I was going to post something about this article by Ron Suskind from the NYT Sunday magazine last night, but frankly, I got so wrapped up in the idiotic fun of The Day After Tomorrow that I never got around to it.
Suskind’s main point is that George W. Bush has turned his office into a “faith-based presidency,” and that nearly all of his decisions and actions can be interpreted and understood in that light.
It make sense. It explains the harsh treatment of those who criticize administration policy, the aversion to empirical data that contradicts the White House’s official view of the world. The President and his administration have the strength of their beliefs, and from their way of thinking, doubting those beliefs or considering alternative views is a sign of weakness and moral lassitude.
Here’s a somewhat lengthy excerpt that gets to the heart of the matter, in which Suskind relates a conversation he had with a senior White House advisor:
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.”
While I find such an attitude rather frightening, I can’t say it’s terribly surprising, given the religious overtones of nearly every aspect of the Bush presidency.
The Christian worldview openly espoused by Bush and the people surrounding him places an inherently greater value on faith and belief in the supernatural than in rational analysis of the actual world. In a fight between their beliefs and empirical data, their beliefs with always win out, because their religious worldview provides no ground for rational discussion of the facts. Such discussions are only tolerated when they are convenient, and not obviously in conflict with religious faith.
And so we end up with an administration that will brook no criticism (or even discussion) of its policies and decisions. At the risk of repeating myself, I cannot place too much emphasis on the fact that these tendencies are a direct result of the President’s strong Christian beliefs. Too often, he (and others who share his beliefs) get a pass on their overt religiosity.
Should there be any doubt on where the administration stands, I close with another excerpt from the article. Suskind is quoting Mark McKinnon, a senior media advisor to the Bush administration:
He started by challenging me. “You think he’s an idiot, don’t you?” I said, no, I didn’t. “No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don’t care. You see, you’re outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don’t read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it’s good for us. Because you know what those folks don’t like? They don’t like you!” In this instance, the final “you,” of course, meant the entire reality-based community.