I recently argued that we need to understand the President’s policies. . In trying to understand what he is doing, we have to develop a complete picture. In doing that, we have to not only determine all that he is doing, both in foreign and domestic policy, but make a stab at understanding where what he is doing is coming from. The question that interests me is the why. Why are we in Iraq? Why has the President apparently undermined the country’s Bill of Rights? Why are we now getting the story that our military should be attacking Iran?
I insisted that the President should be understood in one of two ways. He is either a pawn of our economic elites out to make a buck. Or, he is something called a Christian Zionist who believe they have to clean house to prepare for the second coming of Jesus Christ.
I argued that Bush is best understood as the religious zealot.
People made a couple of strong objections to my claim. One argued that this George Bush could not be a Christian. He could not be a Christian because Christians, according to this writer, were peacemakers. This President is a warmonger, and not a peacemaker, so he could not be a follower of Jesus who argued we must be peacemakers.
This was an objection that many people made. However, in suggesting this kind of criticism of my claim they failed to consider the well known argument made by Christian Zionists that there are many people who say they are Christians, who are their critics, who are themselves not Christians. That is, the complaint is thrown back at the people who argue the Christian Zionists are not really Christians.
These Christian Zionists argue, I believe, that their critics have compromised their Christian principles by agreeing to forget about what Jesus said about opposing evil. They have agreed to ignore what Jesus said so that they can carry on common projects, like empire building, that seemed to them a good idea at the time. The Christian Zionists argue that these “peace” Christians have been so corrupted by their compromises that they no longer represent a true Christianity.
I think there has been a lot of argument amongst Christians about what makes a Christian. There have always been these arguments. Heresy has been an issue for Christians for as long as there have been Christians.
So, I don’t put much weight on such a criticism. Besides, the complaint that Bush and his allies are not really Christians is not directed to them where such a complaint might do some good. It is directed at me and my argument. If Bush were to be persuaded that real Christians didn’t invade other countries, and he wanted to be a real Christian, then I might think their complaint could be useful.
However, why make the point to me? Am I supposed to understand there’s someone or something else to blame for Bush’s warmongering policies?
Another objection to my argument that Bush is best understood as a religious zealot was the claim that his policies are all about oil and power and control. The suggestion that Bush somehow acted out of religious principles instead of being the willing dupe of powerful economic interests was just not credible.
I suppose it is difficult to give up on the idea that Bush is helpless against the influence of powerful economic interests. It may be difficult for these critics to give up on this idea because Bush’s personal history supports the idea he’s one of their guys. He’s been bailed out of all his personal business ventures. His friends all seem to use him for their own economic advantage. Bush’s wars have funneled profits into the pockets of his friends.
The point of these two objections seems to be to undermine the argument I was making. Bush cannot be a Christian because he does not follow the “pacifistic” teachings of Jesus. Not only should we doubt his being a religious person, but a much more likely explanation is that he works for greedy people.
Despite these objections to my claim, there are good reasons to think Bush is more the religious zealot than the pawn of Daddy Warbucks.
I thought the strongest reason to think Bush’s wars, for example, were religiously motivated, was the unnecessary cost and injury to the economy that they have caused.
The cost of the Vietnam War made a difference in how much Presidents Johnson and Nixon could push their war efforts. Once the economy tanked, their political support for the war declined. The Bush administration, on the other hand, seemingly cares not at all about the staggering debts incurred by his war and his attendant tax policies.
The fact that we have huge debts which we may never pay off without selling off the country’s assets does not bother Bush. These facts are seemingly deliberately kept a secret from the general population by “responsible” media.
The fact that jobs have been leaving the country is troubling, but nobody has done anything to stop them from going. No policy has been developed to address the fundamental economic disasters.
If Bush were interested in making money for wealthy masters, I would imagine he would do things that would make a stable environment for long term profit making. The President has, instead, ruined one of the oil producing countries. There may not be any oil production out of Iraq again in our lifetime. This does not seem to be an action in the interests of wealthy people.
Afghanistan provides the major heroin supply for Europe and is a minor supplier for other parts of the world including North America. You’d think that a population gorked out of its mind from these drugs would be a worthless labor force. This development cannot be in the interest of wealthy people.
