Like it or not we are stuck in a psychological dilemma fueled by the collision of two toxic groups""groups with deadly shadows created by literalized Christian monotheism and literalized Islamic monotheism""both fundamentalist, both virulent strains of group-think, both after mental territory, economic and political power. When one group's god is the only god, all other gods must be inferior. When one group's political view is the only view, all other political systems must be inferior. Consequently, intolerance is one of the chief characteristics of the fundamentalist political shadow. In this manner monotheistic religions, like a contagious disease, spread violence and immoral behaviors. The fact that fundamentalist cults, whether Christian, Islamic, or any other denomination are able to recruit and brainwash legions of followers illustrates a confounding global illiteracy about rudimentary group dynamics.
One of the symptoms of fanaticism is the belief that one's mission has been "blessed or even commanded by God," says Dr. Norman Doidge, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. George W. Bush, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, told Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, "God told me to strike at Al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East." For most psychologists, Bush's "God made me do it" sounds a lot like schizophrenia, a malady defined as "a group of psychotic disorders usually characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions, and hallucinations." In every sense of the word, destructive, group-based beliefs are the real weapons of mass destruction that we all need to be very worried about.
"God wanted me to be President," said George W. Bush. "God is my co-pilot," went a World War II slogan. In World War I, "Clergymen created posters showing Jesus dressed in khaki and firing a machine gun." The bishop of London urged his fellow Christians to "kill the good as well as the bad" kill the young men as well as the old" kill those who have shown kindness to our wounded as well as those friends""(16)""Christianity's militant shadow! Regarding Iraq, Lieutenant General Boykin declared that our "spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus."(17) "We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name," Bush declared when announcing his "strategy" for his evangelical crusade"(18) Thus, warfare is applied theology. And from either side of the bloody plain, "every war is a just war, a battle between the forces of good and evil,"(19) a ghastly, incurable, repetition""the darkness of utter evil created by what appear to be the noblest of ideals.
Caught in the consequences of this shadow boxing, we find ourselves compelled to live in a constant state of hypocrisy, burying more and more of our own individual sense of real compassion and charity in the graveyard of our collective dark side, covering our self-deception and shame with the rags of hollow slogans from "mouths that pray." Ironically, "hypocrisy," as Hillman points out, "holds the nation together so that it can preach, and practice what it does not preach. It makes possible armories of mass destruction side by side with the proliferation of churches, cults, and charities"(20)""the bright "good" side covering a very destructive dark side.
This fundamentalist, political shadow has become ever more insidious as their ideological assault erodes the constitutional separation of church and state""a separation that marked a stunning acceleration of individual human freedom, establishing a nation that respected the tension between two old enemies: Enlightenment rationalism and organized religion. Americans lived no longer under religious totalitarianism. Instead they lived in an age of religious freedom and an age of reason. America embodied the revolutionary notion that only a clean separation of church and state can guarantee freedom from religious tyranny and true religious freedom.
Religious fundamentalist incursions into American political life as well as persistent attacks on individual freedom are not new. In 1776 "conservatives" around the world-- priests, state-supported religion, Monarchy, aristocracy,""vigorously denounced and attacked the Declaration of Independence. In 1962 Supreme Court Justice Black described the intent of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause: History had demonstrated time and again that "a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion."(21) The American historian, Clinton Rossiter wrote: "The twin doctrines of separation of church and state and liberty of individual conscience are the marrow of our democracy, if not indeed America's most magnificent contribution to the freeing of Western man."(22)
Psychological projection of a group shadow tends to make the enemy appear to be far more dangerous and "evil" than actual reality. The U.S. is "the Great Satan," and they (terrorists) are going to "destroy civilization." For example, consider our declaration of a "War" on Terror that has created a shadow-inflation enormously elevating the status and celebrity of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda to that of a nation state or even a world power when in actuality we are dealing with scattered cells of cult victims who have been brainwashed by militant, fundamentalist Islamic cult leaders into believing that mass murder is the way into Paradise. Terrorists are what they are, no less, no more: extremely dangerous, criminal psychopaths manufactured by a set of powerful, destructive group dynamics.
One of the best ways to observe a group's dark side is to look at what is particularly upsetting to our group""what "we" (or they) are accusing someone else or some other group of doing. Take the political storm over Newsweek's report about the Koran being flushed down the toilet at Gitmo. The Bush cadre was suddenly VERY "upset" that Newsweek printed an allegedly inaccurate story as a result of supposedly faulty information from one of their "trusted sources"""a story that "seriously damaged" our image in the Arab world. Of course it follows that Islamic fundamentalists' reaction to our disrespect for the Koran also exposes their group shadow, a dark side crawling with their own savage disrespect for human life as in killing innocent people and their violent intolerance for different beliefs and views.
