Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers Prophesy the New State Religion

Madonna should really lay off the steroids.

I wrote recently that I'm increasingly uncomfortable in covering some of the spectacle being broadcast out there, just as it was during Bread and Circuses era of the Roman Empire. Why? Because it gets to the point where you start to feel like an accomplice

That's not a feeling I enjoy. 


That era was recreated during the Super Bowl halftime show, as Madonna and a cast of hundreds revisited the Egyptomania of Classical Rome, as well as the ancient ritual of having subservient peoples dance suggestively for their masters. Last night, the British Empire looked back on its glory days during the Olympics ceremony, which was also sprinkled with the increasingly ubiquitous quasi-Masonic symbolism that even the dumbest YouTard can spot a mile away these days.

I haven't been quite been able to put it into words yet, but I almost wonder if we're not seeing a new quasi-Masonic civic religion being rolled out, with stunning parallels to the roll out of Constantine's church in the early Fourth Century. It sounds absolutely crazy, but history is full of crazy. 

 And here's some crazy- Constantine made his move roughly 300 years after the birth of Christ, even though Christianity was based on religious ideas that had been circulating for much longer. Freemasonry was officially born about 300 years ago, even though it was based on esoteric ideas that had been around for much longer. 

 Constantine too faced a empire in crisis and sought to consolidate it with a one-world religion his predecessors saw as a breeding ground for conspiracy, witchcraft and sedition. But it became alluring to an oppressed people with its promises of eternal life, just as "Illuminism" is so utterly fascinating to so many people with its promises of a life of privilege, pleasure and hidden knowledge. Even the people who profess to oppose it. Hell, especially the people who profess to oppose it. 

The so-called exposés are just part of the sales pitch; viral marketing at its finest. And what's a soul, really, in these days of poverty and economic collapse? But there's a simple explanation for why I don't blog much on that stuff anymore: I'm sick of it. I'm sick of looking at those symbols, I'm sick of the stories and I'm sick of the game. I've been studying this stuff since before a lot of you were even born. It gets old. 

 
But I also know my history too well. Sure, we're talking about an extreme possibility. But I've seen a lot of extreme possibilities become dreary, everyday realities. And cartoonists trade in extreme realities-- oh dear, I meant to write "extreme possibilities." Check out this story from 1984 and look at the spectacle and how that spectacle is the mask behind which the iron face of control hides. Sure, a lot of this kind of thinking was in the air back then too. But something about this story seems especially prescient to me. How about you? 

UPDATE: I should explain what I mean by "civic religion," since it's not exactly the kind of religion that Constantine's church evolved into, concerned with personal salvation and the rest. A civic religion is largely ceremonial and largely involved with rituals of state, like oh, the Super Bowl and the Olympics.

It's about unifying disparate peoples under a commonly understood yet not particularly tightly-held system of symbols, rituals, codewords, oaths (the Pledge of Allegiance, for instance) and public works and monuments. I don't know if the Romans invented it, but they perfected it. 

 This is why I pointed out that Madonna's ritual was straight out of the Temples of Jupiter and Juno- not the "mystery schools" (sic) as some gross historical illiterates would have you believe. America once had a civic religion based on the various national anthems and the mythology of the Founding Fathers, but that is being phased out to make ready for a new model.

So why do so many huge transnational corporations- McDonalds, Visa, TimeWarner, Microsoft, GM, etc etc etc- stuff so much money into the pockets of Vigilant Citizen? I don't know. But maybe it's because that site is doing more to initiate the uneducated into the rites and rituals of the new civic religion than any lodge could ever dream of doing. 

UPDATE: How do old religions die? Like this:
Ronald William Brown of Largo, Florida, the 57-year-old proprietor of “Puppets Plus,” has been charged with the possession of child pornography and of conspiring with another man to kidnap and then eat a child.

The Christian Television Network kids program Joy Junction regularly featured Brown and his ventriloquist dummy “Marty,” who would warn about things like… pornography.

Brown, an active member of the Gulf Coast Church in Largo, and an accomplice, Michael Arnett, were planning to abduct a specific child who was a member of the church and who took part in Brown’s “Puppet Ministry Kidz Zone” youth ministry program.

Homeland Security agents who searched Brown’s home and tool shed yesterday discovered images of bound and gagged kids, photographs of dead children and a flier for a missing child.

According to a Tampa Bay Examiner blogger:

Brown and Arnett chatted about murdering children as young as two. In one chat Arnett described to Brown what it is like to drown a little girl and what different body parts taste like if roasted or fried in a pan.

Brown revealed to Arnett in another chat regarding the little boy at Gulf Coast Church that he would enjoy strangling the child to death.
Not even the most powerful organization can withstand too many stories like this.