Bush has tried to muzzle the climate scientists from telling us about the effect of industrial development on climate change. We face the prospect of a civilization destroying ice age even if we did our best to reign in the effect of industrial pollutants on our environment. The fact that he works to prevent the United States from developing a plan to salvage what we can cannot be in the interests of wealthy people.
Democracy is a fragile thing. The actions of Presidents in my lifetime and Bush in particular in invading and sabotaging other countries has killed whatever life there might have been in our democracy. As a result, I don’t believe the United States continues to exist anymore. At least, no country exists that Lincoln would recognize. Instead of a democracy, we have a lawless territory ruled over by the kind of organized crime families we know about from literature and the movies. I cannot believe rich people will feel safe and secure long in such a “wild west” environment.
Some might argue that Bush should still be considered a tool of the economic elites because you can imagine the rich still trying to make a buck even as the ship of state sinks. He’s just done his job poorly.
The magnitude of the damage suggests, however, that he has never cared to manage a profitable economy. Instead, he has promoted a plan to “clean house” as part of his religious program. The fact that the economy falls apart may be an unfortunate “collateral injury” of his religious program, but nothing that he would count as a failure. One aspect of his religious program is that the ultimate health of the nation’s economy or of the world’s environment is of no importance because the plan is that all the really important people will be going to heaven. No important person need worry how the “left behind” folks will fare.
I have argued that the President is a religious zealot instead of an enforcer for the economic elites. When I made this argument I had the idea that if we could decide why, exactly, Bush has promoted his policies, we’d be in a better position to argue against them. I listened to those who argued that as this is an EMERGENCY, we have no time to spend trying to understand the President. The idea, so I was told, was that we just have to stop him.
It occurred to me that my argument may itself promote an idea that prevents our ever being able to stop the President or his minions. That is, if people are constantly impressed with the idea that anyone who is anyone should be understood as being either a goon for the bosses or a zealot out to prep the world for the end times, I may just demoralize people so much they decide to give up on doing anything constructive. If the fundamentals are so corrupted, how can we imagine any kind of a good result.
I have friends who refuse to hear about what’s going on in the world because the facts make her so depressed that she’s afraid she could not thereafter be a good mother.
There are people who choose not to pay attention to the world because it is so complicated, partly, but mostly, because it has so much wrong with it. They cannot see how their attention is needed or could do any good.
My argument may seem to add more weight to people’s shoulders by suggesting that the world is run by thugs out for a buck, a bad enough prospect, but also a world where there seems to be a question whether the “Jesus” option has any real credibility.
Why should we believe that “Jesus” could save us when the people who hawk his story seem to be vicious unprincipled warmongers?
I recognize that my own account cannot take away the hope offered by the Christian story without trying to explain what I would put in its place.
For one thing, I would argue that our salvation cannot come by having anyone solve our problems for us. It is pretty much a cop out to make the problems we have and then expect some God on a chariot to fly out of the clouds and scoop up the worthy ones to safety.
Second, I believe that the mess we are in has to do with commitments we’ve all made. They are commitments involving how we understand the world is run, ourselves, how we reason, and so forth. I think our problems are matters of philosophy. We are in the mess we’re in because we’ve been persuaded to take on the wrong kind of philosophical baggage.
I think we are like Jack who goes to town to sell the family cow for enough provisions to last through a hard winter. Instead of coming home with his arms full of food, and so on, he gives his mother a hand full of what he says are “magic beans.” The idea our world is run by force which we need to be saved from by some kind of hero is one consequence of our making the same kind of trade as did Jack.
About this, I’ve thought, as we’ve lived by bad philosophy, unless we can think better, we’ll likely die by bad philosophy. Our arguing should, then, involve not only accurate criticism of the President’s policies, but also an idea how things can get better.
That is, in order to get the mass of unengaged people to get together to change things, to throw the bums out, for example, they have to see that things are not just bad, but also that their participation can make things better. The purpose of bad philosophy up till now has been to persuade people that the evil they experience is out of their control.
