Now we come at last to the heart of
darkness. Now we know, from their own words, that the
Bush Regime is a cult -- a cult whose god is Power,
whose adherents believe that they alone control reality,
that indeed they create the world anew with each act of
their iron will. And the goal of this will --
undergirded by the cult's supreme virtues of war, fury
and blind faith -- is likewise openly declared:
"Empire."
You think this is an exaggeration? Then
heed the words of the White House itself: a "senior
adviser" to the president, who, as The New York Times
reports, explained the cult to author Ron Suskind in the
heady pre-war days of 2002.
First, the top Bush insider mocked the
journalist and all those "in what we call the
reality-based community," i.e., people who "believe that
solutions emerge from your judicious study of
discernible reality." Suskind's attempt to defend the
principles of reason and enlightenment cut no ice with
the Bush-man. "That's not the way the world really works
anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create
our own reality," he said. "And while you're studying
that reality, we'll act again, creating other new
realities, which you can study too, and that's how
things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and
you, all of you, will be left to just study what we
do."
Anyone with any knowledge of
20th-century history will know that this same
megalomaniacal outburst could have been made by a
"senior adviser" to Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini or Mao.
Indeed, as scholar Juan Cole points out, the dogma of
the Bush Cult is identical with the "reality-creating"
declaration of Mao's "Little Red Book": "It is possible
to accomplish any task whatsoever." For Bush, as for
Mao, "discernible reality" has no meaning: Political,
cultural, economic, scientific truth -- even the
fundamental processes of nature, even human nature
itself -- must give way to the faith-statements of
ideology, ruthlessly applied by unbending zealots.
Thus: The conquered will welcome their
killers. The poor will be happy to slave for the rich.
The Earth can sustain any amount of damage without
lasting harm. The loss of rights is essential to
liberty. War without end is the only way to peace.
Cronyism is the path to universal prosperity. Dissent is
evil; dissenters are "with the terrorists." But God is
with the Leader; whatever he does is righteous, even if
in the eyes of unbelievers -- the "reality-based
community" -- his acts are criminal: aggressive war that
kills thousands of innocent people, widespread torture,
secret assassinations, rampant corruption, electoral
subversion.
Indeed, the doctrine "Gott mit Uns" is
the linchpin of the Bush Cult. Tens of millions of
Americans have now embraced the Cult's fusion of Bush's
leadership with Divine Will. As a Bush volunteer in
Missouri told Suskind: "I just believe God controls
everything, and God uses the president to keep evil down
... God gave us this president to be the man to protect
the nation at this time." God appointed Bush; thus
Bush's acts are godly. It's a circular, self-confirming
mind-set that can't be penetrated by reason or facts,
can't be shaken by crimes and scandals. That's why
Bush's core support -- comprising almost half of the
electorate -- stays rock-solid, despite the manifest
failures of his administration. It's based on blind
faith, on poisonous fantasy: simple, flattering ("We're
uniquely good, God's special nation!"), comforting,
complete -- so unlike the harsh, bewildering, splintered
shards of reality.
This closed mind-set is constantly
reinforced by the ubiquitous right-wing media -- evoking
the threat of demonic enemies on every side,
relentlessly manufacturing righteous outrage -- and by
Bush's appearances (epiphanies?) at his carefully
screened rallies, where even the slightest hint of
demurral from his Godly greatness is ruthlessly
expunged. For example, three schoolteachers were ejected
from a Bush rally under threat of arrest last week. Not
for protesting -- they hadn't said a word -- but merely
for wearing T-shirts that read, "Protect Our Civil
Liberties." Thus the faithful "create the new reality"
of undivided loyalty to the Leader.
The dogma of Bush's
godliness is no rhetorical flourish; it has been forged
with blood and iron. Consider General Jerry Boykin, who,
in uniform, toured churches across the United States,
declaring openly that "George W. Bush was not elected by
the majority of the American people; he was appointed by
God" to lead his "Christian nation" against Satan and
the "idol-worshippers" of Islam, as Salon.com reports.
Bush then made Boykin the Pentagon's chief of military
intelligence -- the point man for wringing information
out of Islamic captives in the "war on terror." The
result -- confirmed even by the Pentagon's own anemic
investigations -- was a military intelligence system
gone berserk, systematically torturing and occasionally
murdering prisoners who, as the Red Cross notes, were
overwhelmingly innocent of any crime. Bush signed orders
removing these prisoners from the protection of U.S. and
international law; Boykin's boys then visited divine
wrath upon the heathens. But these atrocities cannot be
crimes, because Bush and Boykin are, in the general's
phraseology, "Kingdom warriors" in the "Army of
God."
