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.