The Final Solution: Quantum Politics

Large gestures of course create a lot of attention. When John McCain famously voted against the repeal of Obamacare, it was viewed as a heroic show of resistance to the juggernaut of the Trumpocracy. But few people find themselves in a position in the course of their lives to do things that have such public consequence. Most human life is actually lived on what might be called a quantum ethical scale, in which tiny moments of conscience or exercises of free will result in almost imperceptible changes in the fabric of human existence. However, these decisions on a collective scale result in what grains of sand do when they become a beach. Can the weight of such microcosmic bits of morality fundamentally turn the world in the direction of good or evil? For example, right now nothing seems to be shaking the ethical climate which is swinging out of control. Value free politics, with its Spencerian Social Darwinist inclination seems to be driving both foreign and domestic policy. 12 Republican Senators voted against the president’s declaration of a National Emergency in the face of unanimous House approval of a resolution to this effect. Nice, but no cigar. It’s as if the net effect of the ignorance of global warning was to finally puncture the Ozone layer for good—something which may indeed have already happened. So perhaps the Antichrist is not a satanic figure like Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor or even Trump, but “a thousand points of dark” rather than George H.W. Bush’s "light."