George Bush, Destroyer of the Faith
by Zbignew Zingh
www.dissidentvoice.org
June 21, 2004



 

Ironically, the President who touts faith-based initiatives as the salvation of America is himself the Destroyer of the Faith.

It is not religious faith that Mr. Bush destroys – although he has certainly undermined that, too – but the faith in the myth and systems that form the foundation of American power. The bedrock of that power is 1) a belief in unlimited, inexpensive access to natural resources, 2) faith in our economy and the robustness of the dollar, 3) confidence in our institutions, and 4) unshakable faith in our security systems.

First, there is no rational American who does not comprehend that the United States invaded Iraq, at least in part, in order to gain control of its vast petroleum resources. Implicit in this understanding is the glimmer of understanding that America no longer lives in an age of plenty. No matter what gloss the Bush Administration puts on its overseas adventures, the message has been understood by all: America is vulnerable because, like a junkie, it must procure from abroad its huge daily fix of oil that makes possible our care-free, profligate lifestyle. Although this vulnerability was always there, it is underscored every day by the news of American deaths in foreign lands.

Second, tied to lost faith in unlimited resources, is lost confidence in our economy and our currency.

Money is a measure of faith.

The dollars that uphold the world economy are the memory of transactions and obligations, often many times removed, digitally stored and electronically transferred by and between computers. There is nothing there except faith in the faith of others that others will continue to accept, in future exchanges, these computer digits that you and they have faith in. This is a faith whose circularity is unquestioned so long as the general conditions for exchange remain benign.

Under the current administration, faith in our economy has been shellacked at home and abroad. Our forays have become an economic sinkhole. Our government continues to operate, in large measure, because other nations continue to buy our debt obligations. Any economic “growth” we experience is due to prosecuting War. Our domestic infrastructure has been hollowed out while the President and the Congress cut tax revenue. All the while true inflation – the day to day costs average citizens pay to live their lives – increases at a prodigious rate. Faith in our economy is now, at best, a wish and a prayer.

International faith in the currency is based on the knowledge that it remains "strong" only so long as foreign nations will not risk the loss of their investment in America's debt. Their debt would be repaid in dollars, too, so the foreign holders of our debt must sustain the value of our currency, like the bankers who kept loaning money to Enron even when they knew it was teetering. They knew that if Enron fell, then they would lose their investments.

Moreover, the petrodollar remains the international currency for petroleum. What undergirds the petrodollar is the American military. Might makes money. A military that is strong enough can, and will force others to accept it in exchange for their resources.

The system totters today, however, because the American military looks like it can be tied in knots by irregular forces, because it appears to be overstretched, and because the seizure of Iraqi oilfields looks so incredibly desperate. As a consequence, faith in the U.S. economy and the petrodollar are both falling.

Domestically, the loss of faith in our economy is not measured by Wall Street's roulette wheels. It is measured in the closed public parks and swimming pools, the impoverished public education system, the skyrocketing cost and callousness of privatized medical care, the impoverishment of our senior citizens, cuts in benefits to our veterans, the curtailment of public library hours, the disintegration of our transportation systems, the rising costs of insurance, housing, natural gas, heating oil and water.

When the Federal Reserve Board says that inflation is under control, it means that your wages are not rising. When it says that productivity is increasing, it means that you are working longer for less pay. The Federal Reserve Board is playing a confidence game by its misleading edicts. The real facts are understood by the rest of us, however, and the result is a further erosion of faith in the economy.

Third among the faith-based foundations of America is our institutions.

As public funding for K12 to college has slammed shut, Americans have seen the doors of opportunity slam shut on them. Education equates with opportunity and with the demise of public education, so, too, shrivels the myth of America as the Land of Opportunity.

The Bush administration was born illegitimately. When the Supreme Court elected the President notwithstanding the flagrant disenfranchisement of so many voters, they destroyed faith in the presidency and the electoral process. The Supreme Court also destroyed faith in itself and all its subordinate branches of the judiciary.

The courts are supposed to be bastions of independence, the ultimate check on government power. Now, there are many Americans who view the Supreme Court judges as partisan politicians who, together with the Congress, form a seamless Government of One Will.

In the name of unrestrained free market capitalism this administration has accelerated the Privatization of Everything, exalted greed over good, championed free trade over free will, profit over people. In both wings of the dominant American political party, the politicians' biggest patrons and contributors have been the Ken Lays of the world, the disgraced fraudsters of the corporate world, the lobbyists for big businesses-without-borders. Once, the deluded citizens believed these captains of business and industry were virtuous. Now, we regard them and big business and the political beneficiaries of their largess as just another bunch of con artists.

Worse, the current administration has torn the veil of past administrations' apparent legitimacy. Although past governments of both major parties have lied, dissembled and misled their people, the current administration has not even bothered with the art of the political lie. It lies through its teeth, patently, recklessly, lying as it grabs you by the throat and threatens you with the balled fist if you challenge its lies. This, then, is the cultural example that the Administration sets for all our American institutions; an example of leadership by lying and bullying that must, over time, corrode our institutions to the bone.

Faith in our institutions shrivels. And with the shriveling of confidence, our institutions are held up by the fear of What Comes After The Collapse.

Fourth, confidence in our security systems has taken a beating. Although that faith was never quite rational, it was real for many Americans. What now of that faith?

The military was rankled because it was beaten by an invisible rag-tag army of third world guerrillas in Viet Nam. Now it is losing Iraq to another invisible rag-tag army of third world guerrillas. It seems Resistance cannot be violently extirpated any more than could the Third Reich extirpate the French or Italian resistance.

