Religious fundamentalism becomes religious psychosis when employed to coerce the people into collective action against their own interests (and in the interests of someone else). It becomes psychosis when employed to justify self-righteousness and belligerence on the world stage. It becomes psychosis when it imposes itself on democracy.
Religious capitalists have no other choice, you see, once their infallible choice has been made. The perpetrators and followers of religious capitalism necessarily fool themselves on a continuous basis, all the time, until they simply run out of time, i.e., when the people call them aside for an old-fashioned accounting.
It is one thing to justify personal risk-taking by invoking religion. You may work hard, borrow money, buy a house and pray to God that you can stay healthy long enough to get it paid for before you die. Feel free. It is quite another thing to justify collective risk-taking with American values and America's good name in the world by invoking self-righteous religious justifications.
For Bush to do so is the personification of religious psychosis, the very same psychosis that drove Roman imperialism and European colonialism and currently drives religious capitalism. It occurs when one's self-proclaimed political superiority and infallibility takes the form of self-righteousness in thought and word and belligerence in action, which quickly overwhelms one's grasp of human knowledge and common sense logic. The driving factors in religious psychosis are always ignorance, fear, greed and lust for power (to hell with "the people").
There is a western aphorism that says, "You Can't Fool an Old Fooler." It is essentially true because the Old Fooler has already fooled himself right along with fooling everyone else. Inevitable problems emerge when those who have been fooled too often opt not to be fooled anymore and they leave the Old Fooler behind - with support from the fools he did not have to fool in the first place and support from older foolers who have even fooled the Old Fooler. That is a remarkably foolish situation to be in, especially for an Old Fooler at the helm of American democracy.
Bush, the glad-handing salesman that he is, fooled the American people into believing they had real needs to be fulfilled, he fooled them into thinking that they could afford to fulfill those needs, he fooled them into thinking that he knew how to fulfill those needs, and he sold them a bill of goods named Iraq.
The American people ought and need to take heart and mind unto themselves. None of Bush's religious capitalism will have permanence over the People or over their Land, of that the People can be certain, because the entire program of religious capitalism that dominates America is just too damned foolish to be part of a democracy.
Readings
1) Dr. Gerry Lower, Knowing Nothing of God and Failing in Public, Axis of Logic, November, 2005.
2) Dr. Gerry Lower, The Evolutionary "Why" of Religious Capitalism: Enduring Imperialism, Colonialism and Capitalism, Axis of Logic, July, 2005.
Dr. Gerry Lower lives in Eugene, Oregon. His website is at www.jeffersonseyes.com and he can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com .
Religious capitalists have no other choice, you see, once their infallible choice has been made. The perpetrators and followers of religious capitalism necessarily fool themselves on a continuous basis, all the time, until they simply run out of time, i.e., when the people call them aside for an old-fashioned accounting.
It is one thing to justify personal risk-taking by invoking religion. You may work hard, borrow money, buy a house and pray to God that you can stay healthy long enough to get it paid for before you die. Feel free. It is quite another thing to justify collective risk-taking with American values and America's good name in the world by invoking self-righteous religious justifications.
For Bush to do so is the personification of religious psychosis, the very same psychosis that drove Roman imperialism and European colonialism and currently drives religious capitalism. It occurs when one's self-proclaimed political superiority and infallibility takes the form of self-righteousness in thought and word and belligerence in action, which quickly overwhelms one's grasp of human knowledge and common sense logic. The driving factors in religious psychosis are always ignorance, fear, greed and lust for power (to hell with "the people").
Bush, the glad-handing salesman that he is, fooled the American people into believing they had real needs to be fulfilled, he fooled them into thinking that they could afford to fulfill those needs, he fooled them into thinking that he knew how to fulfill those needs, and he sold them a bill of goods named Iraq.
The American people ought and need to take heart and mind unto themselves. None of Bush's religious capitalism will have permanence over the People or over their Land, of that the People can be certain, because the entire program of religious capitalism that dominates America is just too damned foolish to be part of a democracy.
Readings
1) Dr. Gerry Lower, Knowing Nothing of God and Failing in Public, Axis of Logic, November, 2005.
2) Dr. Gerry Lower, The Evolutionary "Why" of Religious Capitalism: Enduring Imperialism, Colonialism and Capitalism, Axis of Logic, July, 2005.
Dr. Gerry Lower lives in Eugene, Oregon. His website is at www.jeffersonseyes.com and he can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com .
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
