The Y Widens

THE Y WIDENS
(increasing angle of opposition between sign-uses in disagreement, higher levels of closed-off predications. Limits: say nothing...say everything)

Addressing a Broken Body (Reality)

Once a divergence has occurred between the line of events following the intended TEXT of signs used in group communication, vrs. what their TOKENS convey --what the choice of particular signs says, in context – Reality becomes broken.

This is the “Y” splitting of sign-use; “God” for the Almighty, “G.O.D.” for overnight parcel delivery, just to take one example. Generally speaking, tokens convey motive, while text supplies information. In actual practice, they twine in public discourse to create the spectacle of the human P.A.B. (“political animal braying”; they treat it worshipfully, as it does for them, substitute for the Holy.)

America as “Y” has split into ‘citizen’, under the text of the constitution, a defined class of individuals U.S. law is required to recognize as existing and having inalienable rights conferred by their “maker”. Here is where one split leads to another. “Made in the image of God” “we” are, the text of the Bible reads. “WHOSE God?’, the critic demands to know, noting again the sound jackasses make no doubt sounds righteous to other jackasses. The thing is, when AMERICA, the original full-fledged, full-throated simultaneous text of citizenry and token of New World Freedom – won by revolutionary colonials, bequeathed as a legacy of their heirs could keep it – the GOD issue was not an issue. It was either Protestant or …down scale of recognition, but still there -- the Great Spirit the Native Indians recognized. In the grammar of government the experiment in democracy assumed that participated was limited to those responsible for conducting the public affairs and business; use of “men” for voters did not extend, by common application, to women, blacks, Catholics or Jews. And these men got to have their say, because they not only set it up, but through the generations of work had established what “God” meant, as a common workable understanding of whose image men were created in. Signs for race and gender got “Y”-ed off from “men” down the line, then re-grammatized, for good or ill. Now it has come down to the big one.

The original existential situation, establishing what America meant in song, prayer, daily rituals, frontier adventure, devotion, throughout a continent none on earth more beautiful, created the grace of unity of spirit drawn on to govern. The “rope of sand” George Washington called the document was not just a political, but a spiritual ‘string’ entity. Now, unheard; except in the ruffle of Bush braying “democracy”.

VOTE ON GOD?

That has been a thought of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Yes, the First Amendment says no state religion, but the people can vote on whether they want “God” in, say, the pledge of allegiance, defining the country under a unified spiritual predicate, as the founding fathers did. This must be prevented at all costs, since it wipes out the legacy of grace and replaces it by a creed of law. The racial hatred stirred up against Muslims, especially, if the Jewish-Catholic God gets put up as “America”, would be precisely the kind of world-attitude, and basis of public order, most repulsive to original Americans. In government halls, they did not moralize, flout, pontificate or ‘pity-me’-gate with their “God” use. To “vote on God” splits the Y of the constitution wide open. This was something the authorities could swear on as voted “under”, not “on”. What would that mean? Next election if the anti-God ticket wins, what do judges swear on?