World Shut Your Mouth

I hope you caught the amazing piece in this past weekend’s New York Times Magazine by Ron Suskind about Dubya’s faith. Among the scary conclusions is that Bush uses his faith as an excuse to not be bothered by the necessary details or reality of a given situation (the Reverend Jim Wallis thinks Dubya's faith gives him an “easy certainty”). Essentially, Dubya believes his faith in his evangelical Christian God guides him to the right (and righteous) solution in all of his decision making.

Suskind writes:

“Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.

''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .

''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''

Here's more:

“That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness.

The disdainful smirks and grimaces that many viewers were surprised to see in the first presidential debate are familiar expressions to those in the administration or in Congress who have simply asked the president to explain his positions. Since 9/11, those requests have grown scarce; Bush's intolerance of doubters has, if anything, increased, and few dare to question him now. A writ of infallibility -- a premise beneath the powerful Bushian certainty that has, in many ways, moved mountains -- is not just for public consumption: it has guided the inner life of the White House. As Whitman told me on the day in May 2003 that she announced her resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: ''In meetings, I'd ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!''

And we got this guy instead of Al Gore -- one of the smartest, intellectually curious people this side of Clinton? It's amazing how Rove has kept Dubya's incredibly self-righteous arrogance and pure disdain for those who question or oppose him largely out of the public eye. I guess this is the real reason for them screening out and/or arresting dissenters from Bush/Cheney campaign rallies, and keeping the so-called "Free Speech Zones" so far away from the president of the free world. It keeps Dubya from blowing his stack on camera.

Does Dubya's faith instruct him to keep preying (or is it praying) on people's fear of more terrorist attacks in order to win this election? Does God tell him which of His non-white children to bomb next? Does Jesus instruct him to take from the poor and middle class and give to the rich? Did the Holy Ghost help write the torture memo the led us to Abu Gharib? Does Dubya's absolute faith in himself absolve him of his hand in all the deaths of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians? Is God a Republican...or even American? Why doesn't God officially endorse Dubya's candidacy? Is God a he or she? Is God solely a evangelical Christian God, or is (S)He the God of Muslims and Jews, too? Does God have a rating system for all of the various Christian sects? Does Dubya have a special red phone on his desk to reach God? What if God were one of us, just a stranger on the bus?