You believe in heaven and hell? Oh, of course I do. Don’t you believe in heaven and hell?
No. Oh, my. Does that mean I’m not going? [Laughing.] Unfortunately not! Wait, to heaven or hell? It doesn’t mean you’re not going to hell, just because you don’t believe in it. That’s Catholic doctrine! Everyone is going one place or the other. But you don’t have to be a Catholic to get into heaven? Or believe in it? Of course not! Oh. So you don’t know where I’m going. Thank God. I don’t know where you’re going. I don’t even know whether Judas Iscariot is in hell. I mean, that’s what the pope meant when he said, “Who am I to judge?” He may have recanted and had severe penance just before he died. Who knows? Can we talk about your drafting process— [Leans in, stage-whispers.] I even believe in the Devil. You do? Of course! Yeah, he’s a real person. Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that. http://nymag.com/news/features/antonin-scalia-2013-10/ ---- Fascism has opened up the depths of society for politics. Today, not only in peasant homes but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside of the twentieth century the tenth or the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic power of signs and exorcisms. The Pope of Rome broadcasts over the radio about the miraculous transformation of water into wine. Movie stars go to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man’s genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustible reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance, and savagery! Despair has raised them to their feet fascism has given them a banner. Everything that should have been eliminated from the national organism in the form of cultural excrement in the course of the normal development of society has now come gushing out from the throat; capitalist society is puking up the undigested barbarism. Such is the physiology of National Socialism. Leon Trotsky, "What is National Socialism?" http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330610.htm _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
