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Thursday, February 20, 2020

Taking Leave Of A Christian Activist's Facebook Page

Image result for confirmation bias
"Confirmation Bias And The Power Of Disconfirming Evidence"  http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2019/05/confirmation-bias-and-power-of.html

This will be my last post on your Facebook page.

You are now free of "the troll" and at liberty to re-immerse yourself in whatever confirmation bias you need.

Here is a piece I wrote about Eichmann in 2013.

"Thomas Merton: Adolf Eichmann, Sanity and Normality"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/…/thomas-merton-adolf-e…


Life abounds in "critical thresholds," and these thresholds happen to be lower in politics than they are in religious communities.

It is a fact - "plain as potatoes" (as Chesterton liked to say) - that every vote Bernie supporters cast for a candidate other than Hillary (and every Bernie supporter who did not vote at all rather than vote for Hillary) represented a vote that could have been used to keep Trump out of office. 

I understand that statistics can be argued and massaged until the cows come home. 

But, by my lights, the data is persuasive. 

"Bernie Sanders Voters Helped Trump Win 
And Here's Proof"
Newsweek

It bears repetition that during the 2016 primary season I donated exclusively to Bernie.

And if Bernie is this year's Democratic presidential candidate I will do everything in my power to elect him.

***

Elsewhere, but in related vein...

Apparently, I "triggered a complex" when I referenced Merton.

You feel the need to dismiss Fr. Louis' comment about the relationship between insistent perfectionism and consequent transformation of "the best" into "evil" as impertinent to the discussion.

Not so.

Merton's comment is central to our discussion.

"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.” "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton

"The best imposed as a norm, becomes evil."

"Limitations are salutary."

In the 2016 election, enough Bernie supporters in all three decisive states voted for Trump (or for someone else, or "for" no one) to not only tilt the scale in Trump's favor but to ensure that Hillary did not win decisively in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. 

These pro-Bernie Trump facilitators saw Bernie as "the best" and were determined to impose their anti-Hillary views as "the norm."

And now we have Donald Trump in The Oval Office with strong likelihood that third party voters -- coupled with disgruntled purists -- will enable his re-election.

Washing one's hands of this meaningful matrix of causality is no more effective than Pilate's attempt to wash his own hands of responsibility for the crucifixion.

Your categorization of me as a troll is as wrong-minded as your defense of those who contributed to Trump's victory by not voting for Hillary.

"Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." "The best is enemy of the good." 

Adios.




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