Life Among the Nihilists

I had trouble understanding the Paris attacks when they happened. Mass shootings are more than anyone can comprehend. I try to get inside of things sympathetically but I can't do it with the crazy-fucks who do this stuff, only with the people they attack.

Now, with some distance, what I remember is about a French philosopher, Andre Glucksmann, who called this kind of terrorism "nihilist." It seems true to me because it is destruction for the sake of destruction, an unintelligible thing, madness.

It made me think of Thomas Frank and his book, "The Wrecking Crew," about our right-wing. Frank, in an introduction, seemed to believe that the election of Barack Obama was a rejection of the wreckers. He was assuming, I think, intelligibility.

He thought that the wrecker coalition was cunning, not crazy. But they look to me now like nihilists. They have abandoned all standards, an expression of contempt for everything. They embrace an ethic of death. There is no goal, end-game or resolution.

It's acting-out. Also I think it is an attempt to flush God out of the shadows. It's an adult version of the testing done by adolescents to try to reassure themselves that their parents are resilient and worth respecting. They are trying to force God's hand.

They want to see God so they assume the role of the anti-Christ. They are people of fear. We are in very, very big trouble. They have chosen a battle that ends with someone in the ditch and we are in the middle of it, more or less like civilians in a war-zone.

Unconsciously they want to be stopped, so they bait God. And we have only to unelect them. Poof! Crazy gone. Poof! Peace and normalcy. It's hard, though, because they are so insane. Look at the harm they cause. Look at how they lie and cheat and steal.

Look at how they have co-opted the entire government and sabotage everything. And they want God, the existential parent, to stop them. It's an affront to God if anyone else tries, so they are mighty reactive. They are our nihilists.