Cultural savants have been vague in ascribing a starting point to the Post-Modern Age. Some date the end of industrial modes of thinking and the dawn of television-saturated consciousness with the publication of Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media in 1964; others place the epiphany earlier or later in the twentieth century. Four decades after McLuhan's book, Chuck Spinney, Pentagon reformer and author of Defense Facts of Life, was evidently so disgusted with the infantile spectacle of Post-Modernism that he began sarcastically referring to the contemporary Zeitgeist as the Post-Information Age. Yet even that formulation has been left in the dust by events: the medicine show that is the American scene has ushered us into an even more bizarre period: the Post-Reality Age.
Journalist Ronald Suskind introduces us to this concept in his recent article in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. [1] In his chatty tour d'horizon of the President's philosophy and management style, Suskind recounts an interview with a "senior White House advisor:"
" . . . then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality judiciously, as you will 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.'"
It is really a pity that Suskind does not identify this West Wing Nietzsche. The author is hardly protecting a source, since the aide is depicted as supporting, rather than criticizing, his employer. In any case, Suskind has hardly left any bridges unburned with the White House, so he cannot be ensuring future journalistic access to a Bush White House. The uncertain identity of the source leads to the question: is it genuine?
There is certainly no question that Suskind has put on the record many sources, both Democrat and Republican, with unflattering and controversial statements about the administration. Under those circumstances, it is somewhat less likely that he fabricated a quote just for dramatic effect. And several other accounts, neutral and even favorable, confirm the general mindset of the administration and its chief executive as Suskind describes it.
For his first book on the current administration, Bush at War, Bob Woodward received assiduous cooperation from the White House and favorable reviews from the same quarter - it was only his second book, Plan of Attack, which incurred the wrath of Oval Office. Yet Bush at War contained the following Presidential quotes, which somehow escaped notice at the time of publication:
"I'm the commander-see, I don't need to explain-I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
That is an interesting take on the accountability of the chief executive under the Constitution, to be sure. And the President offered Woodward the following strategic insight, so redolent of neoconservative influence, about Afghanistan:
"Look, our strategy is to create chaos, to create a vacuum."
Finally, Woodward recounted a statement from the President that is hard to reconcile with Compassionate Conservatism:
"We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of our great nation." [2]
A reading of Woodward by no means exhausts the available quotes. There is an article in the Israeli daily Haaretz which describes what the President allegedly told Palestinian Prime Minister Mamoud Abbas regarding an Israeli-Palestinian cease fire:
"According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: 'God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.'" [3]
Even presumed acolyte Richard Perle damned his patron with faint praise when he told journalist Sam Tanenhaus in the July 2003 Vanity Fair:
"The first time I met Bush 43, I knew he was different . . . one, he didn't know very much. The other was that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much."
Neoconservative David Frum, former speech writer for the President (and later co-author with Perle of a book with the significant title, An End to Evil), offers this curious assessment of his former boss clearly an odd way to show gratitude to a former employer in The Right Man:
". . . often uncurious and as a result ill informed . . . ."
One could pile on quotes ad libitum, but their general tendency is not at variance with Suskind's article. The combined effect explains better than orthodox political ideas, economic theories, or military strategies, the contemporary world we confront. For instance, a non-reality based paradigm explains the following:
* How an effort to avenge the September 11 attacks got diverted into a feckless occupation of Iraq, a country that had less to do with 9/11 than, say, Hamburg, Germany (where much of the 9/11 plot was apparently hatched)[4] - or Hollywood, Florida (where several of those the U.S. government identifies as the conspirators lived). [5]
* How Afghanistan remains a warlord-infested chaos beyond the environs of Kabul, while al-Qaeda regroups along the border with Pakistan: the U.S. government's objective all along was "to create chaos, to create a vacuum."
* How 40 percent of Americans (and 63 percent of Republicans) still believe Saddam was linked to 9/11: they obviously eschew the judicious study of "discernible reality" in favor of "reality TV."
* How the first administration since Herbert Clark Hoover to see a net loss of jobs during its tenure can trumpet that its economic policies are working.
* How a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion which turned into a projected deficit of $3.3 trillion - an $8.9 trillion reversal - is considered a paragon of prudent fiscal management.
One can multiply examples of this kind almost without limit. It must be refreshing to be unconstrained by discernible reality. Sooner or later, one ends up talking like faithful Party member O'Brien in George Orwell's 1984, in a passage that sounds eerily like the words of Suskind's senior White House advisor:
"We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation - anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of these nineteenth century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature."
It used to be comforting to believe that 1984 was considered fiction.
*Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst.
[2] The neoconservative impulse to create chaos, vacuums, and destruction reaches an apotheosis of sorts in neocon panjandrum Michael Ledeen. This Garment-District Goebbels wrote in his book Machiavelli on Modern Leadership on the need for "total war" through "creative violence." There is no such thing as peace between nations, he claims; peace is just an interval between wars.
