Word: satanic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...your-face, born-again manner that takes its resonance from a long Judeo-Christian tradition that sees radical evil embodied in heroically diabolical figures. This personalized evil is the kind that is insinuated by the sauntering Tempter in the first scene of the Book of Job, when God and Satan speculate like racing touts about whether Job can go a mile and a quarter on a muddy track. In Bush's usage, evil has the perverse prestige of Milton's defiant Lucifer. Evil emanates, implicitly, from a devilish intelligence with horns and a tail, an absolutely malevolent personality...
Bush's critics, hearing the word, go ironic. They put evil in quotes and think of Dana Carvey's Church Lady: "Well, isn't that special, Saddam? Who's your little friend? Could it be Satan!!!???" They mock Bush for what they see as a primitive, frightening and atavistic use of a medieval term that should probably be banished from civilized discourse in a multicultural world...
...your-face, born-again manner that takes its resonance from a long Judeo-Christian tradition that sees radical evil embodied in heroically diabolical figures. This personalized evil is the kind that is insinuated by the sauntering Tempter in the first scene of the Book of Job, when God and Satan speculate like racing touts about whether Job can go a mile and a quarter on a muddy track. In Bush's usage, evil has the perverse prestige of Milton's defiant Lucifer. Evil emanates, implicitly, from a devilish intelligence with horns and a tail, an absolutely malevolent personality...
...Bush's critics, hearing the word, go ironic. They put evil in quotes and think of Dana Carvey's Church Lady: "Well, isn't that special, Saddam? Who's your little friend? Could it be Satan!!!???" They mock Bush for what they see as a primitive, frightening and atavistic use of a medieval term that should probably be banished from civilized discourse in a multicultural world...
...truth about evil that needs attention now is its shallow, deadly, fungus quality. Nice people - especially in a tiny, multicultural world in which different civilizations inhabit different centuries - are often moved to evil deeds, like blowing up the Other. Don't bother demonizing people as being inherently evil (as Satan is evil). That's not how it works. Opportunistic evil passes like an electric current through the world and through people, or wanders like an infection that takes up residence in individuals or cultures from time to time...