This isn't politics as usual -- not even
an extreme version of it, not McCarthyism revisited,
Reaganism times two, or Nixon in a Stetson hat. There's
never been anything like it in American life before: a
messianic cult backed by vast corporate power, a massive
cadre of religious zealots, a highly disciplined party,
an overwhelming media machine and the mammoth force of
history's most powerful government -- all led by men who
"create new realities" out of lies, blood, theft and
torment.
Their "empire" -- their Death-Cult,
their power-mania -- is an old madness rising again.
Annotations
Without a Doubt New
York Times, Oct. 17, 2004
Suskind on Bush: 'I Can Fly!' Juan Cole, Informed Comment, Oct. 17,
2004
Teachers' T-Shirts Bring Bush Speech
Ouster The Bend Bugle (Oregon),
Oct. 14, 2004
The Religious Warrior of Abu
Ghraib The Guardian, May 20,
2004
Reality-Based Reporting Salon.com, Oct. 20, 2004
Pat Robertson: Bush Believed There Would be
No U.S. Casualties in Iraq CNN,
Oct. 19, 2004
Dreams of Empire New
York Review of Books, Oct. 19, 2004
The Brownshirting of America Antiwar.com, Oct. 16, 2004
At Cheney's Side, Controversy (Author of
'Torture Memos') Boston Post, Oct.
17, 2004
Has Bush Lost His Reason? The Observer, Oct. 17, 2003
Infiltrating the U.S. Military: Gen. Boykin's
Kingdom Warriors Yurica Report,
Oct. 12, 2004
The Army's Three-Star Zealot Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Oct. 18, 2003
Evangelical General Sees War as Religious
Battle Los Angeles Times, Oct. 16,
2003
The Abu Ghraib Supplementary
Documents Center for Public
Intergrity, Oct. 8, 2004
The Persian Gulf Empire and Perpetual
War Informed Comment, Oct. 14,
2004
Pentagon Rewards Abu Ghraib
Accomplices The New Standard, Oct.
18, 2004
Republican Presidential Campaign Blasphemous:
UM Bishop The Charleston Gazette,
Oct. 8, 2004
A War Without Reason New York Times, Oct. 18, 2004
The Other War: On Civil
Liberties CounterPunch, Oct. 18,
2004
Orwellian Twist on the Campaign The Nation, Oct. 18, 2004
Delusions of Empire Antiwar.com, Oct. 20, 2004
A Fatal Faith in the Cleansing Winds of
War International Herald Tribune,
Oct. 20, 2004
Why is War-Torn Iraq Giving $190,000 to Toys
R Us? The Guardian, Oct. 16,
2004
Bush's Crimes: The Tie to Abu
Ghraib New Times, Sept. 30,
2004
Now on DVD: The Passion of the
Bush New York Times, Oct. 3,
2004
The
Roots of Torture Newsweek, May 24,
2004 issue
Rendition: The 800-Pound Gorilla in US
Foreign Policy The Guardian, July
28, 2004
The Interrogation Documents National Security Archives, July 13,
2004
The President's Stance on Torture: Gonzales
Letter Washington Post, Oct. 4,
2004
Rumsfeld's Dirty War on Terror The Guardian, Sept. 13, 2004
I Don't Care What the International Lawyers
Say, We Are Going to Kick Some Ass George W. Bush, quoted in "Against All
Enemies," Richard Clarke, Free Press, March 22,
2004
The Logic of Torture New York Review of Books, May 27, 2004
America's Dirty Torture Secret The Guardian, Sept. 10, 2003
A U.S. License to Kill Village Voice, Feb. 21, 2003
Justice Memo Explained How to Skip Prisoner
Rights New York Times, May 21,
2004
US Struggled Over How Far to Push
Tactics Washington Post, June 23,
2004
Justice Department Memo Says Torture May be
Justified Washington Post, June
13, 2004
Lawyers Decided Torture Bans Didn't Bind
Bush New York Times, June 8,
2004
The Torturers Antiwar.com, June 14, 2004
Fear Up Harsh: Diaries of Abu Ghraib
Interrogator Indymedia.org, June
8, 2004
Documents Build a Case for Working Outside
the Law in Interrogations New York
Times, June 9, 2004
Interrogation Abuses Were 'Approved at the
Highest Levels,' The Daily
Telegraph, June 13, 2004
Tortured Meanings The
Guardian, June 12, 2004
The Secret World of US Jails The Observer, June 13, 2004
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