[2] "'Road Map is a Life Saver for Us [ http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=310788 ],' PM Abbas Tells Hamas," Haaretz, 24 June 2003. While this quote has been reproduced countless times on the Internet, no one has as yet commented on its strange enumeration of Godly powers: The Almighty is content to manifest His will in military invasions, but not in the quadrennial circus of U.S. elections. So much for the belief in vox populi, vox dei.
[4] Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, page 160.
President Bush seems to be engaged in a messianic, Jesus-like calling "to set at liberty those who are oppressed." (Luke 4: 19b) He continues to justify his Administration's war of choice against non-threatening Iraq by repeatedly playing both the democracy and the religion cards: "Freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to every man and woman in the world." (Acceptance Speech to Republican Convention Delegates, The New York Times, Sept. 3, 2004) "Freedom" is the preferred code word as it represents a palatable universal ideal. Substitute "Christ" for "freedom" as "God's gift to the world" and the same intent to dominate, rather than liberate, seems obvious. However, unlike Jesus who chose to ride on a donkey to set people free, Bush resorts to overwhelming military force that kills and maims all who resist or happen to be in the path of "the advance of liberty".
Like "freedom," "God" is also big here. Power over others, whether for their oil or to anoint them with "the oil of gladness" (Hebrews 1:9b) is best hidden behind a posture of piety. And what better place to also hide other deceptions than behind the appearance of purity, honesty, humility, devotion. President Bush's faith-based deception is readily seen. His Administrations's pre-emptive war began on bended knee.
At his March 6, 2003 news conference, President Bush said, "I pray daily. I pray for guidance and wisdom and strength. . . . I pray for peace. I pray for peace." (The New York Times, Mar. 7, 2003). Two weeks later American military unleashed 21,000 pound "shock and awe" bombs on the people of Iraq. Bush's daily prayers evidently discredited US intelligence showing no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no Iraqi ties to the 9/11 attacks-the two key arguments to justify invading Iraq, charges that were not only wrong but knowingly false. Nor were Bush's prayers informed by UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, whose team "found no evidence of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction," and who said when Bush's war-starting "moment of truth for the world" ended the search, "I don't think it is reasonable to close the door to inspections after 3 _ months." (The Boston Globe, Mar. 19, 2003)
To whom did President Bush pray daily for peace? His former Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, said that removing Saddam Hussein from power "was topic 'A' 10 days after the inauguration-eight months before Sept. 11." ("Bush Sought 'Way' To Invade Iraq" www.cbsnews.com, Jan. 11, 2004) And Richard Clarke, Bush's former chief advisor on terrorism, reported that Bush seemed determined to use the 9/11 attack against America as a pretext to invade Iraq. According to Clarke, Bush told him "to find whether Iraq did this." And when he replied, "We looked at it . . . [and] there's no connection," Bush insisted that he "come back with a report that said Iraq did this." (Clarke's Take on Terror," www.cbsnews.com, Mar. 21, 2004)
In spite of all the evidence, including the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission finding "no credible evidence" of a "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and Al-Qaeda in the attack on America, President Bush continues to use that discredited argument to justify his administration's selective, costly war. During the first presidential debate, when Senator Kerry told him that he "made a mistake in invading Iraq," Bush replied, "But the enemy attacked us . . . and I have a solemn duty to protect the American people." Kerry responded by pointing out the obvious: "Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al-Qaeda attacked us." Here may be seen one reason why Bush initially resisted the creation of the 9/11 Commission.
To whom does President Bush pray "for wisdom and guidance and strength"? His repeated campaign stump speeches-to uncritical, by-invitation-only audiences-lacks truth-telling: he saw a "threat," shared it and "the intelligence" with Congress, whose members came to the same conclusion. He then "went to the United Nations because this country must always try diplomacy first. . . . We sent inspectors into his country" whom "he systematically deceived" (www.lesun-news.com, "Text of President Bush's Speech in Las Cruces", Aug. 26, 2004)
A recent New York Times special report reveals that senior Bush Administration officials withheld key intelligence from Congress: that seized aluminum tubes destined for Iraq "were likely intended for small artillery rockets," and not "irrefutable evidence," as Vice-President Cheney said, of Saddam Hussein rebuilding his "mushroom cloud"-threatening nuclear weapons program. (Oct. 3, 2004)
Whatever deity President Bush prays to appears neither to inspire "wisdom" or love-especially regarding perceived enemies. He repeatedly tells his selective campaign stump speech audiences, "See, you can't talk sense to the terrorists. You cannot negotiate with them. You cannot hope for the best. You must bring them to justice." (Ibid; www.whitehouse.gov, "President's Remarks in Canton, Ohio," July 31, 2004)
Ironically, President Bush could not talk to Hans Blix about the assumed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. If he had during the run-up to the war, Blix would have told him that "recent inspections proved far-ranging and more effective than any previously in Iraq," that "while inspectors followed up leads from US intelligence, I must regret we have not found . . . any smoking guns." (The Boston Globe, Mar. 19, 2003) Bush evidently also had difficulty "talking sense to" Richard Clarke about "Iraq! Saddam!" when Clarke told him "there's no connection" between Iraq and the 9/11 attack on America.
