‘Holy War! The Rise & Fall of the American Theocracy, 2039-2079’ (Part 7)

By Nathaniel Lane Stewart, M. A.

The Unique Phenomenon of the American Theocratic Republic (Part 7)

(This post marks part 7 of the introductory essay from a book supposedly published in the year, A. D. 2195, and narrates an era of ‘Future history’ in twenty-first century American history known as the ‘American Theocracy’.  This post completes the second of the three ‘necessary presuppositions’ that Professor Stewart maintains as essential in understanding the rise and fall of the American Theocratic Republic.  The previous six parts can be read on this blog. SMC)

What did this convergence [the collapse of Modernity, the rise of Post-Modernity and the explosion of religious warfare] look like in the history of the world?

In a word, chaos.  And in one sense, it was the chaos of the early twenty-first century that popularized the Post-modern criticism of the Modern perspective.  After three centuries, the Modern had failed to create a ‘secular’ unifying religion so desperately craved for by mankind that excluded both a supernatural deity and the institutional church.  Thus, the Post-modern concluded that such a quest was impossible, and that the very idea of a universal claim for anything, but especially one regarding religion, was a fool’s errand impossible to achieve.  For the Post-modern, not only was religion and faith purely subjective (as the Modern claimed), but so also was reason and intellectual pursuit.  Universality was impossible on any level, and thus, for the Post-modern, paradox and contextualization became the only two absolutes mankind could believe.  As one writer of the early twenty-first century remarked, “an eternal tension between the meaning and the non-meaning must perpetually co-exist in our experience.”  This statement was the defining principle of Post-modern thought. (15)

Thus, it was completely natural that the dominate political-economic theory of the early twenty-first century was a hybrid of Libertarian-Anarchist thought regarding the civil body politic, and why by the 2020’s and 2030’s, the primary political goal of both the Neo-Libertarians and the American Gay Party was to dismantle the centralized state that the Modern had previously worshiped.  This trend in political economy was matched by a parallel religious trend which elevated the spiritual principle of the worship of the individual and his or her ego along with the individual’s freedom to express oneself regardless of cultural, social or religious norm.  The widespread acceptance of these streams of thought (that is, the Libertarian-Anarchist, Gay, Postmodern subjective spirituality) was only furthered by the Neo-Libertarian Revolution of the 2020’s, the great Tech Crash of 2031, the political triumph of the ‘Gay Rights’ movement in the 2030’s as well as the explosion of the Muslim civil wars from 2020 to the Congress of Tehran in 2036 (16).  World events appeared to parallel perfectly the Post-modern claim that subjective chaos was the only ‘absolute norm’ in a world that had abandoned all appearance of order, structure and meaning (17).

But those events were insignificant in both promoting and finally killing off the Post-Modern Era when compared to two significant events in first half of the twenty-first century.  The first was the organization of the American Evangelical-Catholic Church and the  ‘moral civil wars’ of the 2030’s and 2040’s that resulted from its organization (18).  The second major event was the publication of the novel, The Surprising Beauty of Subjective Amorality, by Marta LaGrange, in June, 2027.  Both of these events significantly altered the social and moral fabric of American society, finally completing a paradigm shift that had begun in the late 1990’s.

LaGrange’s novel was not a particularly insightful or profound piece of literature, but the philosophy expounded by the novel was perhaps the clearest literary expression of the values that had come to characterize the ‘moral chaos theories’ that became the cornerstone of Neo-Libertarian thought advocated by both the Neo-Libertarian and American Gay Parties (19).  And it was this flowering of the American Gay Culture that led to the other development of the day-the organization of the American Evangelical-Catholic Church and their ‘moral civil wars’ as they were called by some.

While Protestant Evangelicalism and Catholicism were growing closer during the late twentieth century, the political and cultural events of early twenty-first century propelled that union much sooner than some thought possible.  After the Political Plurality Act of 2028 broke up the two-party system, finally permitting both the Neo-Libertarian and Gay parties to gain more political power, the Christian right, (those that had not embraced the Gay Agenda), organized into new politically-active bloc that had one goal-gain control of the Federal government at all costs to outlaw both Gay behavior and what they termed as ‘Libertarian anarchy.’ (20).  Thus, it could be argued that it was the Neo-Libertarian revolution and the widespread acceptance of the Gay beliefs that initially led to the creation of the American Theocracy. (21)

