the Wild Conceits essay: the A.F.R. as Root Cult born in the founding interval — "Canadian and other non American Root…"
Canadian and other non American Root Cults, in contrast to all but what Phelps and Phelps argue are isolated pockets of antihistorical American stelliformism, persist so queerly in directing their reverent fealty toward principles
Context
The essay dates the A.F.R. to the founding itself — "cultists, locating both their political raison d'etre and their philosophical dasein" in the interval that "preceded... the nearly simultaneous inaugurations of O.N.A.N.ite governance, continental Interdependence, and the commercial subsidization of a lunar O.N.A.N. calendar." The three founding acts of the whole anthology (Gentle's O.N.A.N., Interdependence, Subsidized Time) are here the birth-matrix of its deadliest cell. And the theme's account of what makes them unappeasable: unlike "American stelliformism," these Canadian Root Cults direct "fealty toward principles... activally opposed to the cultists' own individual pleasure, comfort, cui bono, or entertainment" — a fanaticism "outside the ken of... psychosocial science," and therefore the exact opposite of the pleasure-seeking U.S. the Entertainment will kill.