Bush and the Book

"It's more of a theological perspective. I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me that doesn't exist"

Despite the mangled syntax or, rather, because of it, the above quote by our President at his most recent news conference affords us an illuminating look into the hamster-on-a-wheel that is his mind.

I need to distinguish myself from the Bush-hating types who reject all allusions to faith as the naive and inane delusion harbored by flat-earth racists and Bible-thumping simpletons. In fact, if I was forced to choose between those who acknowledge the existence of a higher power and those who castigate faith as a mental disorder, I would choose the former without hesitation.

The president's "theology", however, has nothing to do with the transcedant mysteries of the universe that any open-minded person struggles with throughout his or her life. Bush does not use faith to attempt to illuminate the unknown or to frame his relationship with the universe or to attain a sense of peace amidst the overwhelming scale of existence.

Instead, the president's theology is not about mystery, but about certainty. It is not a vehicle for inquisition and exploration, but rather an excuse to castigate such thirst for knowledge as the lot of the weak and the faith-less. Bush's theology has nothing to do with time, space, creation, or any other universal mystery; Bush's theology instead has everything to do with rationalizing his own actions.

Bush's theology is about himself. If this is to be the standard of faith, I would be forced to join the faithless. My faith leads me to believe that a higher power created and ordered the infinitely complicated web that we call "everything". Bush's faith leads him to believe that God created the world primarlity as a stage for certain men, of which he is clearly one. Further, his faith leads him to belive that he, the alcoholic and petulant twerp who found Jesus as the bottom of a Tequilla bottle (or was that the worm?), knows the secret behind the creator's design.

The secret, as revealed to Bush, is that all people deserve freedom. So, God wants all men to have freedom, but God is too weak or preoccupied to do this himself. Luckily, however, God was not too weak or preoccupied to share his designs with George W. Bush. George W. Bush, therefore, takes it upon himself to do the work that God has been too weak or preoccupied to do. George W. Bush will provide freedom to all people. (And, luckily for all people, God and George W. Bush share identical definitions of "freedom".) Bush's means? The very means that God's son, who saved Bush from booze, explicitly rejected. War.

Bush also informs us in the above quote "that is a principle noone can convince me that doesn't exist". How clumsily worded. And how true it is. We all know by now, even those of us who are more kindly disposed towards the president than I am, that this is a man who does not change his mind. Indeed, in Bush's world view, a change of mind would be an affront to God himself.

The incapability of changing his mind is something that Bush explicitly embraces as a positive attribute. We must ask ourselves, however, when did this characteristic take root? On what day, at what hour, did it become okay to never change his mind again? We know that Bush was willing to change his mind at least until he was 40, when he changed his mind about booze and Jesus.

But, apparently, there was a moment between then and now that the president realized he had it. That "it" was nothing short of the key to the universe. The plan had been revealed to him. He knew what the world needed, and he knew how to give it. He had taken full hold of his central principle, which is that God wants something very specific for Earth and that Bush will actualize it if God continues to refuse to do so himself. And since that day, whenever that was, there has been, by his own admission cited above, noone in the world that could convince him otherwise.

This is all difficult for me to internalize because, quite honestly, it scares the living shit out of me. The only thing worse than elitist snobs who see faith as the property of the provincial and the backward are those who see faith as the animation of their own preconceived notions, however gin-soaked or historically illiterate they may prove. Needless to say, George W. Bush and I do not share the same God. Thank God.