123 online
 
Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 41 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing Summarizing
OpEdNews Op Eds   

Bush lies and the religious right complies

 

 

Bush lies and the religious right complies.

Dr. Gerry Lower
OpEdNews.Com


The American people have, largely without their conscious awareness, reached a watershed of considerable proportions with the release of the 9/11 Commission's Report. After months of research and interpretation, the Commission declared that there is "no credible evidence linking Iraq to the September 11 attacks" ("Borrowed Time," Eleanor Clift, Newsday, June 18, 2004).

In defending the administration's failed justifications for war with Iraq, George Bush and Dick Cheney have reiterated their claims of "numerous contacts" between al Qaida and Iraq, as if these contacts somehow justify the numerous lies and fabrications that coerced America into an unjustifiable war in the first place ("Blind to the Truth" The Guardian, June 18, 2004).

Of course there were contacts between al Qaida and Iraq. Of course Al Qaida was in touch with every Islamic organization on earth in its search for fiscal support, man power and strategic bases for terrorist operations. Of course Al Qaida established "cells" in Iraq, as it did in the U.S. and in nations unheard of by most Americans.

What does the Bush-Cheney defense say that was not generally known shortly after 9/11? What does their defense have to do with the fabrications they used to further justify preemptive war on Iraq? Bush and Cheney make their defense entirely outside of recent historical context, and the conservative right wing and the American press don't even notice, it being more important to preserve the current American mythology. In justifying themselves, Bush and Cheney are saying that they want to dismiss the past and start over ... again.

The result of Bush and Cheney's self-righteous military bungling has produced no substantive progress in the war on multilateral terrorism, although it has produced over 500 American deaths, literally thousands of civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq and it has bred terrorism on an even grander scale. In other words, the religious Bush administration is still "playing into Bin Laden's hands" (Julian Borger, The Guardian, June 19, 2004). In dismissing the 9/11 Commission's Report, George Bush and Dick Cheney have put their entire religion-based agenda on the line in what can only be seen as an act of desperation.

Once again, the Bush administration is asking the American people to disregard empirical and historical fact (what they can see and comprehend in historical context) so as to make their choices based solely on faith in George W. Bush and his Old Testament Roman "morality" (based in legalism, penalism, vengeance and self-righteousness). The religious right complies.

Once again, the Bush administration asks the American people to disregard the Christian values they claim on dotted lines in favor of the religious values that drove British colonialism and prompted the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution. The religious right complies.

Once again, the Bush administration asks the American people to ignore the values of natural philosophy that birthed Jefferson's democracy in favor of the religious values that have, for over 1700 years, justified imperialism, colonialism and now Bush's crony capitalism. The religious right complies.

By now, the Bush administration's approach to governing America's newly religious "democracy" is abundantly clear. In the interest of preserving crony capitalism, Bush lies and the religious right complies.

This is the power of Old Testament Roman religion over the human mind. It makes desperate leaders into wolves and it makes otherwise good citizens into sheep. It requests the mind to ignore any and all history outside of the here and now. It requests the mind to close itself down to honest, independent thought. It requests a flirtation with cultural psychosis.

This is precisely the religious "tyranny over the mind of men" toward which Jefferson swore "upon the altar of God, eternal hostility." This is the dark truth of Roman religion, that it serves not the people, not the honest human truth, and not even the values of nascent Christianity. Roman religion only serves itself and those who define it from bully pulpits.

Bush's Roman religion urges the mind to deny the possibility of being in error, it urges the mind into a two-dimensional world of "good" and "evil" in which there is no need to consider what causes anything in the cultural world. Bush's Roman god takes care of all that on behalf of the faithful. If one maintains blind faith, then one is, ipso facto, on the side of "good," never mind the lies employed to define and defend that "good." Accepting this self-righteous infallibility is "how the west was won," from the Roman conquest of Europe to the European conquest of the Americas to the current American neo-conservative dreams of a pax Americana.

In being a "no-nonsense" president, Bush has pursued an agenda that remains chock full of nonsense. In being a religiously "moral" president, Bush has pursued an agenda that remains chock full of immorality. In being a "uniter, not a divider," Bush has pursued the division of America on purely religious ground, the dualistic, exclusionary ground which Jefferson and Franklin hoped the American people would depart for the sake of democracy and nascent Christian human rights.

Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 

Tell A Friend