Today in Both Sides Do It: Heresy in the Time of Ptolemy, Blasphemy in the Time of Brooks

The Council [of Trent] prohibits interpreting Scripture against the common consensus of the Holy Fathers; and if Your Paternity wants to read not only the Holy Fathers, but also the modern commentaries on Genesis, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Joshua, you will find all agreeing in the literal interpretation that the sun is in heaven and turns around the earth with great speed, and that the earth is very far from heaven and sits motionless at the center of the world.

-- Robert Bellarmine, Italian Jesuit and Cardinal Inquisitor of the Catholic Church, 1615

Four hundred years ago the mighty Roman Catholic Church was faced with a crisis of fact which, in turn, became a crisis of faith and legitimacy.   The Church had built their hierarchy and theology around Ptolemaic  Geocentrism -- around the theory that the Earth was the center of the universe and the rest of the cosmos existed as a light show embedded in a series of "celestial spheres" that surround the Earth.  And once the Church had irrevocably integrated that cosmology into its official dogma, any challenge to that cosmology was automatically registered as a threat to the authority of the Church.

The place of God and Man and Earth in the cosmos was considered a settled matter until a small group of Heliocentrists began quietly speaking heresy.  Building on the exhaustive observational data compiled by Tycho Brahe (who nonetheless believed to the very end that the cosmos circles the Earth) and new observations of Venus and Jupiter made possible by the invention of the telescope, these astronomers began putting it around that, just maybe, the Earth was not the center of all things.

And as all you nerds already know, one of the most famous of the heretics was Galileo Galilei.

This didn't sit well with the church Fathers so, in 1616, they took Galileo quietly aside and warned him to shut the hell up.  Which he did, because Mama Galilei didn't raise no fools.  But he never stopped trusting the data and never stopped tinkering with his Sun-centered cosmology in private.  Then, in 1623 when Pope Gregory XV was kicked upstairs and the College of Cardinals gave Urban VIII the Big Hat, Galileo thought he was in the clear -- after all, before his papal election, back when he was just Maffeo "Good Times" Barberini, the new pope had been a friend and admirer of Galileo.

Galileo found out just how wrong he had been after he published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in 1632 and was hauled up in front of the Inquisition, tried and found guilty of suspected heresy for defending the Earth’s motion, and thus denying the authority of the Church.  (Since he was tried for "suspected heresy" and not "formal heresy",  he was wasn't burned at the stake but instead was put under house arrest and his work was banned.)

So take a couple of steps back and ask yourself this:  What material difference would it have made to the lives of ordinary people under Catholic rule in the 17th century to wake up one day to find that the Church had kicked Ptolemy to the curb and endorsed the Copernican system?

The answer is, "None."  Psychologically and culturally it would have come as a shock, but it would have had no effect on births or marriages or deaths.  On the building of cathedrals or the planting and harvesting of crops.  As Sherlock Holmes famously said in A Study in Scarlet, when John Watson  was shocked to learn that Holmes was unaware that the Earth revolved around the Sun:

“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”  

But to the 17th century Catholic Church, heliocentrism was considered a very real and existential threat because it was an attack the temporal authority the Church.  Because the Church was the government: the absolute and final authority on all matters from the most mundane to who got into Heaven and who got sent to Hell. And that authority was based entirely on the Church's claim of divine infallibility, handed down in a direct line from Jesus Christ to Galileo's friend, Maffeo  Barberini.

Which is why, once Barberini became Pontifex Maximus, it no longer mattered whether or not he had warm feelings for Galileo.  As the divinely-appointed leader of the most powerful institution in the world. his job was to advance the interests of that institution and ruthlessly defend the authority of that institution against all threats and challenges.

And the dogma of the absolute authority the Catholic Church left absolutely no room to admit even the possibility that the Church might be wrong about anything -- certainly not on a matter as fundamental to its theology as the literal location of the Earth within the heavens.  And so rather than face facts that threatened its institutional power, the Church committed itself to a doomed, centuries-long war against observable Reality.

Which, in the end, Reality won.  Because, in the end, Reality always wins:

Vatican admits Galileo was right

Now we are engaged in a remarkably similar struggle between observable Reality and the failed dogmas of another deeply-entrenched, world-bestriding institution.  Like the Ptolemaic Geocentrists of the 17th century Catholic Church, the 21st century American political press has staked their authority on a radically false doctrine.  The doctrine of "Both Sides Do It".

