I wonder how long we’ll pretend that our reaction five years ago was about the deaths of 3000 strangers.

“Devastating”, just like Silverman says. Nearly harder for us to bear than the 2700 we’ve sent to die in Iraq. Or the 46,000 dead Iraqi innocents we anguish over. Nearly as unbearable for us as yearly deaths due to inadequate health care or malnutrition. Devastating.

What we were devastated by and reacted to was the loss of a desperately needed delusion: "We are admired and feared and safe because we are strong and good and just and right." As long as media could serve those lies and history and reality could be constructed to hide the contradictions, we felt relatively secure. But the images of our gleaming, towering symbols of superiority and strength crashing down to rubble could not be hidden

We reacted by killing innocents, torturing, eroding freedoms, and engendering hatred because, as AJCalhoun noted, we do not tolerate the fear, uncertainty and insecurity that would have allowed the generation of more adaptive responses.

Ms. Walsh is astute to juxtapose 9-11 with another rupture: our model democracy and its highest body of justice and moral order reduced to thugs in black robes stealing a national election. The matrix is degrading, and the real danger of these times is the reality-distorting, amoral, self-preserving reaction that comes when denial is pulled away from a psyche desperately protecting itself. Or from a collective psyche.

We do stand to lose much more if we lack the courage to confront and dissent.

If regressive and defensive behaviors reflect a threatening and disintegrating social environment, then Lauren’s take on the scope and spread of Mars Hill as ominous may be right on.

Religion evolved largely as means for a patriarchy to control behavior, especially the reproductive/sexual behavior of women, as Mars Hill is regressively recapitulating. Another primary function is to allow individuals to avoid moral development, that is to avoid the anxiety associated with moral choice. Mars Hill provides this escape from fear of choice – and the possible rejection by a group for non-conforming behavior – by establishing a strict moral code by authority. To some extent this is a feature of all religions, but what is remarkable is the stifling of autonomy in the Mars Hill age group.

The author’s characterization of church member Ted Dietz illustrates a basic psychological need served by Mars Hill, and the internal seed of its failure. Dietz’s choices and behaviors are clearly morally compromised: endangering others by running a red light, subjugating and mistreating others based on their gender or lack of conformity to his beliefs, disregarding social injustice (a Bush supporter). He defensively projects his own “tyranny” onto others. To protect himself from the resulting internal dissonance and anxiety, he constructs himself as moral entirely by virtue of his membership in the church, where he can go to be named “godly” by his pastor. Salvation not by works, but by symbolism alone.

As many letter-writers have noted, the Mars Hill phenomenon can be analyzed as fear-based, regressive, misogynist, not-for-us. OK, so what then?

We all have a need for relatedness and security, just as Mars Hill members do. Mars Hill helps us see that real community can never be based on fear, enforced conformity, need for control, or conditional acceptance. That is, never on religion but quite possibly on the ideals that religions destroy. Like Lennon said.

So the top shot-caller puts it out, a major, major dis on the other guys and everybody on the street is like, “What the fuck?”, because everybody knows this top guy is savvy, he knows exactly what kind of shit he just stirred up. The other guys say it ain’t over yet. They already burned a couple places and they hit one of their women, shot her in the back.

The talk on the street is war, that the top guy who put out the dis aint safe. Who knows? With whack guys like these who’s gonna predict anything? Check it out – the top guys all totally gave up sex, like that’s gonna get em somewhere, like that aint totally whack. Turns out (no shit !) it did get em somewhere – a whole lot of these top guys end up bein punks, messin with little boys. Their protection held for a while, but then it was no good, so couple of em end up goin in for some time. But it’s like nobody gives a shit, like forget about how whack this organization is. They got their women lined up on some weird shit too. No sex for them either. One of them takes a hit for the top shot-caller’s dis, then she says she forgives the guys who hit her! Maybe they shoulda forgave those top guys punkin the little boys, maybe a little forgiveness woulda put a stop to them messin with the little boys.

Yeah on the street they’re askin “What was this top guy thinkin?” Thing is, he don’t have to care. Check out his bling-bling. Whatever kinda fear and protection he’s peddlin, it’s givin him the juice.