Skip to main content

Godwin's Law Is Funny, Until It Isn't

 It's often said that if you invoke the Nazis, you lose any online argument. On the other hand, how close to a dangerous authoritarianism do you have to get, before those who are sanguine about it turn out to be the foolish ones?

On the one hand, a close examination of the physical ballots involved in the election will eventually be necessary. I have no objections in theory to any group exhausting all legal challenges and remedies. On the other hand, the president is not a person who can be trusted. If he could find his own version of the Reichstag fire, he would do it in a second.

That's why I don't buy the stuff from right-wing media, to the effect of, "just asking questions". You have tens of millions of people living in an alternate reality anyway, and a good number of them will not renounce violence, or in any manner accept the results.

We ought to keep our processes and timelines firm. Challenge whatever you like, but it's all over by December 14. And if you're in court, it's "put up or shut up" time. The common rabble can believe whatever it wants about stolen elections, but in a court of law, you prove what you are saying, or you go away.

On the other hand, I don't think anyone thinks it's a good thing that large numbers of people have mistrust in our electoral processes. Then again, an epistemic flaw is not the same thing as a democratic flaw. If you are the problem, you can't expect everyone else in the system to shape their beliefs to your own.

It was almost inevitable that it would end this way. We had never been governed by someone so pathologically narcissistic. Those people fall hard. And they try to take as many people down with them as they can. I don't need a doctorate in psychology to figure this one out. The real astonishing thing will be the number of people who can't acknowledge this basic reality. There is always a small group of people who claim to be above the emotional fray, but when the truth is revealed, they are revealed as the most hardened partisans that could be found.

I would say wake me up when it is over, but I'll be watching. I will continue to do what I have always done, which is attempt in my own way to put the world in order. Someone may not like the conclusions I reach, but I don't like Tom Hanks, and the world still seems to go on.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Friend I Once Had, And The Dogmatic Principle

 I once had a friend, a dear friend, who helped me with personal care needs in college. Reformed Presbyterian to the core. When I was a Reformed Presbyterian, I visited their church many times. We were close. I still consider his siblings my friends. (And siblings in the Lord.) Nevertheless, when I began to consider the claims of the Catholic Church to be the Church Christ founded, he took me out to breakfast. He implied--but never quite stated--that we would not be brothers, if I sought full communion with the Catholic Church. That came true; a couple years later, I called him on his birthday, as I'd done every year for close to ten of them. He didn't recognize my number, and it was the most strained, awkward phone call I have ever had. We haven't spoken since. We were close enough that I attended the rehearsal dinner for his wedding. His wife's uncle is a Catholic priest. I remember reading a blog post of theirs, that early in their relationship, she told him of the p
Hilarious Com-Box Quote of The Day: "I was caught immediately because it is the Acts of the Apostles, not the Acts of the Holy Spirit Acting Erratically."--Donald Todd, reacting to the inartful opposition of the Holy Spirit and the Magisterium. Mark Galli, an editor at Christianity Today, had suggested that today's "confusion" in evangelicalism replicates a confusion on the day of Pentecost. Mr. Todd commented after this reply , and the original article is here. My thoughts: By what means was this Church-less "consensus" formed? If the Council did not possess the authority to adjudicate such questions, who does? If the Council Fathers did not intend to be the arbiters, why do they say that they do? At the risk of being rude, I would define evangelicalism as, "Whatever I want or need to believe at any particular time." Ecclesial authority to settle a particular question is a step forward, but only as long as, "God alone is Lord of the con

Just Sayin.' Again.

One interesting objection to this chart has been to say that one gets stuck in a "loop" that doesn't resolve. This is a thinly-veiled way of putting forward the argument that we don't need absolute certainty in religious dogma. But Fred Noltie already dealt with this in the comments on another post. And to the specific objector, no less. I'll be blunt: The only principled thing to do is put down your Bible, resign your pulpit, and lead tours in Europe. Because a man must be able to distinguish dogma from human opinion, and this epistemology doesn't allow us to do that. One of dogma's distinguishing characteristics is infallibility; another is certainty. Without this, essential characteristics of God Himself are put into question. If we say that the most important Person any person could know is God, and the content of that knowledge (doctrine) is the means by which we know Him, it must be certain. This Reformed argument that certainty is a dangerous or un