Good article. Here's an excerpt, followed by entire article:
"This [the Bush phenomenon] isn't "politics as usual" - not even an extreme
version of it, not McCarthyism revisited, Reaganism times two, or Nixon in a
Stetson hat. There's never been anything like it in American life before: a
messianic cult backed by vast corporate power, a massive cadre of religious
zealots, a highly disciplined party, an overwhelming media machine and the mammoth
force of history's most powerful government - all led by men who "create new
realities" out of lies, blood, theft and torment."
-----------
http://smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=18373&mode=&order=0
Chris Floyd: 'Heart of Darkness: The Bush cult and American madness'
Posted on Friday, October 22 @ 10:37:49 EDT
By Chris Floyd
Note: This is an expanded version of Chris Floyd's regular Friday column in
The Moscow Times
Now we come at last to the heart of darkness. Now we know, from their own
words, that the Bush Regime is a cult - a cult whose god is Power, whose
adherents believe that they alone control reality, that indeed they create the world
anew with each act of their iron will. And the goal of this will - undergirded
by the cult's supreme virtues of war, fury and blind faith - is likewise
openly declared: "Empire."
You think this is an exaggeration? A typical bout of "liberal paranoia"? Then
heed the words of the White House itself: a "senior adviser" to the
president, who, as the New York Times reports, explained the cult to author Ron
Suskind
in the heady pre-war days of 2002.
First, the top Bush insider mocked the journalist and all those "in what we
call the reality-based community," i.e., people who "believe that solutions
emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." Suskind's attempt to
defend the principles of reason and enlightenment cut no ice with the Bush-man.
"That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and
when we act, we create our own reality," he said. "And while you're studying
that reality, we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study
too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you,
all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Anyone with any knowledge of 20th century history will know that this same
megalomaniacal outburst could have been made by a "senior adviser" to Hitler,
Stalin, Mussolini or Mao. Indeed, as scholar Juan Cole points out, the dogma of
the Bush Cult is identical with the "reality-creating" declaration of Mao's
Little Red Book: "It is possible to accomplish any task whatsoever." For Bush,
as for Mao in the all-devouring Great Leap Forward, "discernible reality" has
no meaning: political, cultural, economic, scientific truth - even the
fundamental processes of nature, even human nature itself - must give way to the
faith-statements of ideology, ruthlessly applied by unbending zealots.
Thus the reality-twisting assertions of Bush's ideologues: The conquered will
welcome their killers. The poor will be happy to slave for the rich. The
earth can sustain any amount of damage without lasting harm. The loss of rights is
essential to liberty. War without end is the only way to peace. Corruption
and cronyism lead to universal prosperity. Dissent is evil; dissenters are "with
the terrorists." But God is with the Leader; whatever he does is righteous,
even if in the eyes of unbelievers - the "reality-based community" - his acts
are criminal: aggressive war that kills thousands of innocent people,
widespread torture, secret assassinations, imprisonment without charges or trial,
electoral subversion.
Indeed, the doctrine "Gott mit Uns" is the linchpin of the Bush Cult. Tens of
millions of Americans have now embraced the Cult's fusion of Bush's
leadership with Divine Will. As a Bush volunteer in Missouri told Suskind: "I just
believe God controls everything, and God uses the president to keep evil
down...God gave us this president to be the man to protect the nation at this time."
God appointed Bush; thus Bush's acts are Godly. It's a circular, self-confirming
mindset that can't be penetrated by reason or facts, can't be shaken by
crimes and scandals. That's why Bush's core support - comprising almost half of the
electorate - stays rock-solid, despite the manifest failures of his
administration. It's based on blind faith, on poisonous fantasy: simple, flattering
("We're uniquely good, we're God's special nation!"), comforting, complete - so
unlike the harsh, bewildering, splintered shards of real life.
This closed mindset is constantly reinforced by the ubiquitous rightwing
media - evoking the threat of demonic enemies on every side, relentlessly
manufacturing righteous outrage with distortion and deceit - and by Bush's appearances
(epiphanies?) at his carefully-screened rallies, where even the slightest
hint of demurral from his Godly greatness is ruthlessly expunged. For example,
three schoolteachers were ejected from a Bush rally under threat of arrest last
week: not for protesting - they hadn't said a word - but merely for wearing
t-shirts that read, "Protect Our Civil Liberties." Thus the faithful "create the
new reality" of undivided loyalty to the Leader. And it's clear that the very
idea of "civil liberties" is now a dangerous blasphemy in the
divinvely-sanctioned Empire.
The dogma of Bush's godliness is no mere rhetorical flourish; it's being
forged with blood and iron. Consider General Jerry Boykin, who, in uniform, toured
churches across America, declaring openly that "George W. Bush was not
elected by the majority of the American people; he was appointed by God" to lead his
"Christian nation" against Satan and the "idol-worshippers" of Islam, as
Salon.com reports. Bush then made Boykin the Pentagon's chief of military
intelligence - the point man for wringing information out of Islamic captives in the
"war on terror." The result - confirmed even by the Pentagon's own anemic
investigations - was a military intelligence system gone berserk, systematically
torturing and occasionally murdering prisoners who, as the Red Cross notes, were
overwhelmingly innocent of any crime. Bush signed orders removing these
prisoners from the protection of U.S. and international law; Boykin's boys then
visited divine wrath upon the heathens. But these atrocities cannot be crimes,
because Bush and Boykin are, in the general's own phraseology, "Kingdom
warriors" in the "army of God."
This isn't "politics as usual" - not even an extreme version of it, not
McCarthyism revisited, Reaganism times two, or Nixon in a Stetson hat. There's
never been anything like it in American life before: a messianic cult backed by
vast corporate power, a massive cadre of religious zealots, a highly disciplined
party, an overwhelming media machine and the mammoth force of history's most
powerful government - all led by men who "create new realities" out of lies,
blood, theft and torment.
Their "empire" - their Death-Cult, their power-mania - is an old madness come
again, an old heresy in new form, another outbreak of the fever, the deep
soul-sickness that devoured so many nations in the last century. Now it's come to
America. After decades of sliding toward the abyss - blithely, blindly, drunk
with corruption, letting democracy and justice wither on the vine - now we
are here at last, in the heart of darkness.
Chris Floyd is a columnist for The Moscow Times and a regular contributor to
CounterPunch. His new book, Empire Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush
Regime, is available at http://www.globaleyefloyd.com/. He can be contacted at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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