Ironically, while both events were reacting primarily to the Post-modern world of the early twenty-first century, between 2020 and 2040, both the views of the novel and the organization of the new church also successfully killed the Post-modern paradigm.  By mid-century, most intellectuals (religious or non-religious) maintained that universality was completely impossible.  The only exception to this claim was the militant leadership of the American Evangelical-Catholic Church and the Christian Union Party, and from 2034-2060, both entities energetically promoted Christian activism against the four other competing political parties in the American Federal system (22). In contrast, the other parties simply resigned themselves to the popular belief that chaos in all forms was inevitable.  What was left of Western Modern society by 2050 (which was indeed precious little) not only cemented the belief in pure subjective chaos as intellectually superior, but it also killed off any further intellectual pursuits in the Western world.  In fact, so few were the philosophical works published between 2050 and 2100 that many scholars now refer to that era as the ‘Great Collapse’, in which Western thought finally appeared to cease to exist.

By 2060, much of Europe was dominated by the Russian Imperial Federation and was no longer a political or military influence on the global scene while the League of Islamic Republics stretched from North Africa, across the Middle East to Southeast Asia.  In the United States, six political parties were competing for political power, although none could gain a substantial majority to actually accomplish their political or civil goals.  And the disastrous effects of the Treaty of Beirut (2053) upon both the American economy and government only furthered the sense of spiritual despair and social disorder that the Post-modern Libertarian and Gay Rights Era had brought into American civil and social life.  Many desired a savior to right the wrongs, and since by that point, religion and politics had so merged in the thinking of the American political right and center, that savior needed to be both a religious and political individual.  It was into this world that Senator L. Carter McPherson and the Christian Republic Party entered, promising to restore spiritual, political, economic and social vitality to a republic that had suffered under the curse of a semi-religious subjective morass for over fifty years.  This was the unique world that produced the American Theocracy.

 

To Be Continued. . .

(15) See Kyle’s soliloquy  from The Surprising Beauty of Subjective Amorality, by Marta LaGrange, published by the Freedom Press of New York, New York City, in 2027.  Professor Stewart’s analysis of the novel is contained in the November edition of the Academic Literature Review, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2163.

(16) Each of these events are covered fully in Chapters 3-6, 8 and 11-12 of Volume I of this work.

(17) These political and economic developments also explain the widespread popularity of the inane ‘chaos theory’ in physics during the 2030’s which became a dogma among scientists before the Theocratic Party purged most of those scientists during the 2070’s.  Today we know the ‘chaos theory’ is as absurd as Aristotelian cosmology, but sadly, it took the Theocratic Party to kill off completely the widespread acceptance of that pseudo-science.

(18) Both the organization of the new church and its militant crusades against open immorality were ultimately in reaction to the Political Plurality Act of 2028.  See chapter 10 of Volume 1 for a more thorough explanation of the consequences of that legislation.

(19) LaGrange’s novel is really two stories woven in one: the first follows the lives of two young gay men, and the second, two older lesbian woman.  The first story particularly focuses on the religious hatred and persecution endured by the young male couple and the second story focuses on how the older female couple embraced hatred and persecution against anti-gay sentiment.  Critics raved about the book, and for 8 years, the book was in the top ten of the New York Times‘ best-seller list.  The widespread embrace of LaGrange’s novel parallel’s the ‘Tea Party’ movement’s embrace of the works of Novelist Ayn Rand in the 20-teens.  So close is the parallel, that even as Tea Partiers were known to chant, ‘Who is John Galt?’, so the Neo-Libertarians and American Gay Party activists would chant, ‘Free Kyle!’ at their conventions.  The cry was a reference to the young gay man, Kyle, jailed for defending his gay lifestyle from the Bible.

(20) The term, ‘libertarian anarchy’ was used in the first party platform of the Christian Union Party in 2034.

(21) Theocratic apologists cited the presence of the ‘Gay Rights movement’ as one of the primary reasons their leaders instituted the American Theocratic Republic.  See the first Christian Republic Manifesto, published in 2043, and Carter McPherson’s Manifesto for a Christian Republic, published in 2058.

(22) After the Political Plurality Act of 2028 broke up the two-party system, the following parties developed over the next three decades, and all vied for political power within the American Federal System: 1. The Old Democratic Party, 2. The American Republican Party, 3. The Neo-Libertarian Party, 4. The American Gay Party, 5. The Corporate Business Party (later dissolved in the 2040’s, though it appeared again briefly in the 2050’s before it was suppressed in reaction to the ‘August Coup’ of 2055), 6. The Christian Union Party, and 7. The Christian Republic Party.