“[Irony] is the hardest addiction of all.  Forget heroin.  Just try giving up irony, that deep-down need to mean two things at once, or be in two places at once, not to be there for the catastrophe of a fixed meaning.”

-- The main character, Patrick, in Edward S. Aubyn’s novel, At Last

Up until now, we have been shielded in our country from many of the usual misfortunes.  Now we have begun to experience what hitherto we have only read of in books, like the Cult of the Leader.  In the advent of the current president we saw it in its God-Emperor mode; in the advent of another unmentionable person we are seeing it in its Swaggering Thug mode.

I should have said, what some of us have read of in books.  Too bad we think reading is outdated.  Too bad we think history is bunk.

Question:

I think your point that socialists can be just as materialistic as capitalists is well-taken. However, I’m not so sure the main appeal of Bernie to the young is free tuition (at least not free tuition for them). Most of the young non-religious people I know -- mostly artists of some kind -- support Bernie, and most of them are already out of college.

They are already leftists, they are already ignorant of economics, and they support Bernie rather than Hilary because they sense authenticity in him -- he actually believes what he is saying, unlike anyone else in the race.

Reply:

You’re trying to understand why confirmed young leftists might support Senator Sanders over Senator Clinton, and I’m sure your reasoning is correct.  But I’m trying trying to understand why unformed young people might be attracted to his leftism in the first place.

They do want someone “authentic.”  But although it is difficult to believe in the authenticity of someone as indictable as Senator Clinton, I don’t think it true that nobody else in either party believes what he is saying.

On the other hand, it is easy to believe in the authenticity of someone who enthusiastically promotes one’s own self-interest.  And to feel good about it too.

Coming Monday:  Is it all materialism, or is there something else too?

Around the same time as the incident I told about in yesterday’s post, the contraceptive mandate came up in another class.  I mentioned how strange it seemed to me personally to call artificial contraception, sterilization, and the provision of abortion-inducing drugs “health care,” because pregnancy is not a disease.

A young man responded that pregnancy is a disease.

“Do you mean that pregnancy itself is pathological,” I asked, “or do you mean only that although pregnancy is a natural condition, complications may arise during the course of it?”

He vigorously denied that the distinction was valid.  Pregnancy is associated with certain health risks, therefore it is a disease.  Although some of the other students were shocked, others agreed with him.  Still others seemed troubled and confused.

Since I had encountered this view in the writings of abortionists, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I hadn’t fully realized how common it had become.  It was as though a plague vector had escaped from a containment facility and was spreading through the population.

It happened several years ago, but I guess anecdotes on the increasing split in the culture are never out of date.  I was guest-lecturing about political theology and St. Augustine’s City of God in a colleague’s graduate seminar.  Discussion ranged widely, and among the things that came up was the federal mandate requiring that employers who provide insurance plans include coverage for artificial contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs, even if they are morally opposed to doing so.

Someone suggested that the motivation for the mandate couldn’t be financial, because a month’s supply of birth-control pills costs doesn’t cost much anyway.  “That’s not true!” protested one young woman angrily.  “My birth control pills cost more than my cable bill!”

Irrespective of the cost of her pills, I was taken aback.  She could afford cable, yet she pled poverty, so that others would pay for her privilege of sleeping with anyone at any time -- and she was indignant that the others might not want to.