And in doing so they have turned American political journalism into a suffocating theology, complete with its own orthodoxies, rituals and icons.

A High and Holy Church of Both Sides Do It.

A church with its own venerated Pope --

David Brooks, Pope Bias the First, Bishop of the Acela Corridor, aka, Vicar of Both Sides, Successor of the Prince of the Kristols, Supreme Pontiff of the Washington Beltway, Primate of Fake Centrism, Archbishop and Metropolitan of Humility, Sovereign of True Conservatism's City State and Servant of the servants of the Church of Lyin'tology

-- and College of Cardinals.

A church which ruthlessly wields its enormous institutional power to reward the faithful and punish heretics and blasphemers.

And so, as a proud heretic who has written literally thousands of posts about what a catastrophe the High and Holy Church of Both Sides Do It has been for our democracy, I have these words of advice for those of you out there who still wait on the faint hope that the American political press will somehow snap out of it and do their duty.

Stop it.

Just stop it.

Stop huffing the ether-soaked rag of Edward R. Murrow nostalgia and praying for the press to "do their job" because enforcing the dogma of Both Siderism in the face of overwhelming evidence that Both Siderism is a toxic lie Is Their Job.

Until you accept that reality, nothing the press is doing as our democracy collapses around us is going to make any sense.

After you accept that reality, everything the press is doing makes perfect sense.

If you still need need proof of any of this, the evidence is to be found all around you all the time.  All you need to do is pay attention during any given week to the Cardinals of the High and Holy Church of Both Sides Do It as they perform the rituals of their faith. 

For example, this from CNN Politics Reporter and Editor-at-Large, Chris Cillizza

The whole thing -- even for someone like me who gets paid to watch this stuff -- was, well, unwatchable.

A bunch of adults yelling at one another over matters that almost no one watching understood or cares about. https://t.co/i2Fn83a8cx

— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) December 9, 2019

Jay Rosen comments on yet another abomination from The New York Times last week:

"Each side took what it wanted from the day’s developments and drew the conclusions that best reflected its views." https://t.co/QtCg2jKq89 This is now the best the Times can do. It has maneuvered itself into a null space, where it can only repeat this observation over and over.

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) December 10, 2019

And this:

New write-thru. Exclusive: Barr thinks FBI may have acted in bad faith in probing Trump campaign https://t.co/INtENgckNz via @nbcnews

— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) December 10, 2019

And this:

Trump to sign executive order targeting anti-Semitism on college campuses. @maggieNYT https://t.co/BXYVXjJ6pJ

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) December 10, 2019

And this:

On the day of impeachment, The NY Times runs with FBI abuses against Trump as main headline. Baquet must go. @nomoremister @DougJBalloon @ElieNYC @Yastreblyansky @joan_mediator @Mr_Electrico

— Boswood (@Bosengood) December 12, 2019

And this:

In a Polarized Era, Will Impeachment Become a ‘New Normal’? ⁦@hillhulse⁩ https://t.co/7EDW1spW3q

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) December 13, 2019

And this:

The Breach Widens as Congress Nears a Partisan Impeachment

Fleeting efforts at persuasion by members of the Judiciary Committee gave way to disputes over basic facts during a marathon debate over articles of impeachment.

And this:

Apparently “voters outside the beltway”, in Michigan are all white Republicans.

What a miserable mess this show is. https://t.co/HzD3yQ2TMS

— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) December 15, 2019

And this:

The New York Times' impeachment coverage devolves into Republican talking points

And this:

McCain is proposing the feel-good politics of fools. She would abandon any sense of right or wrong in order to promote a false balance. This is the most dangerous of all mainstream political stances, as it undermines truth, deepens divisions and strengthens the hand of autocrats. https://t.co/YB2Nl5uLGv

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) December 17, 2019

And this:

Trump appears resilient as he faces the "very ugly word" of impeachment https://t.co/PkoXLX0CsA

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 18, 2019

It took more than three centuries of Reality continuously kicking the Catholic Church in the face for it to finally cry "Uncle" and formally concede that, yes, the Earth really does rotate on its axis and orbit the Sun.  So I am moved to wonder how many centuries of continuous ridicule and humiliation it will take for the American political press to be forced to concede that Both Sides Don't.

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