Faith-Based Administration

On Faith-Based Oppression: Untimely Ruminations

N.B.: “Mukaka:” – a word used by an incumbent Republican Senator and Republican Presidential Hopeful for 2008 to describe a person of color. He claims it is “just made up,” and means nothing in particular. His main credential is that he is the son of a football coach. Linguists indicate that it is a derisive term for a human being, meaning some sort of monkey. I’m with the football coach.

Introduction:

I wrote the following out of an attempt to understand the current administration. My chief concern or question is whether this administration, and the Chief Executive in particular, is simply moronic or deliberately lying. I have no difficulty in understanding and even accepting a so-called corrupt, scheming, power-hungry, slime ball politician so long as the garbage is picked up and the street shoveled. This, no doubt, comes from my early, formative years in Chicago and understanding of its Politics. What confuses me is when a politician asserts and acts in a manner clearly against the best interests of his citizens but who actually believes that he is doing God’s work. I have no problem understanding a Caesar Borgia[1], but George Bush still puzzles me. The following ruminations are designed to come to terms with this genuine bewilderment.

1

We have all heard the President, or Mukaka in chief, talk about “faith-based” “initiatives” and it hasn’t been very difficult to realize that he meant vouchers for religious schools, Christian denomitated charities replacing government entitlements, and the destruction of all “New Deal” reforms, etc. It has not been clear, however, that EVERYTHING in the administration is faith-based.

2

For example, we have a faith-based foreign policy. It is not really Xtian V. Moslem that is the defining element. It is the decision to do what they feel they want to do and then to find facts to back it up. In this sense, it goes one step past religion, which admits all of its chief tenets, such as the existence of a Monotheistic God, can not be proved but merely accepted. Instead, it claims absolute proof based on facts. Any facts that contradict the decision are disregarded, discarded, or the presenters of them attacked. If the facts refuse to go away, they are then “interpreted.”

3

The decision to attack Iraq and its sovereign government was made to install permanent military bases in the Mid-East in order to control the oil supply. This would stabilize or increase profits for the oil companies and give the U.S. leverage against China and other states so they would do our bidding. The major error made by Saddam was in setting a good example; that is, by providing universal health care, giving women full rights, and, above all, putting Iraq’s interests before those of the corporations in the United States. The invasion of Kuwait is still a murky subject – did we encourage that in order to have a valid pretext? Has anybody heard from April Gillespie lately?

But we needed facts with Bush 2 to support the invasion and make it “the right thing to do.” Ahmed Chalabi gave them to our administration: Saddam had weapons of mass-destruction, was a Hitler, the people would be glad we invaded them, and it wouldn’t cost us a cent as they had oil. Everyone else, especially those who knew better, was silenced to varying degrees and by whatever methods possible. Since the same corporate structure that owned the government owned the media, the citizens of the U.S. were pretty much fed Chalabi inspired lies. Idiological underpinnings were supplied by such “neo-conservatives” and Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Pearl.

When the lies were uncovered and proved false, the rationale for attacking and occupying Iraq became a love of democracy and making the world a better place. And so on.

4

War on Terror: It would be nice if there were no more terror in the world, let us all agree on that.

Much has been made of Iraq’s importance in the war of/on “terror”. The facts are fairly obvious: No one hated Saddam more than Bin Laden and the hatred was mutual. If it is true, as I have been told by our media and heard elsewhere, that Saddam was Psychotically Narcissistic (scale 9 on the MMPI), he would not tolerate any activity that suggested to him how to do anything, especially if a God were invoked for that purpose.

Now it has become clear that the war on Iraq increased the danger of terrorism, the administration released and declassified a document that stated exactly that – BUT THEY THOUGHT THAT IT EXHONERATED THEM! We are safer today, they say, see? And hold up a NIE report that says terrorism increased as a result of our “premptive war” in Iraq, and one of the proofs is that we are fighting what we call terrorists there, not here, while at the same time talking about many terrorist threats averted here! Furthermore, they seem to believe it. Stay the course (as did the Titanic).

It should be added here that, if we really wanted to stop suicide bombing in Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank, we could do it by supplying the Palestinians with the same weapons the Israelis have.2

5

Voting: It is clear that anyone voting for this insanity is incapable of reason. They must intend to vote based on faith. In what? I don’t know. Faith that stem-cells are living beings? (I have been fond of saying that if God had wanted us to have stem cells, we would have been born with them.) I suppose the faith is that reality is as our administration interprets it and that if you do not vote for them, terror will get you. It is also well known and documented that those eligible to vote, but who don’t, realize that there is nothing for them in it no matter who wins.

