Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Leftist Rituals
I’ve often written that leftism is better understood as a religion than as a political movement. The ideology of the left is universally destructive, and thus makes no logical sense. If you think about it. Which leftists hope that you do not. You just have to believe.
Religions remind their followers of important things through rituals. My fellow Christians have many such rituals, such as The Lord’s Prayer. Perhaps leftists could adopt something similar:
Our Father, who art in Washington, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in Red States, as it is in Blue.
Give us this day our daily entitlements.
And forgive us our crimes, though we don’t forgive the crimes of others.
And lead us not into prosperity, but deliver us from freedom.
For thine is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever.
Amen.
I think this is a more compelling ritual than just watching TV news and putting Ukrainian flags on your Facebook account.
What do you think? Should the left adopt other traditionally religious rituals? Any other suggestions?
It’s sort of tricky, because the left caters to a group that considers themselves to be enlightened because they are atheists. They proudly proclaim that they don’t believe in anything. But they do believe in leftism. Whatever that is this afternoon.
The ever-changing themes of leftism may make rituals difficult. But I think it might help.
What do you think?
Published in General
It’s a good start, except the left DOES forgive crimes, just not crimes of conservatives. And it imagines crimes by conservatives that don’t actually exist.
The Left already have their sacrament that all must bend the knee to: abortion.
They even mock the words of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist: “This is my body”.
As Archbishop Charles Chaput says:
They have taken circumcision to a whole new level by just removing the entire thang.
Matt Walsh reported that a doctor — real medical doctor; not a clone of DrJill — said that males who take puberty blockers will never experience adult sexual function. I guess that meant orgasm. In those cases, what function does it serve except as an organic bilge pump?
Well if the appendage is left on, at least they’ll get fewer UTIs which actual females are more susceptible to.
Instead of weekly church attendance, I watch my progressive neighbors dutifully wheel multiple recycling bins (3 in all) to the curb once a week. Gaia demands sacrifice.
These are the same people whose care for Mother Earth does not extend to their backyard, which is eroding away due to neglect.
Nice young couple. Lost to the cult of leftism, so far. They just had a child, which tends to change people’s perspective. One can hope and pray.
Leftists already have many religious rituals. But, 1) the participants refuse to see them as religious rituals, and 2) the masters change the rituals so frequently and quickly that most other people also miss the ritualistic nature of them.
As you noted, because leftists generally consider themselves nonreligious, they don’t see the religious nature of their rituals. Sixty years ago, a religious ritual of the left was applying the “peace symbol” or a daisy to everything. Wearing certain types of clothing was another religious ritual of the left. Beginning a few years ago, it was putting the latest background on your social media profile (and you knew who was in your religion or not by whether they had the latest “correct” background), or hanging the correct banner at your house or business. Just as people have shown their traditional religion by the symbols they wear as jewelry, or display at their homes or on their clothing. A more recent leftist religious ritual is putting pronouns in your communications. Using certain types of transportation (or at least professing your intention to do so) is a ritual of religious leftism. Eating certain types of food (or refraining from eating certain types of food) is a ritual, just like the food-based rituals of many other religions.
Use of the “correct” language is part of the rituals. People of many traditional religions use religion-specific language. Judgment by fellow leftist co-religionists is swift if a person purporting to be within the leftist religion does not use the “correct” buzzwords.
The self-appointed de facto leaders of leftism (shepherds) dictate to the followers (sheep) followers what the “correct” visual symbols and language are. And they change the “correct” visual symbols and language frequently to ensure that the sheep stay closely connected with the religion. The very fact that a symbol of the religion can be changed so quickly (think of how the rainbow homosexual banner quickly morphed into the blue and pink plus triangle transexual banner, or how quickly so many adherents added pronouns to their names or how quickly the language of “global cooling” changed to “global warming” changed to “climate change” changed to “climate crisis”) is a sign that we are dealing with religious rituals.
Our Sunday School class lesson this morning was how sin and evil always follow decisions not to worship God. And evidently (based on thousands of years of history) everybody worships something. If you’re not worshiping God, you’re worshiping some other “god,” or your own base desires and passions. Leftists are worshiping something, no matter how much they try to deny it. They have all the religious rituals consistent with that worship.