Now we can see more of the George W. Bush group's dark underbelly, fundamentalist politics' long heavy bag. The Bush administration""we were told""went to war in Iraq because of allegedly "faulty intelligence" from trusted sources. Eight months before the invasion of Iraq the Downing Street Memo (""But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."),(23) provided even more proof that the U.S. and Britain "fixed" intelligence in order to support the Bush administration's war plans. The REAL damage to America's image, the REAL destruction of innocent lives began when George W. Bush and a handful of hired mercenaries unnecessarily invaded an already impoverished Arab nation that had nothing whatsoever to do with the September 11th tragedy.
Fundamentalist politicians consistently blame and accuse other individuals and other groups, projecting their own disowned darkness: they are part of the "Axis of Evil," they are mass murderers; they are undemocratic; those people don't value life, they "hate freedom," it's a "Liberal conspiracy." Saint Augustine's directive comes to mind: "All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to demons"""a perfect characterization of fundamentalism's group-think that insures infantile irresponsibility while spreading mass paranoia. Faced with probing questions about the Patriot Act, John Ashcroft (a devout member of a Pentacostal sect) told a senate panel, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends."(24) Mark Twain would have seen right through all this shadow-speak, language intended to "demonize" and kill any serious criticism. Twain once wrote: "Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutation of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."(25)
When someone shines a spotlight into a group's dark side it arouses, almost without fail, righteous indignation along with virulent, "kill-the-messenger" attacks. That is also why it is so utterly frustrating to have any meaningful, rational discussion or collaboration with such people; you can never quite reach the real person. Instead you are stonewalled; you keep getting programmed, predictable, group-speak responses and jargon designed to abort any real scrutiny of the group's always secretive dark side. Exposing torture and gross violations of the Geneva Convention means we are guilty of "not supporting our troops." In his famous book On Liberty, John Stuart Mill maintained that silencing an opinion is a "particular evil." If the opinion is right, we are "robbed of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth"; and if it's wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in "its collision with error."
"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders," said Hermann Goring, at his trial in Nuremberg. He added: "This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country." George W. Bush brings up Bin Laden and 9/11 over and over: "The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September 11."(26) Constant repetition of certain ideas is a common method of indoctrination used in destructive cults. "It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion," declared Josef Goebbles, the Nazi propaganda minister, who knew that tyrannical governments require brainwashed followers. And here's George W's not quite so articulate fundamentalist equivalent: "See, in my line of work, you got to keep repeating things over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda," quipped our self-titled "War President" in a 24 May 2005 speech.
So the Bush administration "fixes" intelligence reports, "fixes" scientific data on climate change and greenhouse gases,(27) "fixes" reality on the ground in Iraq for the unthinking, uncritical, patriotic, loyal, citizens. These so-called "fixes" are really "lies"""the Bush group's program to "supervise the formation of public opinion," as Goebbles stated. Indeed, the purpose of all propaganda is to program individuals to act according to group beliefs and aims.
Turn these hypnotic phrases around and we can again see into our own shadow: two fundamentalist cults locked in another lethal embrace, an "adversarial symbiosis," a system that guarantees that neither side will have to face their own shadow, reminiscent of the "cold war"""Russia and the United States""the latter having created nuclear weapons technology while the former copies it and both proceed to manufacture and infect the planet with over 60,000 nuclear weapons""enough destructive power to end all life on the planet many times over. Never mind the fact that the United States actually dropped two atomic bombs on civilian populations in Japan during the Second World War. Bush precisely articulated his own treacherous dark side when he announced, "The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."(28)
Presidential scholar, Michael Genovese suggests that 9/11 helped to create a mass illusion: "The public needed to believe that [Bush] had grown," so "we chose to see him "as bigger, better and different than he was."(29) You could say that we temporarily projected a "savior" image onto the president; psychologists call this the "halo effect," the same sort of illusion that can make quite ordinary people suddenly appear to be superhuman, until the truth rattles our projections and reality returns.
