Heart of Darkness: The Bush cult and American madness

[LynnTheDem]

First, the top Bush insider mocked the journalist and all those "in what we call the reality-based community," i.e., people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." Suskind's attempt to defend the principles of reason and enlightenment cut no ice with the Bush-man. "That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality," he said. "And while you're studying that reality, 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."

Anyone with any knowledge of 20th century history will know that this same megalomaniacal outburst could have been made by a "senior adviser" to Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini or Mao. Indeed, as scholar Juan Cole points out, the dogma of the Bush Cult is identical with the "reality-creating" declaration of Mao's Little Red Book: "It is possible to accomplish any task whatsoever." For Bush, as for Mao in the all-devouring Great Leap Forward, "discernible reality" has no meaning: political, cultural, economic, scientific truth - even the fundamental processes of nature, even human nature itself - must give way to the faith-statements of ideology, ruthlessly applied by unbending zealots.

Thus the reality-twisting assertions of Bush's ideologues: The conquered will welcome their killers. The poor will be happy to slave for the rich. The earth can sustain any amount of damage without lasting harm. The loss of rights is essential to liberty. War without end is the only way to peace. Corruption and cronyism lead to universal prosperity. Dissent is evil; dissenters are "with the terrorists." But God is with the Leader; whatever he does is righteous, even if in the eyes of unbelievers - the "reality-based community" - his acts are criminal: aggressive war that kills thousands of innocent people, widespread torture, secret assassinations, imprisonment without charges or trial, electoral subversion.

....

Their "empire" - their Death-Cult, their power-mania - is an old madness come again, an old heresy in new form, another outbreak of the fever, the deep soul-sickness that devoured so many nations in the last century. Now it's come to America. After decades of sliding toward the abyss - blithely, blindly, drunk with corruption, letting democracy and justice wither on the vine - now we are here at last, in the heart of darkness.

http://smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=18373&mode=nested&order=0

[daydreamer]

1. So insightfull

You post explained why we do not landslide poll nembers for Kerry.

[MoJoWorkin]

2. The most Powerful statement I have read

Nails it exactly, and in VERY VISUAL terms.
Floyd further expounds on Gore's speech of last week--driving head-on into the belly of the beast we have got to overcome.

Bush as Anti-Christ or precursor? I do not profess to be knowledgeable enough in this area. I have turned away from belief in the religion I was born into, due to the fact that all three of the main monotheistic religions can't wait to kill one another in the name of their GOD.

[rfranklin]

3. Did they make their own reality on September 11, 2001?

Could that be why there were no warnings, no fighter jets ready to intercept, and a President who sat calmly through a photo op and then hopscotched across the country without apparent direction?

[billyoc]

4. I make shit happen

These banana republicans don't have a monopoly on "creating reality".