The Temple of Dagon

News that an environmental activist has taken over the Discovery Channel headquarters to demand an end to “filthy human babies” reminds us that religion can take a number of guises. Men have always worshipped some strange things.  That they are called “causes” and not religion is only a matter of words. James Lee’s demands tell us about what happens when the tenets of common “causes” are magnified by an endless media feedback loop. Amplified without limit they reach a kind of reductio ad absurdum.  A site believed to be affiliated with the suspect, Save the Planet, sets forth the his creed as the “sayings of Lee”. Some of his demands are:

• All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infant.
• All programs promoting War and the technology behind those must cease.
• Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed.
• Immigration … Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US.
• Find solutions for Global Warming
• Develop shows that will correct and dismantle the dangerous US world economy.
• You’re also going to find solutions for unemployment and housing.

Lee says ‘The world needs TV shows that DEVELOP solutions to the problems that humans are causing, not stupify the people into destroying the world. Not encouraging them to breed more environmentally harmful humans.” TV. That replacement for the ancient temple; the magic mirror against which the laser-like craziness of Lee bounced back and forth until, focused into a single beam of insanity, it flashed back upon the Discovery building.

The most interesting thing about Lee’s ideas is that they are simply monstrously enlarged versions of mainstream Leftwing notions. Promoting birth control in Third World countries, abolishing all advanced combat systems, ridding the world of the Judaeo-Christian heritage, Climate Change, building down the US economy, handing out subsidized housing — what could go wrong? Nothing out of the ordinary in that, is there?  But one way to detect logical fallacies is to see what happens when you scale them up. Those harmless ideas when projected onto a horizon ten miles high and fifty miles wide are so awe-inspiringly crazy that either you say “what the f**k?” or “why not?” James Lee said “why not”. When the cops finally take down James Lee and people go back to carrying out the same program in small but unnoticeable ways, who will dare to say, “a prophet, now there was a prophet!”