The most insidious face of the ever-darkening shadow of evangelical, fundamentalist politics and its bright, shining slogan, "compassionate conservatism," is the in-humane, COMPASSIONLESS disregard for the suffering of others. Of course war is not compassionate for either side. So-called "compassionate" conservatives ignore preventable human tragedies like the ongoing genocide in Darfur, mass starvation in Nigeria, or the recent genocide in Rowanda, which was ignored by the entire world but for a few U. N. peacekeeping remnants. George W's "Compassion" for the corporate world is a big part of fundamentalism's economic shadow. "Compassionate" conservatives care more about the welfare of corporate America than for human suffering. Hypocritical, shadow-laden "compassion" is not new. Hitler and Stalin were two of the most vigorous "pro-lifers" of all time, as were numerous other tyrants. They (Hitler and Stalin) also criminalized previously legal abortions immediately upon taking power.(30)
One of the symptoms of fanaticism is the belief that one's mission has been "blessed or even commanded by God," says Dr. Norman Doidge, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. George W. Bush, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, told Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, "God told me to strike at Al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East." For most psychologists, Bush's "God made me do it" sounds a lot like schizophrenia, a malady defined as "a group of psychotic disorders usually characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions, and hallucinations." In every sense of the word, destructive, group-based beliefs are the real weapons of mass destruction that we all need to be very worried about.
"God wanted me to be President," said George W. Bush. "God is my co-pilot," went a World War II slogan. In World War I, "Clergymen created posters showing Jesus dressed in khaki and firing a machine gun." The bishop of London urged his fellow Christians to "kill the good as well as the bad" kill the young men as well as the old" kill those who have shown kindness to our wounded as well as those friends""(16)""Christianity's militant shadow! Regarding Iraq, Lieutenant General Boykin declared that our "spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus."(17) "We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name," Bush declared when announcing his "strategy" for his evangelical crusade"(18) Thus, warfare is applied theology. And from either side of the bloody plain, "every war is a just war, a battle between the forces of good and evil,"(19) a ghastly, incurable, repetition""the darkness of utter evil created by what appear to be the noblest of ideals.
Caught in the consequences of this shadow boxing, we find ourselves compelled to live in a constant state of hypocrisy, burying more and more of our own individual sense of real compassion and charity in the graveyard of our collective dark side, covering our self-deception and shame with the rags of hollow slogans from "mouths that pray." Ironically, "hypocrisy," as Hillman points out, "holds the nation together so that it can preach, and practice what it does not preach. It makes possible armories of mass destruction side by side with the proliferation of churches, cults, and charities"(20)""the bright "good" side covering a very destructive dark side.
Religious fundamentalist incursions into American political life as well as persistent attacks on individual freedom are not new. In 1776 "conservatives" around the world-- priests, state-supported religion, Monarchy, aristocracy,""vigorously denounced and attacked the Declaration of Independence. In 1962 Supreme Court Justice Black described the intent of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause: History had demonstrated time and again that "a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion."(21) The American historian, Clinton Rossiter wrote: "The twin doctrines of separation of church and state and liberty of individual conscience are the marrow of our democracy, if not indeed America's most magnificent contribution to the freeing of Western man."(22)
Psychological projection of a group shadow tends to make the enemy appear to be far more dangerous and "evil" than actual reality. The U.S. is "the Great Satan," and they (terrorists) are going to "destroy civilization." For example, consider our declaration of a "War" on Terror that has created a shadow-inflation enormously elevating the status and celebrity of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda to that of a nation state or even a world power when in actuality we are dealing with scattered cells of cult victims who have been brainwashed by militant, fundamentalist Islamic cult leaders into believing that mass murder is the way into Paradise. Terrorists are what they are, no less, no more: extremely dangerous, criminal psychopaths manufactured by a set of powerful, destructive group dynamics.
One of the best ways to observe a group's dark side is to look at what is particularly upsetting to our group""what "we" (or they) are accusing someone else or some other group of doing. Take the political storm over Newsweek's report about the Koran being flushed down the toilet at Gitmo. The Bush cadre was suddenly VERY "upset" that Newsweek printed an allegedly inaccurate story as a result of supposedly faulty information from one of their "trusted sources"""a story that "seriously damaged" our image in the Arab world. Of course it follows that Islamic fundamentalists' reaction to our disrespect for the Koran also exposes their group shadow, a dark side crawling with their own savage disrespect for human life as in killing innocent people and their violent intolerance for different beliefs and views.
Now we can see more of the George W. Bush group's dark underbelly, fundamentalist politics' long heavy bag. The Bush administration""we were told""went to war in Iraq because of allegedly "faulty intelligence" from trusted sources. Eight months before the invasion of Iraq the Downing Street Memo (""But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."),(23) provided even more proof that the U.S. and Britain "fixed" intelligence in order to support the Bush administration's war plans. The REAL damage to America's image, the REAL destruction of innocent lives began when George W. Bush and a handful of hired mercenaries unnecessarily invaded an already impoverished Arab nation that had nothing whatsoever to do with the September 11th tragedy.
