To Be Pure

In one if my favorite, ever, short interviews, Carlos Fuentes, when asked by Deborah Solomon about being an atheist in Mexico, said that in Mexico even the atheists are Catholic. Similarly the soul of America is Puritan, the distorted spirit of Salem. 

The Feminists are Puritan. Gays are Puritan. Even a lot of Catholics are Puritan. How can you tell? Puritans are judgmental, idealistic, humorless and self-righteous. Their idealism is utopian. The standard is an impossible ideal of piety and purity.

They aspire to perfection so they take whatever they have for granted, The glass is always half empty. I knew older gay guys who were thrilled not to be beaten up and bothered all the time. The younger guys want everything. Fine, but get a perspective.

Remember how lucky you are. Is there a model Puritan in the Bible? Well, there's Judas. When Mary Magdalen washes the feet of Jesus with perfume at the home of Lazarus, Judas finds fault with the waste. The money could have been given to the poor. 

This is Puritanism: the inhuman standards, the lack of balance, understanding and reasonableness. They are fastidious with everyone else, jealous, and always applying a critical eye. Puritans are inconsistently scrupulous and unfairly exacting.

Life is too damned imperfect for them. Too messy. No wonder we are so screwed. We are witch-hunters, always on the lookout for imperfection, and oblivious to our own. Puritanism is antithetical to life, in always striving to be beyond its limitations.