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Wow, Dale notes a powerful Hauerwas quote to start off the new year:

A “truth” that must use violence to secure its existence cannot be truth.
(The Peaceable Kingdom, p.15)

If this statement is accurate, and I believe it is, then all this “freedom is on the march” talk cannot be truthful. I think such talk is instead, generally speaking, nonsense. Deadly, deadly nonsense.

I’m enjoying the unlikely benefit of a houseguest who lived in and through the rise of Nazi Germany. His stories are changing me, and giving me fresh first-hand confirmation of the perils we face given current U.S. leadership, practices, and attitudes.

Eeriest similarity between here-and-now and there-and-then:
Government manipulation of public opinion through the media.

If I understand him correctly, that’s the factor that most enabled the consolidation of power in the Third Reich. And in our time, it’s what chills me most about our current U.S. governmental predicament.

In this new year, I seek to grow beyond simply railing against the problem — as God knows I did a lot last year, and which can’t possibly be interesting — to participating somehow in the solution. What we’ve lost in embracing the worldview we’ve embraced is monumental and, too often it has seemed to me, unrecoverable. Yet presumably, with God all things are possible. Heartchange can happen in the blink of an eye, and over sweeping numbers of people. I tend to forget this over and over, but the reality securing this hope is as constant as ever.

[Promised Textpattern blog rollout almost ready; family holiday activities took precedence over its preparation, as they should.]