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By Arianna Huffington
This is my last column before Election Day. With less
than a week to go, I plan on doing everything in my power to defeat
George W. Bush (need a ride to the polls?). Then I'm going to get down
on my knees and pray to a higher power.
As someone for whom faith is incredibly important, and
who regularly prays for all the people and things that matter to me,
I'm hopeful that God is as appalled as I am with the way His name is
constantly being taken in vain on the Bush campaign trail, and with how
the president is abusing his faith to justify to himself and to the
world his disastrous policies.
Lord knows there's a very long list of things to be
angry with Bush about, but this one has moved to the top of my personal
hit parade because, as Catholic theologians teach us, "The corruption
of the best is the worst." And George W. is truly corrupting faith and
dragging it into the political gutter. In two fundamental ways:
First, he's using it as a spiritual inoculation against
uncertainty and complexity.
Ron Suskind's recent piece in
the New York Times Magazine painted a chilling portrait of a presidency
in which thoughtful analysis and moral questioning have been replaced
by "God-given" certainty, and where facts and open debate have become
an anathema.
Suskind reveals a president who uses his faith to numb
himself against reality. It anesthetizes him in the same way a stiff
drink — OK, 20 stiff drinks — used to, and allows him to drown out the
voices of doubt. Yet great thinkers throughout history have extolled
the virtues of doubt. As Paul Tillich put it: "Doubt isn't the opposite
of faith; it is an element of faith."
But not in the Bush White House, where doubters are
treated as traitors, and inconvenient facts are the work of the Devil —
because facts can lead to questioning, and questioning undermines
faith. And that would be blasphemy in an Oval Office where unbending
resolve has become a holy sacrament. No wonder Bush is unwilling to
admit to even a single mistake.
The second way the president is corrupting his faith is
by using it as a marketing tool designed to garner support among the
over 60 million Americans who identify themselves as evangelical —
particularly the 4 million born-again voters who stayed home in 2000.
Nowhere is this blending of church and campaign more
evident than in "George W. Bush: Faith in the White House," a DVD being
distributed to tens of thousands of America's churches.
Although not officially the work of the Bush-Cheney
campaign, it obviously has its approval, and indeed was screened at a
party for Christian conservatives hosted by the campaign at the GOP
convention in New York.
In the documentary, President Bush is presented as a man
with "the moral clarity of an old-fashioned biblical prophet" — and is
shown sharing a beatific split screen with the Son of God himself.
So, in 2004, Jesus is not only the president's favorite
philosopher — he's his surrogate running mate. I'm surprised we haven't
seen any "Bush-Christ 2004" bumper stickers yet. It would make for a
heck of an October surprise.
All this pious posturing is also being used as a cudgel
with which to attack John Kerry, portraying him as a sorry second in
the faith sweepstakes.
Forget that Kerry carries a Bible and a rosary with him
on the campaign trail, used to be an altar boy, and has said, "My faith
affects everything that I do." The Bushies have made it seem as if they
are running against Joe Pagan. Just check out the "Kerry: Wrong for
Catholics" page on the
official Bush-Cheney campaign Web site.
What's next? Attack ads from Altar Boys for Truth
claiming Kerry never actually swallowed the body of Christ during
communion?
What the president calls faith is actually nothing of
the sort. It is fanaticism, pure and simple. The defining trait of the
fanatic is an utter refusal to allow anything as piddling as evidence
to get in the way of an unshakable belief.
This zealot's mindset is what allows President Bush to
take in the death and destruction in Iraq and see them as "freedom on
the march." And it's also what allows Abu Zarqawi and his followers to
coldly put a bullet in the back of the head of four-dozen unarmed Iraqi
Army recruits because they are "apostates."
"Either you're with us or you're against us" plainly
cuts both ways.
"This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about
al-Qaida and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy," explained Bruce
Bartlett, a domestic policy advisor to Reagan and Bush 41. "He
understands them because he's just like them."
I pray that every American of real faith keeps this in
mind when stepping into the voting booth on Election Day.
© 2004 ARIANNA HUFFINGTON.
DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
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