Fundamentalist politicians consistently blame and accuse other individuals and other groups, projecting their own disowned darkness: they are part of the "Axis of Evil," they are mass murderers; they are undemocratic; those people don't value life, they "hate freedom," it's a "Liberal conspiracy." Saint Augustine's directive comes to mind: "All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to demons"""a perfect characterization of fundamentalism's group-think that insures infantile irresponsibility while spreading mass paranoia. Faced with probing questions about the Patriot Act, John Ashcroft (a devout member of a Pentacostal sect) told a senate panel, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends."(24) Mark Twain would have seen right through all this shadow-speak, language intended to "demonize" and kill any serious criticism. Twain once wrote: "Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutation of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."(25)
When someone shines a spotlight into a group's dark side it arouses, almost without fail, righteous indignation along with virulent, "kill-the-messenger" attacks. That is also why it is so utterly frustrating to have any meaningful, rational discussion or collaboration with such people; you can never quite reach the real person. Instead you are stonewalled; you keep getting programmed, predictable, group-speak responses and jargon designed to abort any real scrutiny of the group's always secretive dark side. Exposing torture and gross violations of the Geneva Convention means we are guilty of "not supporting our troops." In his famous book On Liberty, John Stuart Mill maintained that silencing an opinion is a "particular evil." If the opinion is right, we are "robbed of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth"; and if it's wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in "its collision with error."
"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders," said Hermann Goring, at his trial in Nuremberg. He added: "This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country." George W. Bush brings up Bin Laden and 9/11 over and over: "The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September 11."(26) Constant repetition of certain ideas is a common method of indoctrination used in destructive cults. "It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion," declared Josef Goebbles, the Nazi propaganda minister, who knew that tyrannical governments require brainwashed followers. And here's George W's not quite so articulate fundamentalist equivalent: "See, in my line of work, you got to keep repeating things over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda," quipped our self-titled "War President" in a 24 May 2005 speech.
So the Bush administration "fixes" intelligence reports, "fixes" scientific data on climate change and greenhouse gases,(27) "fixes" reality on the ground in Iraq for the unthinking, uncritical, patriotic, loyal, citizens. These so-called "fixes" are really "lies"""the Bush group's program to "supervise the formation of public opinion," as Goebbles stated. Indeed, the purpose of all propaganda is to program individuals to act according to group beliefs and aims.
Turn these hypnotic phrases around and we can again see into our own shadow: two fundamentalist cults locked in another lethal embrace, an "adversarial symbiosis," a system that guarantees that neither side will have to face their own shadow, reminiscent of the "cold war"""Russia and the United States""the latter having created nuclear weapons technology while the former copies it and both proceed to manufacture and infect the planet with over 60,000 nuclear weapons""enough destructive power to end all life on the planet many times over. Never mind the fact that the United States actually dropped two atomic bombs on civilian populations in Japan during the Second World War. Bush precisely articulated his own treacherous dark side when he announced, "The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."(28)
Presidential scholar, Michael Genovese suggests that 9/11 helped to create a mass illusion: "The public needed to believe that [Bush] had grown," so "we chose to see him "as bigger, better and different than he was."(29) You could say that we temporarily projected a "savior" image onto the president; psychologists call this the "halo effect," the same sort of illusion that can make quite ordinary people suddenly appear to be superhuman, until the truth rattles our projections and reality returns.
The most insidious face of the ever-darkening shadow of evangelical, fundamentalist politics and its bright, shining slogan, "compassionate conservatism," is the in-humane, COMPASSIONLESS disregard for the suffering of others. Of course war is not compassionate for either side. So-called "compassionate" conservatives ignore preventable human tragedies like the ongoing genocide in Darfur, mass starvation in Nigeria, or the recent genocide in Rowanda, which was ignored by the entire world but for a few U. N. peacekeeping remnants. George W's "Compassion" for the corporate world is a big part of fundamentalism's economic shadow. "Compassionate" conservatives care more about the welfare of corporate America than for human suffering. Hypocritical, shadow-laden "compassion" is not new. Hitler and Stalin were two of the most vigorous "pro-lifers" of all time, as were numerous other tyrants. They (Hitler and Stalin) also criminalized previously legal abortions immediately upon taking power.(30)
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