Bully Nation
Yale Magrass and Charles Derber

Science is objective. It has no teleology, rejects any concept of meaning or purpose. The world is a spinning dead rock that doesn’t give a shit about anything. It is neither good nor bad, provides no morality. It is what it is. The only thing it promises is death. Life is a biochemical accident.  

Nature is, as Rabbi Woody ben Allen observed, big fish, eating little fish, being eaten by even bigger fish. The most fundamental principle of biology is bullying, survival of the fittest. Every species is competition with every other species.

Everything can destroy each other in the process, but one tactic some species adopt in the struggle to dominate all other species is cooperation among their own. One species has become so successful in cooperating among its own that it may destroy the entire biosphere including itself, but if it happens the dead rock wouldn’t give a shit.  

Science tells us we are but tiny dots, which will disintegrate in an instance, spinning around a bigger dot, spinning around an ordinary star on the periphery of a galaxy with another 100 billion stars, among another 100 billion galaxies. It took billions of years for us to emerge on our minor planet.  Rationally, we have no special place in the universe. Other epistemologies tell us the universe revolves around us literally. It was created for us. Everything in the universe has a purpose--to serve us.

Science is the product of one specific culture at one specific point in time. For all other societies and for all other times, some variation of the irrational was the dominant epistemology. Like bullying in nature, the modern West was able to use science to conquer the world, either enslaving all other societies or forcing them to think and live like modern Westerners. Its rationality is so irrational that it may lead to it destroying itself and everything else in the process. It already had two world wars.  

The enlightenment brought science; in reaction, romanticism insisted there must be inherent goodness in nature, some higher force-nature itself, God, nation, community- which provides meaning and purpose. Although I am personally trivial, I can merge with this higher force. My God, my king, my nation, maybe my family, may bully me, oppress me, impoverish me, but I can experience greatness through his greatness.

Through submission, I gain power.  The more powerful and brutal, he is, the better. He must be able to destroy all foe and the only way I can know he can do that is if he can destroy me. Even if I die, perhaps in service to my God, my lord, perhaps in his war, it is alright. I can merge with this higher force. A very large percent of the population yearns for a strong man.

The irrational is a reality that cannot be known through science, empiricism or logic. You must feel it in your being, in your gut. It cannot be communicated through words or numbers. If you have to have it explained to you, you do not understand it. You are deficient, incapable of appreciating and understanding ultimate reality.

A few people have grace, special knowledge of higher truth in their being. All others must submit to their will. They have alternative facts, which can defy all empirical evidence.  In some version of the rational, if you feel it in your gut, that is all you need. It is true. Trump felt he won the election; so, he did. He can present no empirical evidence that even courts he appointed could accept, but that does not matter. He knows it to be true.

George Bush Jr. worked through his gut. He knew he was morally ordained to invade Iraq because he knew in his gut Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, even though no one could provide any empirical evidence. The United States can have all the weapons of mass destruction it wants, but not Iraq, Iran or North Korea, because America has been chosen by some higher force to be the policeman of the world, to bring its vision of freedom, democracy and capitalism to the rest of the world, even if it must  be given to infidels at the point of a sword. The irrational assures all who feel it can share in America’s greatness. If you need to have America’s greatness explained to you, you are inferior,  incapable of knowing what it is.