[CTRL] Fwd: [ctrl] RELIGION AND SECRECY IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 12:06:55 -0700

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RELIGION AND SECRECY IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION

The Gentleman, the Prince, and the Simulacrum

Hugh Urban
Ohio State University

 

Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success…Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists… The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

                                                                                          — George W. Bush,  September 23, 2001[1]

 

Secrecy lies at the very core of power.

— Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power [2]   

 

            When contemplating the figure of George W. Bush, the historian of religion—and really, any thoughtful citizen—is presented with a very strange paradox and apparent contradiction. On the one hand, this is by many accounts the most outspokenly religious president in U.S. history—a man who claims to have been not only saved but called by God to political office, who uses extensive references to scripture throughout his public speeches (both explicit and subtly double-coded), who has denounced certain nations as part of an insidious "Axis of Evil," and who promises to bring freedom as a "Gift from the Almighty" to benighted regions of the world like the Middle East.  Bush's remarkable display of piety has been noted not just by the Religious Right, his strongest base of support,[3] and the mainstream media,[4] but also increasingly by historians of religion.[5]  Strong morality and grounding in faith have been the bulwarks of his administration and major reasons for his widespread public appeal; and, according to some estimates, they are among the most important factors in the 2004 elections.[6]  

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Yet on the other hand, the Bush administration is also arguably the most secretive in U.S. history, displaying an intense preoccupation with information control. Bush and Cheney have been described by various observers as having an "obsession with secrecy,"[7] even a "secrecy fetish"[8] that is "the most secretive of our lifetime"[9] and "worse than Watergate."[10] From his first days in office, Bush was busy at work trying to conceal his own Texas gubernatorial records and the presidential records of Ronald Reagan (and those of then vice-President, George H.W. Bush); meanwhile, vice-President Cheney was assembling a highly secretive energy task force, while refusing  Congress knowledge of its membership or workings. This concern with secrecy has intensified dramatically in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Not only has there been much debate over the question of what the administration knew, did not know, or ignored about possible terrorist attacks prior to 9/11, but more importantly, there has been intense controversy over the administration's use of intelligence to justify its invasion of Iraq in 2003. The accusations of dissimulation do not, however, end with Iraq. In addition, Bush has been charged with concealing many other sensitive matters, such as ties to corporate scandals like Enron, the effects of its environmental policies, and, well, really almost everything. As some critics have suggested, the Bush administration simply dissembles as a matter of policy.[11]

At the same time, ironically, this administration has also displayed a remarkable preoccupation with the surveillance and monitoring of its own citizenry. Particularly in the wake of 9/11 and new measures like the USA Patriot Act, public rights to privacy have been significantly restricted, even as the government's transparency has been radically reduced.[12]  

So how, then, are we to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory aspects of the current administration, this intense public display of religiosity and this obsession with concealment?  The kind of secrecy being deployed by the Bush administration is clearly very different from the kind familiar to most readers of Esoterica. It has little if anything to do with the doctrines of “correspondences” and “living nature,” with the use of spiritual “imagination” or “the experience of transmutation” described by Antoine Faivre; nor does it involve the sort of “metaphysical gnosis” and “cosmological gnosis” described by Arthur Versluis.[13] It is, however, no less relevant to our understanding of religion and secrecy, and it forces those of us who are interested in esotericism to deal seriously with other uses of religious secrecy that have more explicit political implications. The Bush administration, we will see,  does use many strategies and tactics that have much in common with traditional Western esotericism – strategies of rhetorical double-coding, the art of “writing between the lines” and a skillful use of obscurity.[14] Yet the ends for which these strategies are used are quite different, having less to do with spiritual transformation than with raw political power, in Canetti’s sense.

 In this article, therefore, I will suggest that we look at the Bush administration through the lenses of three controversial theorists who have had much to say about secrecy in both its religious and political dimensions: the German-born political philosopher, Leo Strauss, the Florentine philosopher, Niccolò Machiavelli, and the French postmodern theorist, Jean Baudrillard. I have chosen these three, seemingly disparate, theorists because they correspond to and help make sense of three of the most important forces at work in the Bush administration, namely: 1) the Neoconservative movement, which is heavily indebted to Strauss' thought and has a powerful presence in the Bush administration through figures like Paul Wolfowitz (a student of Strauss) and the Project for a New American Century;[15]  2) the manipulations of Bush's pious public image by advisors like Karl Rove (a reader of Machiavelli) and Vice-President Dick Cheney (often compared to Machiavelli), who have used the President's connections with the Christian Right for political advantage; [16] and 3) an astonishingly uncritical mainstream media, whose celebration of Bush's image as a virtuous man of faith and general silence about his less admirable activities is truly "hyperreal," in Baudrillard's sense of the term.

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Bush himself, I will argue, lies at the intersection of these three (and other) forces, and his political persona has in turn been constructed in multiple ways by his advisors and constituents: he is thus at once the Gentleman, the Prince, and the Simulacrum. The first of these is Strauss’ term for the political figure who serves as the public voice of religion and morality for the wise man or philosopher, who is in fact the one with the real knowledge and power. For Strauss, both secrecy and religion are necessary to the functioning of society: the former protects the “vulgar” public from harsh truths that would endanger them, while the latter gives them faith in the laws that govern society.[17] The second term is of course from Machiavelli, whose work has been taken up by Neoconservative thinkers like Michael Ledeen who call for a neo-Machiavellian use of both religion and deception in American politics.[18] And the third is the term developed by Baudrillard to refer to the new era of simulation and hyper-reality that characterizes much of culture and politics in media-driven, late capitalist consumer society. For Baudrillard, the age of the simulacrum in which we live is one in which “the secret” no longer conceals some hidden truth, but simply conceals the fact that there is no truth or reality beneath the appearance.[19]

After a brief discussion of Bush's self-presentation as a deeply religious individual and "Prodigal Son," I will then look at his administration through the three lenses of the Gentleman, the Prince and the Simulacrum. To conclude, I will suggest that the case of the Bush administration forces us to re-think the political role of the scholar of religion and to take a much more active, outspoken and critical role in relation to the powers that be.

 

 

I. THE PRODIGAL SON:  Religion and Secrecy in the Bush White House

 

I know we're all sinners, but I've accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior.

                                               —George W. Bush, when asked what argument he would give to gain entry to heaven[20]

 

The centrality of religious faith in the life and politics of George W. Bush is surely no secret.  The narrative that he and his biographers tell of his life is clearly modeled on that of the prodigal son—the young man who fritters his early life away on alcohol and sin, only to find God and return to his rightful place in his father's former occupation.  As he recounts his own redemption-narrative, Bush had become mired in the world of business and the overuse of alcohol, and so turned in his darker hours to the study of scripture.  The beginning of this conversion occurred during a summer weekend in 1985, when evangelist Billy Graham visited George and Laura at their summer house in Kennebunkport, Maine. The Reverend, with his magnetic presence and warmth, planted a “seed of salvation" in his soul that soon blossomed into a new birth:

Reverend Graham planted a mustard seed in my soul, a seed that grew over the next year. He led me to the path, and I began walking. And it was the beginning of a change in my life. …[T]hat weekend my faith took on a new meaning. It was the beginning of a new walk where I would recommit my heart to Jesus Christ. [21]

More- http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeVII/Secrecy.htm

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