Sunday, October 17, 2004
Handling the Chaos
Kevin Drum says of the Ron Suskind piece in the Times Magazine: Whoa, everybody, maybe you've all misinterpreted the key paragraph. And collectively, more or less, Everybody responds, "No we didn't." From the comments to the post come two links from other blogs that are worthwhile reading:
Just a Bump in the Beltway says that far from proving that Bush is truly a man of faith, his actions show how little faith he has in himself, and how much fear, and how admitting doubt would cause his entire world to cave in: "This is a fearful man who went looking, not for 'faith,' which grounds reason in experience, but for certainty." There's something right-on-target here about that analysis, and I think it can be extended to the sometimes-impossible question of just why Bush inspires such passion among his followers. It started in the Moral Majority 80s and continues to this day: as the world moves faster and becomes more complex, more and more people are simply unable to handle the chaos, and as a result, they grab at anything that promises to manage the chaos. Religion offers that promise, particularly fundamentalism, which reduces everything to utter simplicity. And who better to lead a simple world than somebody who thinks it's just as simple as you do? After all, those of us who think the world is a complex and difficult problem to solve hate Bush precisely because he doesn't think it's complex or difficult problem to solve, and want a leader who sees it our way.
Over the years I've read several commentators who have tried to deal with the idea that Bush's theology is faulty--that the spiritual and moral assumptions on which he rests his governing philosophy don't square with the real meaning of Christianity. In that vein, the Recomomist reiterates a point he says he's made before--that Bush doesn't believe in God as much as he believes he is God.
I'd call that faulty theology, yeah.
Kevin Drum says of the Ron Suskind piece in the Times Magazine: Whoa, everybody, maybe you've all misinterpreted the key paragraph. And collectively, more or less, Everybody responds, "No we didn't." From the comments to the post come two links from other blogs that are worthwhile reading:
Just a Bump in the Beltway says that far from proving that Bush is truly a man of faith, his actions show how little faith he has in himself, and how much fear, and how admitting doubt would cause his entire world to cave in: "This is a fearful man who went looking, not for 'faith,' which grounds reason in experience, but for certainty." There's something right-on-target here about that analysis, and I think it can be extended to the sometimes-impossible question of just why Bush inspires such passion among his followers. It started in the Moral Majority 80s and continues to this day: as the world moves faster and becomes more complex, more and more people are simply unable to handle the chaos, and as a result, they grab at anything that promises to manage the chaos. Religion offers that promise, particularly fundamentalism, which reduces everything to utter simplicity. And who better to lead a simple world than somebody who thinks it's just as simple as you do? After all, those of us who think the world is a complex and difficult problem to solve hate Bush precisely because he doesn't think it's complex or difficult problem to solve, and want a leader who sees it our way.
Over the years I've read several commentators who have tried to deal with the idea that Bush's theology is faulty--that the spiritual and moral assumptions on which he rests his governing philosophy don't square with the real meaning of Christianity. In that vein, the Recomomist reiterates a point he says he's made before--that Bush doesn't believe in God as much as he believes he is God.
I'd call that faulty theology, yeah.
