Damn right. Hmm, looks like I should post your last PM and my reply in here for kar... I mean, for the public's benefit.

[Konkvistador messaged me:]

Orwell is dead

and soon Žižek and Chomsky will follow.

You put your hope in the decentness of Universalism as a replacement for Christianity.

I don't endorse that position because modern Universalism seems to be suffering more or less the same malaise that killed its predecessor.

I don't know what will happen next.

[I replied:]

You put your hope in the decentness of universalism as a replacement for Christianity.

No, I put my hope in the fact that it is Christianity, mostly intact or even refined under the surface. It was led astray not by immorality but by a philosophical and epistemic error - the folly of rationalization, the is-to-ought thing, "deriving" preferences from "pure reason", being ashamed of making a seemingly arbitrary stand on an issue, assuming the inevitability of their particular "progress"; you see what I mean.

The irony is that most branches of "Christianity" that remain openly theistic, like Catholicism, still retain many advantages such as better-maintained Chesterton's fences, but not because they're a better living fork - they merely remained a century or so behind the "core", Universalist Christianity, and see no other way to advance. Either they'll become fossils unable to handle new reality, or they will keep following in Universalism's footsteps without the vision or the imagination to adjust the course.

I hope that, should this single big error of Universalism be somehow mended - not necessarily or solely through a return to theism - then we can have the good things back and filter the really bad ones. This is why I'm looking into the relationship between the radical/totalizing/"core" current in Christianity and its Gnostic/less-worldly side. As I was beginning to say, I see this "1968 counterrevolution" as the former voluntarily surrendering to the latter in the face of the Left's Orwell-like fears. However, the resulting paralysis of the Left led to a vacuum of power, where the Right are kept away from institutions by the Left's massive aura of influence, yet the New Left is unwilling and afraid to approach any really important matters. It's not about some mysterious lack of "personal responsibility", "accountability", etc - there were plenty of unaccountable but good rulers. It's about the psychology of it, turning inwards instead of forging any sort of a path.

And, speaking of that last one:

(I can't resist mentioning Evangelion yet again. I'll do a full, detailed look at its place in historical and political context one day. Malaise is certainly its central theme.)