I'm reminded of an old cowboy western movie, unfortunately, where the old time director saw the truth that inhabits most small towns, most small populations where the the crowd is so sure, so certain about someone who they dislike.
This old earth is rapidly becoming like that little town, where the tyranny of the majority is so sure of itself that it pays little attention to its own habitual ways of thinking.
We are habituated to not trusting the media. Why is it so hard for us to become accustomed to not trusting the majority? Or even questioning ourselves especially if we reside in the majority?
Psychology is advancing to the point and you occasionally see it in the headlines that we are less the original thoughtful thinkers we think we are but all more a product of our culture, or the local herd.
And so it follows that our first response is emotional, and so watch us all search for the rational explanation, the long scroll of facts to support our emotional and initial first response.
This kind of talk is immediately dismissed by those well into the crusade, well into the habit, well into the thought pattern.
History actually tells us that very little is ever predictable. The best and brightest never see ahead of time any event before it happens.
This story in Iraq is unfolding every day, and I can guarrantee the story will confound your best predictions, your best belief, the bedrock of all of which you hold dearly.
You already saw it once. No one forsaw the behavior and pride of those who voted, but like the stock market, we've already moved on, cancelled the value and insight of such an event and have returned to our habits our zeitgeist and so we're still putting stock in the same stock, so to speak.
Iraq really is not Vietnam.
And religion, per se, has informed and been the genesis of most of our democratic ideals and most explicitly seen in the most democratic principle of all: the Protestant reformation. All religions contain these principles. All of them. They warn against the tyranny of hubris, the tyranny of the majority, the lack of humility, the lack of tolerance ---- all behaviors that make democracy work.
And the majority of people that go to church are raising families, going to their jobs, and are feeling the heat of an intolerance coming from all places --- the intellectuals, the secular ones who claim enlightenment.
And I say this despite having received a hell-fire pamphlet from a person who believes that all those who don't believe in Jesus will not be saved in the afterlife.
But I looked at him a little more than just the mind-think he was in.
Perhaps Marilyn Manson said it best if I can get this right: I love the true God, just not the God of the people.
And even there I doubt the God of anyone's idea and like Carl Sagan's point that mankind, the orphan race that it is, still searching for its origins, still searching for its parents, has not yet dimly envisioned a greater religion, a true religion that will fit us all.
