The new Jesus and Mo, called “force,” came in an email with this message:
Jesus and Mo should cheer up. The good old days are making a come-back.
I presume the “come-back” refers to the recent deference of people towards Islam and the rise of the Right in both Europe and America.
I was thinking last night about how most of the terrorism in the US in the 1970s and early 1980s was associated with left-win groups who thought violence was a legitimate response to perceived social ills. So in some sense, it’s not just the right that’s trying to go back in time; the regressive left is doing something similar.
Good old days…like a Trump election. The republicans know how to take you back. Back to the dark ages when a stone of your own to throw at someone just because you could.
In Susan Jacobi’s “Strange Gods, A Secular History of Conversion”, the point about religious tolerance is the underlying theme of the book. While Europe slowly groped it’s way toward modernity, the founding of the U.S. was a remarkable clean break. Tolerance was written into the government’s language. As late as 1766, just 10 years before the declaration: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”, in France Catholics beheaded and burned a man for owning a book by Voltaire, singing impious songs, and failing to bow to the Eucharist.
One hopes the rise of secular western democracies won’t turn out to be just “one brief, shining moment”–our Camelot; or Sagan’s guttering candle finally asphyxiating…
Probably all cultures have had the same wish.
Well, aren’t you reassuring…
😉