A Very Convenient Jesus

It's one of the most confounding things I've ever encountered, when I recognized that intelligence could be mechanically associated with some very bad stuff, which is to say fear, because primally fearful people can exhibit overdeveloped intellectual abilities in response to the fear. They have incredibly inquiring minds because they never assume that what is on the surface is reality.

In fact they assume it is not, so they dig deeper in search of the truth, usually coming to rest in a place which justifies the fear, that being the only real thing for them. This is hard to detect, because the stuff piled higher and deeper on top of the fear is very nearly impenetrable and, like most everyone I know, I admire intelligence, a reasonable prejudice in so far as that is possible. 

The other impediment is that the fear is usually unrecognized in proportion to its severity. The more fearful people are the more likely they are to be unaware of it, that is. If it's wholly beneath the threshold of awareness their lives are unconsciously consumed by the fabrication of threats, since the fear is easier to tolerate when it has a focus. Paranoia strikes deep.

Into your lives it will creep. The edifice of rationalization on top of the fear is usually internally consistent and highly evolved, the weak point being the false premise of the fear. The edifice is also defended to the death because primally fearful people are irrationally and erroneously operating on the assumption of impending annihilation. Normally they themselves go on the attack.

Thinking that they are under attack, of course, which they aren't initially, but then they are in response to their own aggression. It's dizzying to think about it. I better admit it, against my will, but I got started on all of this when I googled something innocuous and Ann Coulter popped up in the results, first in line. And then there was Ted Cruz in the news. Evidently he's brilliant. 

How do you explain these people? It's as though they're in a psychological submarine, trolling in the murky waters of the unconscious, a submarine which can never surface because of fear. There's an autistic aspect as well to this in the enormous element of isolation in their ideation. They are also usually incapable of empathy and don't appear outwardly fearful.

Try to make a Disney movie out of this. It's the antithesis of innocence, and yet they're probably not responsible because of the delusion. They're mentally ill, but I say that knowing that there's a catch underlying the insanity defense. If you have to be crazy to kill someone then no one can be held responsible for killing anyone. I prefer to decide first on the crime and who did it.

And then on broader culpability. The crimes of the Coulter crowd are approaching another threshold of comprehension. Like a light-year, you can't get your head around the damage they've done. All of South and Central America, destroyed by us. The Middle East, wrecked by us. The world economy, on the ropes because of us. The natural environment, reeling from us.

Is it any wonder Ann and Ted won't open the door an inch on admitting any fault in relation to anything? The weight behind that door is immense. It also means that their religious convictions, out of which they make so much, are a sham, just another mechanism of defense against the imaginary threats. The self righteousness and obliviousness have real utility.

Their Jesus doesn't care about Muslim lives, food for children, care for the elderly, hope for the poor, or anything other than their own aggrandizement and increasing wealth and power. What they have there is a very convenient Jesus, but they can't honestly believe in the existence of God at all. If they did then they would really have something to fear, judgment day.