(Side note: the song “Losing My Religion,” came on while I was preparing this post.)

One line that caught my attention in Kirsch’s book as we read from the second half was this line: “Apocalyptic fancies, no matter how weird or woozy, were capable of taking on the quality of revealed truth. . . . The sure and urgent expectation of the end-times was, quite literally, a fact of life in the middle ages” (Kirsch 157).  The thing that is most hard for me to grasp is what it is like to live in a world not where we are aware that some people think this is a real way the history of our world is going, but a general political belief held by society.

I can’t help but think of this sort of “group think” and be reminded of things like the current political state of America because there is the phenomenon of having the population (mostly) split itself into two like-minded camps of thought where religion plays different, and yet specific roles. I was reading a quote from Sandra Fluke who spoke at the Democratic National Convention and she said “Over the last six months, I’ve seen what these two futures look like. And six months from now, we’ll all be living in one, or the other. But only one.”  Now, full disclosure, I think that political elections are extremely important and take it seriously, but reading that statement, I actually found myself a tad bit anxious like the “fate of the world,” rested in my hands. It is really interesting to look at how political speak uses the idea of a future history, and of a sort of apocalypse not only in its speeches against other campaigns, but in general. I would need to do more research, but I am super curious to see how this past election utilizes religious talk, and apocalyptic talk, as part of its “language arsenal.”