First missed point by Esolen
Esolen normally hits the nail on the head. He missed this one.

Esolen is comparing the statue-pullers to the main character in a Twilight Zone episode. Serling was using the character to represent McCarthy. The character goes around trying to eradicate evil by snitching on people, often falsely. He acquires magical powers and uses the powers to weaken all evil people by making them short. As soon as the wish comes true, he finds that he can't reach things because he's a dwarf. Yeah, okay, karma. Got it.

Esolen has the sides backwards. Serling was also statue-pulling. He was defending the Establishment against a rebel. After the 1954 Cohn Coup, all of TV was solely devoted to pulling down the statues of anti-CIA (alias anti-Soviet) rebels. Serling's story wouldn't have made it to air if he had tried to take the anti-CIA side.

The modern statue-pullers are not McCarthy. They are Serling, working FOR the Establishment and eradicating rebels and Rebels. They don't need to worry about karma or justice. They will win. All Deplorables will be EXTERMINATED on schedule.

Incidentally, many of the commenters didn't even get the basic point of the fable. They said that pulling down statues of Mohammed is okay because Islam is the ultimate total evil. Oops. Aside from the fact that there AREN'T** any statues of Mohammed by Islamic definition, they were blinded by the classic eye-log.

= = = = =

** Yesterday I was comparing idolaters vs abstracters. Hadn't thought of it from this side... Maybe old God was a shrewd strategist when he prohibited graven images. When there aren't any physical representations of God, the enemies of God have nothing to pull down, no physical leverage.

You can see a much more refined version of this problem in the lawsuits among splitting Anglicans. The rebels who are attempting to move back toward God are getting distracted and weakened by fights over the church building and real estate. If they'd pay more attention to the Commandment, they'd rent a vacant storefront and let the Satanists keep the building. Loosen = solve. Se-lu.

Labels: Pluponents, se-lu

  ¶ 3:20 AM