I don’t know these guys, but I suspect them of disingenuous mischief.

Still, the times are fearful and polarized. The “left” (scare quotes because who really knows what the labels mean these days?) fears theocracy, and I increasingly see why they would fear it. The “right,” or at least “the religious right,” fears (whether they can name it or not) French-style glorious revolution secularization, with concommitant marginalization, persecution or even martyrdom of Christian believers. I have never had trouble seeing why that fear should arise, even though those of the “left” find it risible, since they perceive Christianity as dominant to the point of oppressiveness. (The phenomenon of multiple flavors of Christianity, however, is one to which I have often alluded, and they differ at a deep spiritual level, not just in their political valence. The same, I believe, is true of Islam — and for analogous reasons.)

We have dug ourselves a very deep hole economically, and if that plays out as I suspect it will, I see no sign that people are ready to repent of economic nonsense and start building something sustainable, since what’s sustainable won’t be as giddily distracting as the faux prosperity we currently experience — and which, truth be told, we enjoy if only as guilty pleasure.

And I’ve not really touched on “the culture” in a sense broader than politics, religion, and their respective discontents.

In such a millieu, some rough beast may well be slouching toward Bethlehem. I doubt that it’s Clarence Thomas (who I don’t find a rough beast at all). A political Peter Singer, with the rhetorical gifts of a Barack Obama, seems likelier to me. He (she?) must be seductive enough with nostrums to seduce — what is it? — 218 Electoral College Votes (assuming, contrary to the “Bible prophecy” wankers, that he’ll be American).

On that bright note, I close the computer and prepare to go sing the praises of The One whose incarnation in the flesh, with its Bethlehem nexus, makes me hopeful even in the most troubled of times.