6

Tax and Spend: It is generally believed that Democrats are “tax and spend liberals”. This makes voters believe that they will cost them money. The facts indicate quite the opposite. When Bill Clinton (fact: Democrat) left office, he left billions of dollars of surplus funds. Georgie Bush (fact: Republican) has taxed and spent to where we have a deficit approaching trillions. One has to use faith to vote for a Republican congress on this issue.

7

Soft on Terrorism: The faith holds that Republicans are more macho on this. The fact is that more action has been taken against so-called “terrorists” by Democrats, even though “the resistance” might be a better term for them. A recent interview between Chris Wallace and Bill Clinton made this fairly clear.

8

Spreading Democracy: The commonly held belief in this country is that it is a democracy while it is, in reality, Crypto-Fascist. To keep up the ARREARANCE of democracy, elections are held (between candidates whose policies differ little), and many speeches are carried on our mass media to that effect. The recent passage of a bill allowing the governments to seize you, lock you up, and never charge you, in other words eliminate due process, is just another case in point. The Constitution is a document made possible by the great Cognitive Revolution of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, Descartes and those guys, invoking facts, logic, and reason. Our century has managed to ossify that basis and replace it with faith.

9

Faith Defined: The definition was attributed to Jesus. Once, after reportedly performing a “miracle” (suspension of the normal laws of natural science), his apostle Thomas said “Ah, now I believe, thou are God,” (or something like that). The response was “Thou believest because thou hast seen. Blessed are those who believe and yet have not seen.” In other words, remain blind to the facts and still believe the drivel said to you – that’s faith.

10

Insanity or Denial: Fact: there is an attack on U.S. forces or bases every 15 minutes in Iraq and the people of Iraq clearly want us out of there. The war is every bit if not more unpopular in the U.S. than was Vietnam near the end. We will be forced to “cut and run” in scenes reminiscent of the helicopters leaving the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon (now, Ho Chi Min City). Who can forget Ken Kashiwahara, an ABC reporter, just barely surviving?

However, while the fact may be acknowledged, it is interpreted as a sign of our success. This is very characteristic of paranoid schizophrenia. Let me give a couple examples: I once had a patient who was convinced that he was Jesus. The policies of the institution did not allow me to undertake a “cure,” but I was expected to manage his behavior. To do so, one ought never to challenge the first premise or hypothesis the patient holds and this is a mistake many therapists make. For someone with this illness, everything will be logical so long as it accords with the first premise. So, when this patient started to disturb the other patients by demanding that they act like disciples and pray with him, or to him, it was my task to stop him (although the command came more as “let him know he’s not Jesus or fooling anyone”). Such is the state of clinical psychology in our society. Now Jesus is quoted extensively in the New Testament saying many things, so it is possible to support almost any argument by finding an appropriate quote, and this I did (fact: most Xtians have not read the Bible with the same rigor a philologist would and few are aware of the multitude of various English translations alone). I then called him into my office, opened up the New Testament and asked him, after establishing he was them same Jesus, of course, “didn’t you say this? Why are you doing that?” Well, he read the passage, said, “Oh, yeah, I forgot, of course” and the proselytizing stopped. I was praised for the “cure.”

A more wide spread anecdote is the man who was convinced he was dead. In exasperation, the therapist asked, “Look, do dead men bleed?”

The man replied “No.”

The therapist immediately took out a small razor and cut him.

The patient looked down at his wrist in amazement and said, “My God, dead men DO bleed.”

In other words, all facts can be accepted so long as they do not contradict the first premise: God is leading the Mukaka in Chief in all his political actions, therefore they are correct. Any fact that contradicts this is subject to reinterpretation.

11

Consequences: The party that has the majority in the house and senate appoints the Chair of all legislative committees. At the present time, this is the same party as the President’s. So long as this continues, his policies will continue unchecked and his appointments to the Supreme Court will pass easily. After this election, no matter what the result, gasoline prices will increase rapidly and the actions will intensify as well as their consequences. They will only be checked or mitigated if another party and set of individuals becomes the majority

12

I invite commentary, response, suggestions, and revisions. I will leave this up for a few days, then continue posting other information, then repost this some time later. I hope to hear from you.

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[1] He was a Renaissance Era Cardinal in the Catholic Church. He reputedly liked to fight tigers in the colleseum. Unlike present day leaders, his subjects feared he would assinate him, not vice versa. He wanted his Uncle to become Pope, but that required a 2/3 majority. Elections kept being held and other Cardinals kept dying until this was accomplished. At least, that is what I’ve been able to gather.

2 A better option would be to disarm the entire planet.