This is cool. Common in C17 to argue religious liberty promoted trade. Tindal inverts it: a commercial society permits leisure to think critically and hence differently about religion. But in an absolute monarchy, "where men are poor" they lack time/energy for religious dissent In other words, Matthew Tindal in 1697 is groping toward the notion that a bourgeois society is *materially* capable of religious pluralism in a way absolutist states (where "men have mean, low and abject thoughts suitable to their condition") are not.

In contemporary American political religions, only violence sacralizes. We impart holiness to things by imagining them to be under assault. It is the byproduct of a certain Taylorian vision of the secular age as characterized by interminable optionality. Religion is always there, but it is always optional. One takes it or leaves it. It is no longer the inescapable and pervasive atmosphere of our lives.

I'm a sucker for sweet and sharp in a cocktail so this absolutely works.

https://twitter.com/imbibe/status/1330211888320434183

Pairing with

This is what the anthropologist and ritual scholar Roy Rappaport called "oversanctification of the specific." To tie a general set of religious beliefs to the outcome of one historically contingent event like an election is to court extreme dissonance.
washingtonpost.com/technology/202… Most conspiracy theories provide a language for alienation, but Q is unique in that it is ultimately predicted on one consummate instance of non-alienation: Trump actually being in power.