Ideologues of the Flock

Ryoji Iwata photo

By

Mark W. Jones

Is it contradictory to call someone an intellectual who is a member of the Christian or Communist Flock? Can one hew to an Ideology and still be called an intellectual? Does the Ideologue judge the truth of a statement by independent verification of fact or by what the Communist or Superstitionist Flock think proper to believe? This is why Superstitionism and Communism are nihilistic; they seduce the supplicant to have faith in their belief before rationally examining the proposition: faith and belief suborn reason.

But is political belief in Superstitionist belief of the same species? The similarity is that both Superstitionism and Communism are Ideologies, closed systems of “thought,” or more accurately social signifiers, “thought” loans too much gravitas for either notion, whose essential element is that nothing can be added or contradict its premises from the outside; both are closed systems that seek to be the whale that swallows every discipline around it into its subsuming body. The difference is the depth of influence on the individual’s conscience: too bad there are not as many ex-Superstitionist as there are ex-Communists.

The other difference in the two Ideologies is scope. Though a Communist government can dominate physical space by force and airspace with propaganda, the victims of Communism, after depleting their faith in the system if they had any, clung even more closely to their Superstitionist faith. How can a mere utopian political system on earth expect to compete for the stakes of complete human happiness when there is a utopian Superstition that guarantees Everlasting Life, and an even better life on Earth through prayer for the supplicants’ low prerequisite of believing the Word? This proves Superstitionist Ideology is the more virulent and indestructible.

But this is a measure of each Ideology’s toughness in sustaining its viability, which ultimately depends upon the strength of conviction of its carriers to propagate for the cause. Russian and European communism has withered; China has made huge concessions to the growing middle class and consumer markets inside and outside the country; and that leaves North Korea, alone and, literally, in the dark hugging its missiles for comfort. On the other side of the world there’s Cuba, led by milder brother, Raul, with whom we are attempting to reconcile; then there’s cheap knock-offs like Venezuela, and Nicaragua who in the 1980s seized power in the name of Ideology, but it was for power itself. Radical Islam, which is to Islam what Christo Nazi-ism is to Christianity, vows to behead those of us who will not bow to their Ideology.

But is it accurate – and fair – to place the honorific intellectual upon Cathlo-Nazi William Buckley whose entire system of “thought” and interpretation of the world was his Superstitionism; or the Communist who understands every war as class conflict and all he can talk about a revolution and a classless society? Both Communism and Superstitionism are strongly deterministic, though the Cathlo-Nazi profess belief in free will, the hypocrite also claims the day of judgment as the end of the narrative. This is a hard determinism no serious modern philosopher would tolerate; and this is because we are not dealing with the philosophical but with the irrational. You cannot be a rationalist and be a literal believer of the Bible with its miracles and angels. Rather it is not the intellect at work, but what Keynes called animal spirits, the viscera that gratifies its feeling for moral rightness first and afterward conjures an intellectual framework.

There is a similarity that Communism and Superstitionism are irrational as systems. One surmises Marx called his system “scientific” for the specific opportunistic purpose of contrasting Communism with its Superstitionist counterpart. But Marx, too, had a sort of faith, most famously that the revolution would start in industrial Germany, that workers would, indeed, unite in the struggle to overthrow the capitalist class and that the entire world someday would be Communist.

Depending on how the Superstitionist viscera twitches that day, he will tell you that: all you have to do to gain Everlasting Life (being a good Christian) is to believe in Jesus; or, every word in the Bible is true and you must live by those principles: or, both. The Communist could jettison any number of tenets, including the notion of Communist world domination and still be a Commie in good standing; but the good and loyal Superstitionist of whatever sect must profess to hew to every syllable and morpheme of the Bible, lest he be crucified by the Moronic Orthodoxy of the Christo-Nazis.

It is ironic; the Communist is of freer mind than the Superstitionist. The Communist can roam the frontiers of his ideology while the Superstitionist’s property of mind is as big as a postage stamp. For anyone who can step outside for a breath of objectivity recognizes the oldest of human errors, not thinking in all; it is the default mode of the Flock to automatic acceptance and believe before rational examination because it is not philosophical validation they are seeking but personal validation, a feeling of what they believe is true. It is, literally, the lowest of instincts, safety and security, that they seek. Whether Christo-Nazi or Communist, the problem is methodology, where every other field of endeavor must be integrated into their outlook or else be ignored or refuted outright. That’s why Christo-Nazis deny global warming, (God would let his own moronic children kill themselves off, would he?) and the Soviet Communists propagated their own version of genetics.

How can one be called an intellectual and have an abiding faith in irrational belief? The Communist, with his dialectic materialism and his millennialism, which rather parodied the biblical end of days, was easy bait for the Reich in America. The sham is that pseudo-intellectual Cathlo-Nazis like Bill Buckley have the caliber and breadth of intellection of a Sartre or even a Camus and a presumptuous narcissism that is the entitlement to govern this country like a duchy of personal belief.

Mark W. Jones

I was born in Detroit, Mich., in 1956 and have resided in Colo. since 1976. I have written one novel, Mr. Green Goes to Town, and am writing a second novel. My short stories and article have appeared in various magazines such as F.O.C. Review, Welter, Dan River Stories, Re:al, in the “Overtime” series chapbook of Workers Write! and, most recently, in several iterations of Conceit. My short story, “Under the Weather,” was selected for inclusion in 2016’s Best New Writing.