So This Is Christmas — and What Have Celebrities Actually Done?https://instapundit.com/763976/To be sure, faith is no guarantee of a refuge from the evil that men do. Evil is also committed in the name of faith and by those who think they were/are on a mission from God. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been doing this since 1979, as one modern example.
However, it’s an analytical stretch that requires undue faith in the innate goodness of the religiously naked ape to believe atheism and atheist states will be any different from others who have complete power in a state. It’s an error to think that atheism will somehow thus serve as a peaceful refuge from humanity’s worst impulses. To believe this is to assume that religion — and not concentrated power — is the main problem in human affairs.
See China’s Xi Jinping today as the latest atheist incarnation of John Lennon’s imagined state and its consequences: a man on a mission for himself, who will run roughshod over his own population and others who want nothing to do with his view of how we should live. Xi’s repression is already obvious in China and in Hong Kong, and if he ever gets the chance, in Taiwan.
The same vapidity is evident in “Happy Xmas.” Its most famous line opens the song, and lodges in my cranium without asking permission: “And so this is Christmas/And what have you done?” Those ten words have enough hubris to inflate the Hindenburg. It’s as if ordinary folk somehow should justify themselves to a 1960s–1970s rock star consumed by self and by error, as in his musical worship of anti-religious belief and consequences.
The easy response from normal people to two celebrities who, by 1971, had been writing songs and giving interviews from their bedroom decked out in pajamas can be imagined as follows, perhaps from a single mom: “Oh, I don’t know, John — I’ve been raising three kids, caring for my aged Mom, and working double-shifts at the coffee shop to pay the bills. You?”
Other responses to imagine: From a Second World War veteran: “I fought my way on to Omaha Beach and survived D-Day — and the rest of the war, but many of my friends did not. We beat the Nazis, which is what mattered even more despite the sacrifices.”
Or imagine the response from a steelworker, miner, or farmer: “Endured another grinding day at the foundry/shaft/farm, this to afford the mortgage and Christmas presents.”
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In one of his last interviews, Lennon would finally admit, “I dabbled in politics in the late 1960s and 1970s, more out of guilt than anything. Guilt for being rich and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something, or get punched in the face to prove I’m one of the people. I was doing it against my instincts.”
Maybe John came to know better, probably partially, but his unrecognized detachment for normal-people reality, his guilt-feelings for being rich, and mental elitism are probably shared by many entertainment industry denizens.