..For thine is the country, the power, and the votes, forever.
Amen
Great post! Your right on with the halo pics. How can you argue with, hope and change, build back better, lets go Brandon, oh wait. I agree with that last one.
Unfortunately I think most voters have no clue about any current events and just sway to a vague lefty feel-good sound bite. As soon as anyone points out the fatal flaw in leftism, however they define it, the definition changes.
Just for fun here are some 2020 campaign slogans.. Look at Mike Gravel near the end. At least he admits it.
Do they offer any clues to their understanding of the gender of the child?
Where’s woo woo Marianne Willamson? I bet her slogans are lit.
I believe much of what they do has religious tendencies, but is an agenda that uses the seven deadly sins as tools. Other things are purely vindictive. I believe they push shocking things to shock us. One could easily believe they don’t like for their religion to have competition. Attacking the very essence of God’s creations for them is attacking the enemy.
I wish we had a good recycling system like I’ve seen in some communities. But just as with churches, there are good ones and weird ones. And the neighbors seem to be judgmental about it either way. Just last week I noticed that two of our neighbors now use the same trash service we do.
What constitutes a “good” recycling system?
From an economic standpoint (and therefore environmental, because people of affluence do not live in effluence), anytime you have to pay someone to have your recyclables hauled off, rather than having someone pay you (metal recycling, for example), the system is, by definition, inefficient. There is no value added. Similar to how wind and solar require subsidies.
And speaking of waste disposal nightmares, have you seen how wind turbine blades have to be handled at the end of their lifespan, which is about 15 years? OMG, it’s apocalyptic.
There are negative externalities that may keep a recycling system from paying for itself, yet be worth doing. One kind I like is the way many states require a deposit on beverage cans. The one in Michigan really did a lot to clean up the roadsides. Maybe the program could be extended to include Amazon boxes. (After the Michigan program became a success the environmental greedsters looked at all those deposits and said that money should be theirs so they could do wonderful environmental things with it. But no, they didn’t get it.)
That’s a problem with doing wind energy by government subsidies rather than market forces. (Not that I’m against the government putting its thumb on the scale to deal with negative externalities.)
I’m all about beautifying the environment I live in (I maintain 2 gardens other than my own). But, that’s not what these 3 recycling bins to the curb are about. This is a pretense that people are “saving the planet.” It’s fake virtue.
I wish we had one like the one in Hubbard County, Minnesota. The main facility there is sometimes referred to by the locals as the Henrietta Mall. The linked article maybe paints an idealized picture of how it works. The facility goes back and forth in the degree to which it lets scavengers come and take things. The things scavengers take away are the things that the recycling center could sell for cash to pay for the operation. But the facility seems to serve the county well. Hubbard County is a big county, geographically, and the mall is more convenient for some people than others. But the county’s townships also offer recycling services where people can dispose of their stuff, which then is hauled to the Henrietta Mall. I think only one township of very small population provides its own door-to-door trash pickup.
The only committee position in our local Michigan township that I ever considered volunteering to serve on is the one for recycling. But we travel a lot, so I wouldn’t be able to go to meetings regularly. And I have issues with both the anti-recycle wackos and the pro-recycle wackos who have no economic sense whatsoever. I suppose it might help me get along with people if I quit thinking of them as wackos.
Don’t you think you’re being rather judgmental about your neighbors?
Do other neighbors look at you heading to church on Sunday morning, saying “That’s fake virtue?”
We collect aluminum cans and donate them to the Boy Scout troop at our parish. That’s it. All my other recycling efforts occur in the garden.
We recycle kitchen waste into our garden, but the family doesn’t always cooperate with me. On the other hand, I’m reluctant to put a lot of effort into recycling cardboard (my wife took a load to the township recycling bins a mile away this morning, while I would do it only under duress) as woodpulp isn’t exactly a scarce resource and paper is biodegradable. But as part of an overall recycling program, I’m not against it.
But are you factoring in the energy used to transport and process the cardboard versus making new?
But?
I’m not enough of a central planner to do that. I’ve seen some extraordinarily inefficient and wasteful energy programs that attempt to do that.