Most telling was President Bush's reaction to the UN inspectors' pre-war search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. His resistance to the inspections led him to repeatedly say, "I'm sick and tired of games and deceptions." (The New York Times, Jan. 15, 2003). "How much time do we need to see clearly that he is not disarming." (The New York Times, Jan. 22, 2003) "No doubt he will play a last-minute game of deception. The game is over." (The New York Times, Feb. 7, 2003). Saddam Hussein had stated, "As I tell you, and have said on many occasions before, that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, whatsoever." ("60 Minutes II," CBS, Feb. 5, 2003) The final report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction prepared by Charles A. Duelfer, America's chief weapons inspector for Iraq, is now in: "Iraq had destroyed its illicit weapons stockpile within months after the Persian Gulf War of 1991, and its ability to produce such weapons had significantly eroded by the time of the American invasion in 2003." (The New York Times, Oct. 7, 2004). Bush constantly accused Hussein of the very deception he was practicing-and continues to practice with his faith-based posturing.
So-called "terrorists," Hans Blix, and Richard Clarke are not the only persons President Bush evidently "can't talk sense to." The deity to whom he prays apparently led him not into the United Nations, but delivered him from the French, the Germans, the Russians, the Chinese and the leaders of other countries. He turned off many by the unilateralism underlying his call to arms in the fight of good against evil: "You're either with us or with the terrorists."
There seems to be a whole host of people President Bush has difficulty "talking sense to." During a 2000 presidential campaign debate, when asked to name the political philosopher or thinker with whom he most identified, he answered, "Christ, because he changed my heart." When the moderator followed up with, "I think the viewer would like to know more on how he changed your life," Bush replied, "Well, if they don't know, it's going to be hard to explain." It was. Bush repeated, "Ah, when you turn your heart and your life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as a saviour, it changes your heart, it changes your life. And that's what happened to me." Bush's inability or refusal to "talk sense" to people extends far beyond so-called "terrorists."
A basic threat to our security is President Bush repeatedly telling us Americans that "you can't talk sense to the terrorists." In declaring his global war "to rid this world of evil and terror," he repeatedly demonizes his administration's selected enemies, who are stripped of their humanity by being constantly called "evildoers," "the evil ones," "killers," "terrorists." ("George W. Bush's insights on evil," www.irregulartimes.com Oct. 5, 2004) Here a child, woman, older man, or another civilian caught in the onslaught of "liberation" is able to be counted as a dead "insurgent." Here there is Abu Ghraib Prison. Here there is fostered a dehumanizing culture of death which prizes the presidential candidate who can best "hunt down and kill the terrorists." Here there is no need for "the greatest nation on the face of the earth" to engage in soul-searching about its foreign policy, no need to take the log out of its own eye, as Jesus taught, so that its people may see clearly enough to experience, rather than interpret, the reality of another country.
To whom does President Bush pray? It is not believed to be about prayer but about global domination masked as divine intervention. It is about conquest and exploitation in the name of "freedom." It is about the "transfer of power" to selective Iraqis secretly completed, with the "gift" of "freedom" now in Iraq-wrapped in US occupation. It is about resisting "insurgents" being ground under to pave the way for an election-at the point of a gun. It is about resistance to occupation driven by nationalistic love of country and not about "terrorists" who "hate our success [and] our liberty." (Ibid.)
It is not assumed to be about "the ways of Providence" but about arrogance disguised as "moral clarity." It is about instilling fear to control us and stay in power under the pretext of providing security to protect us. It is about conformity parading as patriotism. If "the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power," does that mean the world is better off without Kenneth A. Milton? Without Jose A. Perez? Without Samuel R. Bowen? And is the world better off without all those other American sons and daughters being killed--and maimed-- in Iraq?
Faith-based deception is believed to be about George W. Bush and his administration and not about "the loving God behind all of life and all of history." (The New York Times, Jan. 21, 2003). A loving God talks to everyone, wants his sun to shine "on the evil and on the good," rather than setting them warring against each other. A loving God desires the rain to descend on and refresh "the just and the unjust," not have them imposing irreconcilable, demonizing differences between each other. A loving God "is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked," not only inspires love of one's neighbor as oneself, but love of one's enemies as well. (Matthew 5: 43-48; 22:35-40; Luke 6:31-36) Peace is not just about "bringing terrorists to justice" but about bringing justice to those terrorized by poverty and domination.
Rev. William E. Alberts, Ph.D. is a hospital chaplain. Both a Unitarian Universalist and a United Methodist minister, he has written research reports, essays and articles on racism, war, politics and religion. He can be reached at: william.alberts@bmc.org
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