fails one decade in the past. So it is with denial. We are all aware of people who refuse to connect the dots, who cannot draw proper conclusions from the facts. People who say "Iraq was better off with Saddam", or "Iraq was more stable with Saddam" as if unable to admit the reality of life under the dictator. We call such people "in denial", because their conscious faculties have been so impaired by ideology.

So, rule number one in every debate, is Know Thyself. The strategy most easily adopted is often the one most transparently indicative of one's own failings. Clinton's defense "it depends on what the meaning of is is" tells us volumes about the man and the metaphysics of his character. So rather than get hung up on the brain-numbing lunacy of these ad hominem attacks, consider what they really are, attempts by your opponent to express his heartfelt inadequacy in the only way he knows. They are Confession, pure and simple, and should provoke our sympathy, not our wrath. With this as guide, let us sympathize with an MSM editorial review of a book entitled, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

The breathless exaggeration of the phrase "most dangerous" is reminiscent of Dawkins'  famous analogy of Christianity to smallpox, but remember, an undeserved curse is a perchless bird that cannot alight until it returns to the one who sent it.  Although his opening sentence is determined to polarize and antagonize, we should not let it blind us to the heart-wrenching confession that follows.  "The engine driving religion", he claims, "is despair".  This is classic Marxism, who saw in the stupor and decay of opium addicts an analogy to religion. What to answer?  Two words: Karol Wojtyla. But if despair is not the engine of Christianity, it is the exhaust of materialism. And if our good Chris Hedges sees rampant despair, even if he wrongly assigns it to class warfare from over a century previous, he still may be making a valid observation about our Post-Modern culture. Therefore let us hold our ire, and compassionately listen to the darkness of his soul.
All of these are most excellent observations and confessions. He is telling us what Pascal told us, that man has a god-shaped vacuum engineered into his soul that cannot be filled by anything less than God himself. He is telling us that the American individuallism that drove our culture and our society also drives us apart, leaving us isolated and lonely. He is telling us that he doesn't like living in the suburbs for which his father worked so hard to obtain, that he has alternately embraced and rejected Marxism, Enlightenment materialism, and eschatological religion (pie-in-the-sky by-and-by).  He's despondent and getting pretty desperate.
My dear Chris, my poor, materialist journalist Chris, you lost it. You were going to tell us about despairing people, and instead you told us about your own emptiness and ache. I'm so sorry. It looks like you'll have to chose between the advance on the book or getting help. Don't let a stupid book publisher stand in the way of getting better. Do something before it's too late.
You chose the book. I'm not surprised. But for a man who sees the workers paradise as an empty promise, you sure seem to have memorized the Manifesto. If it is any comfort, communist predictions of imminent economic collapse and class warfare are about as reliable as communist economics. After all, if it were so inevitable, why did we need all those well-funded insurgencies, acts of terrorism and suicide bombings (that mysteriously dried up when the USSR collapsed)? Could it be that class warfare just isn't inevitable enough? And from which class did 19 suicide hijackers come from? If you said "working class" then you neither read the 9/11 report nor Osama's bio. Really, you would cheer up if you just started reading again after your aborted education at a typical US university.  I could send you a list of highly recommended books beginning with the Bible.
Oh you poor boy. I'm so sorry to hear about your childhood. Your dad really tried to do the best for you, didn't he, even if it was a financial stress on the family? Was it a relative who abused you, was it your public school experience that exposed you to drugs? As a teenager did you consider suicide as an option? Did you think that the school counsellor or the state drug treatment facilities were inadequate? How did you escape?
You found escape in religion, didn't you? It took you out of that suicidal trap. But somehow, it didn't take. Or more likely, poor defenseless lamb, you went to a US university and those rapacious wolves tore you to shreds, didn't they? They told you how stupid you were to fall for religion. They told you that only the strong survive. They told you that reality is ruthless and cruel. And when you brought those insights back to your former friends, they treated you like a wolf, didn't they? "Rage", you said, but it really was well-deserved anger for what your professors had done to a defenseless, lonely, wretched lamb. Then you told them they were stupid and gullible and they showed you the door. Or was it you who went to the door willingly? They're probably still there, waiting for you to return. Praying for you.
Still trying to blame them for not coming with you, aren't you? Hard to blame someone who just sits and prays for your soul. Maybe you can blame them for sitting, that's it, blame them for not solving all of your professor's imaginary problems, I mean, your problems, I mean, world problems. After all, if the world is ending, it must be everyone's first problem to solve. I mean, it isn't me who has problems, it's the world, right? Right?
Chris, look at me. Stop it. Right now. Wishing revenge on your friends is no way to repay them for their help to you. You owe them a lot, and you are somehow trying to balance the account with revenge. Go back and apologize, because until you do, you will be behaving quite despicably.
Oh Chris. Oh Chris. You are bound and determined to demonize them because of your inability to say I'm sorry. What a shame. You have so much potential. It only hurts you to kick against the goads.
Since you have chosen this path, I can only treat you as an infidel and an apostate. Yes, by all means prevent infiltration and manipulation of government. These are the tools of Communism and Materialism as witnessed by the history of the wars of the 20th century. These are peculiarly Modernist tools because power is all they understand, and control is their drug of choice. But these same followers you despise for being unrealistically focussed on heaven, surely they wouldn't sacrifice their eternal salvation for such an ephemeral thing as worldly power and empire? On the other hand, there is no other reality for a Modernist. Your precious professors have no future but their career and their TIAA/CREF retirement. Your recipe for disaster above is as self-fulfilling as it gets. Which is why we have a democratically elected representative government, to keep the control in the hands of the people, and out of yours. And if the people have spoken, then on what basis do you claim it is a manipulative minority? Whom do you fear more, your political professors or your former friends?
It isn't too late Chris, it is never too late to turn. Go back to that storefront church. Go back to those frumpy women in gunny sack dresses who gave you unwanted hugs. Go back to those overly sincere men in polyester suits clutching a dog-eared Bible. Get on your knees and apologize. You will never regret it.