Reconciling the Election: Cursing the G^ds 2.0

Oh, the crazies.

There is a long-standing tradition among humans that when faced with a situation that our assumptions do not like, we consider that our Assumptions are Valid and that Reality is Fickle and we seek - well, we seek somebody (else) to blame. It could be a single individual but if a sole-source scapegoat is insufficient we willingly blame groups; we blame different groups at different times, but generally the Other, the people WhoDon'tLookLikeUs™ - Gypsies, Jews, Mexicans, Gays, whatev.

When teh crazies can't stretch their own cognitive dissonance around blaming a person or a group, then we need to level-up to a bigger scapegoat. It could be a philosophy (The Greens, The Unions) or it could be another country (Iraq), preferably something that fits in a simple, passionate phrase like Operation Iraqi Freedom or Wisconsin Right-to-Work.

When cultures and countries are insufficient to blame for our own situation, the spectrum of scapegoats escalates and narrows. We can blame natural forces like hurricanes, we can blame unexpected global events like global warming, but after a while there's only one ScapeGoatOfLastResort and then the distressed actually blame G^d for their troubles.

It's nothing new, we did this way back in the day:

Look now how mortals are blaming the gods,
for they say that evils come from us,
but in fact they themselves have woes beyond
their share because of their own follies.
Odyssey, by Homer

To a cynic, it might seem an ironic circle; people starting using scapegoats to appease the Gods, and when that failed they just got mad at the Almighty.

Even more ironic: in the political realm does a Party that presents itself as the party of moral virtue and religious belief forfeit the opportunity to blame G^d? It would be very difficult for the Moral Majority or Pat Robertson or NewtG and his TrueBelievers to start blaming the Deity, and so what do they do? How do they explain that the Omniscient dropped the ball, that He didn't read the memo and foolishly didn't see things their way?

People who can't imagine that G^d might not agree with them do what people have always done, but with a twist - except instead of building and worshiping a false G*d, they build-and-blame one. We see a perfect example of this in this week's RedState.org, in which the writer describes an omniscient Power that might have been a force for Good but went TheOtherWay, and now it's a force of darkness that explains our current predicament.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are presented with: Google, the Slayer of TrueBelievers. Mind you, we're not saying that these are the EndTimes; but be prudent and watchful.

The article is actually worth reading, if only to experience the state of mind. How could Team-Blue have done so much better that Mitt Romney's Business Intelligence system, honed with his years of boardroom experience? How could Obama be so in tune with what's happening in America?

It's simple, really. Google was reading everybody's email, datamining the issues by geo-location, and real-timing the keytrends via The Cloud to the White House. (Cloud references are obligatory these days, and perhaps the Google-Cloud duality appeals to polytheists.) Could the symbolism be more apparent? How did you miss this?

How else could Mitt Romney, a Mormon who wears special underwear, a rich financier who bankrupts businesses, a visionary that considers 47% of the country to be Moochers, and who ran on a platform of cancelling my kid's health insurance - how else could Mitt Romney have lost to these people?

The outcome of the last election was so unacceptable and unthinkable that it must have been the work of a malevalent, uncaring Being who had method, motive, and opportunity - why, it just has to be Google's fault. Couldn't be anything else. Has to be.

Damned Google.
Wait a minute.
Didn't Eric Schmidt just go to North Korea? Which is - gasp - part of the Axis of Evil?

Dark times. Update on FoxTV at 9pm.