The “Holy War” Has Begun, When/How Will It End?

Recently I have been reading/thinking about the ReAwaken America Tour (RAT) here in the U.S. I have become even more alarmed about RAT after watching the PBS documentary “Michael Flynn’s Holy War.” I highly encourage you to take the time to watch that October 18 production.* 

The same thing looks vastly different because of aspect perception. That was the main point of my previous blog post, using the widely-known duck-rabbit illusion. In that article I referred to religious ramifications of aspect perception. This post is about political ramifications.

What you see in the duck-rabbit illusion depends on whether you look to the right or the left of the image. In the political world, there is a huge difference in how the Republican right or the Democratic left sees this nation.

As is clearly shown here, in the Oct. 23 edition of Meet the Press, a recent NBC poll indicates that 79% of Republicans and 81% of Democrats think that the “other Party’s agenda will destroy America.”

What a huge and crucial difference aspect perception makes! The two political parties just see and interpret the current situation in the U.S. in radically diverse ways.

According to Michael Flynn’s perception of America, the future of the country is in grave danger and can only be saved by “spiritual warfare.” He is now leading a “holy war” to save the nation.

As you probably know, Flynn (b. 1958) was a prominent U.S. general, active especially during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In February 2016 Flynn became an advisor to Trump for his presidential campaign, and in January 2017 he was sworn in as Pres. Trump’s first National Security Advisor (NSA).

Soon after being forced to resign as NSA, in December 2017 Flynn pled guilty to a felony charge of “willfully and knowingly” making false statements to the FBI. In November 2020, however, he was issued a presidential pardon by Trump.

Since then, Flynn has been active as one of the most prominent leaders of Christian nationalism. As one of the main speakers at the ReAwaken America Tours, since April of last year he has spoken to numerous enthusiastic audiences of thousands. On Nov. 4-5 he will be with RAT in Branson, Mo.

Perceptions of Michael Flynn vary greatly. In the PBS documentary, pastor Jacqui Lewis is shown as a staunch opponent of Flynn. She exclaims, “It’s our calling to disrupt fake Christianity. And we're not going to be nice about it.” Lewis also declares, “It is a battle for the soul of America.”**

The interviewer, Michelle Smith, comments, “Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis is part of a coalition of religious leaders that opposes what they see as a hijacking of Christianity by figures like Flynn.”

While not included in the documentary, a group known as Faithful America is also actively opposing what they perceive to be the false Christianity of Flynn and his supporters. On their website they identify 20 Christian nationalists whom they say are “false prophets.” Flynn is one of them.

Flynn’s supporters, though, perceive things quite differently. This week I checked out journalist Dave Erickson’s book Framing Flynn: The Scandalous Takedown of an American General (2021) from my local library.

The blurb on the back of the book says that it is an “eye-opening and shocking look at the Obama administration’s scandalous set up of an innocent man—General Michael Flynn—to destroy his livelihood, reputation, and job with the incoming Trump administration.”

Author Erickson obviously perceives the same man in a drastically different way than pastor Lewis and Faithful America. They represent the two sides of Flynn’s “holy war.” The November 8—and Nov. 2024—elections will give some indication of how that “war” will end.

Which side of the “holy war” are you on, and why?

Please note: I am not in the least suggesting that one “side” is as true or viable as the other. My use of the rabbit/duck illusion is only to illustrate how the same thing can be seen in diverse ways, not how each is equally correct.

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* This program was produced by PBS in cooperation with The Associated Press (AP), and the main interviewer throughout is AP correspondent Michelle Smith. On their website, AP, founded in 1846, claims to be “an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting.”

** Lewis is the pastor of Middle Collegiate Church in Manhattan. Here is the link to her informative website.

Aspect Perception: A Duck or a Rabbit?

There is a difference between seeing (or “seeing that”) and “seeing as.” That difference is due to aspect perception according to the noted philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. He used the following image in explaining the meaning and importance of aspect perception. 

Ludwig Wittgenstein is said by some to be the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century, in spite of not being widely known (or understood). He was born in Austria in 1889, taught at the University of Cambridge from 1929 to 1947, and died in England in 1951.

During his lifetime, only one book of his philosophy was published, but he left voluminous manuscripts. Some of those were published posthumously in the 1953 book Philosophical Investigations.

In Part II Section XI of that book, Wittgenstein used the above image, which first appeared in the October 23, 1892, issue of Blätter, a German humor magazine. He used that image to illustrate what he termed aspect perception.

Wittgenstein’s philosophy is not easily grasped. He is one philosopher whom since my graduate school days I thought I ought to read more than I have. Reading and understanding his philosophical views are not easy. But my purpose here is not to explain Wittgenstein’s philosophy.

I am writing this piece in order to think with you about how we humans can “see” the same thing and understand it in completely opposite ways. Here is another illusion, one that was on a German postal card in 1888, four years before the rabbit-duck image was published.

There are newer versions of this image that I have seen many times, but I was surprised to learn just last week that it is sometimes called the “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law” optical illusion.

Depending on which “aspect” you perceive, these images change decisively. The rabbit-duck image changes depending on whether you focus your eyes on the right side or the left side of the drawing. And in the latter, it depends on whether you look at the upper left or the lower right part of the image.

Wittgenstein’s emphasis on aspect perception has religious, as well as political, ramifications. I am indebted to Stephen Law of Oxford University for his thought-provoking essay referring to the duck-rabbit drawing.**

As Law indicates, belief in God may well be far more a way of perceiving things than recognizing “the cogency of certain arguments for the conclusion that God exists.”

Law goes on to say,

Just as some suffer from a kind of aesthetic blindness—they can’t see a particular painting by Pablo Picasso as a powerful expression of suffering—so, some suggest, atheists suffer from a kind of religious blindness that means they’re unable to see the world as it really is: as a manifestation of the divine.

Yes, we would not expect a severely visually impaired person to give an accurate description of a beautiful sunset or the fall splendor of the maple tree I see out my window.

Why should we expect a person who suffers from “religious blindness” to make statements about God as superior to those who have the sight, or insight, that comes from deep faith?

Or, why should those who have a paucity of experience of God think they are qualified to deny the richness of the experience of those who have had, and who continue to have, a deep and ongoing relationship with God?

Law adds a word of caution, though: “Seeing something as a so-and-so doesn’t guarantee that it is a so-and-so.” One can always be mistaken in what they think they “see.” But that is as true for those who “see” no evidence of God as well as for those who do.

So, I encourage those who see only the “old hag” (as she is sometimes called) in the lower image above to shift their eyes upward and you will likely see an attractive young woman.

I also encourage those who see mainly the ugliness of the present world of humans to (metaphorically) shift their eyes “upward.” A change in aspect perception might drastically change what you see—and also help you understand people who see things differently.

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**Law’s article “Do you see a duck or a rabbit: just what is aspect perception?” was posted by aeon.com on July 31, 2018. Aeon is a British digital “magazine of ideas, philosophy and culture” that has been published since 2012.

Note: My next blog post will be partly about the political ramifications of aspect perception.