Maggie's Farm

Given the inherent absurdity of much of prog-think these days, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between prog-think and parody of prog-think. I don't think this was a parody.

Exactly. I am reminded of the HL Mencken quote about Purtitanism.
For the Castro bros, it would be the haunting fear that some Cuban outside the Nomenklatura is making money and thus making himself independent of the state.

It should have read, "I double dog dare you to read the whole thing." After 10 lines or so, I rolled my eyes, and stopped reading. Bad. Bad. White Man. Blah.Blah. Blah. As Joseph Bottum points out, the religious impulse has not left those who have left the churches their ancestors attended. Those non-churchgoers are just as obsessed as John Calvin with Original Sin - if not more- and with belonging to the elect.

For these latter day Calvinists, Original Sin is associated with white skin and with racism. They can belong to the elect by adopting the correct views on racism, on global warming, on diversity, on the epidemic of rape on college campuses, on multiculturalism- better expressed as any culture but Western culture- and so forth.

Speaking of multiculturalism, I recently started reading the Spanish language version of Isabel Allende's Ripper, set in the San Francisco Bay Area. I couldn't get past 5 pages. All the politically correct characters. Whereas in Paula, Isabel Allende shows the mixed nature of things in looking at her grandfather, whom she loved dearly but who also supported the coup against Allende- who was Isabel Allende's first cousin first removed. Or in Chile, My Invented Country where she admits that while from her point of view Pinochet was an SOB, she gave Pinochet some grudging respect for what he accomplished in governing Chile.