The American soldier who fights in the belief that he brings goodness and civilization to a barbaric world must disbelieve that myth when he is ordered to kill old men, children and women, demolish homes and olive groves, torture bound and hooded prisoners. Even the manufactured stories of heroism have been poorly executed and quickly debunked: the Hollywood filming of the “rescue” of Pvt. Jessica Lynch, the apparent “capture” of Saddam Hussein by the American military rather than the Kurds, the needless death of Cpl. Pat Tillman by "friendly fire" and not by the arms of the Taliban. The Rambo-Terminator hubris crumbles, and our faith is flagging.

Not only is the soldier's faith and the public faith eroding, so, too, erodes the faith of 'client nations' in the omnipotence of America's military. For it is military power that props up our dependent autocrats in Pakistan, Egypt, Columbia and around the globe. They fear their own citizens' realization that the Protector's armies are not invincible after all, and therefore their people could remove their local despots.

Other security agencies, too, have suffered the same erosion of confidence on the Bush Administration's watch. The so-named Independent 911 Commission will whitewash the tragedy of the New York/Pentagon attacks as a lapse in attention, a failure of intelligence on the part of the Pentagon, the FBI and the CIA. Reprehensible negligence, the Commission will declare, but it will find no crime, no collusion, no hoodwinking, no foreknowledge, no political opportunism.

However, this cleansing of the record will fail to end the public inquiry into what really happened on September 11, 2001. In addition, it will also further the corrosion of faith in the FBI and the CIA. Faith in those institutions stems from the mythology of J. Edgar Hoover and Cold War spy days, and it was always misplaced. But the fact that their credibility has been sacrificed in order to protect the Administration's will make it ever harder to use the FBI or CIA in support of future government actions.

We have been asked to radically compartmentalize our thinking. We have been told that the 9-11 tragedy occurred because the FBI and the CIA cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. We were told that we invaded Iraq because it had weapons of mass destruction. We were told that terrorism world-wide declined during our occupation of Iraq. We were told that Iraq was in league with terrorists who plotted our destruction.

Then we are told that the CIA got it wrong about the weapons of mass destruction. We are told that they got it wrong about terrorism abating – it has actually increased. We have learned that Iraq actually had no nuclear arms program; but Pakistan did and it sold its nuclear weapons technology to others - however that merits only a rebuke and an increase in military aid. We were lately told that the Iraqis were not in league with terrorists (although Vladimir Putin, the Russian protector of America, purportedly did urge the U.S. to attack Iraq before Iraq attacked the U.S. Or, was he, is he, sucking the U.S. deeper into Iraq and into four more years of Mr. Bush to return the favor we paid the Russians by sucking them into Afghanistan?) We are told that our CIA and FBI were deceived by Ahmed Chalabi's lies; but then Chalabi remained in office and the Director of the CIA resigned.

We are then asked to trust these very same CIA and FBI to authenticate every grainy video or audio tape purportedly released by Osama bin Laden whenever Mr. Bush's poll numbers begin to flag. We are asked to trust the CIA and FBI's verification that the dead amputee al-Zarqawi has come back to life and grown a new leg just to terrorize Americans in Iraq. We are asked to believe these same security agencies that purportedly cannot walk and chew gum at the same time when they tell us that North Korea and Syria and Iran threaten America's security or that terrorists lurk behind every tree. They might be right or they might be wrong, but what rational person can believe them any more?

We have been asked to suspend our credulity while maintaining our faith in America's myths. The Administration tells us our only goal is Democracy while we simultaneously seek to overthrow Democracy in Haiti and Venezuela. We are supposed to be spreading popular elections while we prop up monarchies in Jordan, Morocco, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

Our credulity is in crisis, and Mr. Bush is destroying our faith.

This is the danger posed by the destruction of faith. As it evaporates, we begin to seek changes, and we begin to talk to others who have lost faith in their systems. What Mr. Bush called a “focus group” is, in fact, a small, multi-million-person trans-national snowball that has begun to roll down the hill.

There are those in the highest circles of the highest levels of world society who recognize that this rolling snowball could cause an avalanche. It is the impetus for world-wide change borne from disillusionment with the current world model. This portends bad things for the rulers who benefit from the world as it is.

Note that many of the most elite Republicans do not share the blurred vision of the Bush demagogues. These elite power-brokers were willing to let the messianic Neocons and religious extremists experiment with power. But they will absolutely not countenance anything that threatens to destroy the lovely world order from which they profit. The power elite knows better than we do that Mr. Bush is the Destroyer of the Faith, and they will not tolerate him to threaten their interests.

Many established, credentialed, powerful people are coming out of the woodwork, here and abroad, to castigate the Bush administration. It is also happening in Europe.

They are not conspirators. They naturally share common interests and common values. They value themselves and others like themselves. They collude because their rulers' interests tend to coincide. They do not care whether the President is a Republican or a Democrat. They do not care whether there is peace or war, justice or injustice, so long as they are not at risk and so long as there is justice enough for them. National boundaries are irrelevant to them. They want stability and maintenance of the status quo. Their status quo.

Notice that they do not often condemn the Bush agenda, but mainly the means by which he seeks to achieve it. It is Mr. Bush's style, not his objectives that worries them. He worries them because he has let the snowball start rolling down the hill.

The rulers do not like Losers and Mr. Bush is a Loser. He does not lie well. He does not have the gift of dissimulation. If he does not satisfy their concerns, they will seek to replace Mr. Bush with someone more malleable. They will support someone who, in the future, will enlist the support of their class, here and abroad; someone who can better pull off the propaganda stunts; someone who can better fool the people than can this President.

Eventually, the elite and influential might even throw their support to another party's presidential candidate who, as the "lesser evil" in their minds, will stay the course, but soothe the people.

They believe that they might thereby staunch the erosion of that all important faith that Mr. Bush seems bent on destroying, and prevent the rolling global snowball from growing into an avalanche for change.

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