Meditations (Politics): A Question of Faith

Jesus said, ''Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God.'' What then, will a warmonger like George W. Bush be called?

Is there no accountability, no justice for the man who lied to America and the world to start a war, a man whose orders continue to needlessly kill thousands of people? Bush and bin Laden have plunged the world into a dark age. How in God’s name can such a man be rewarded, by being re-elected to the most powerful office in the world?

These are questions of faith as much as politics. Even for completely secular people, indeed even for atheists, they are questions of faith. If your faith extends no further than the belief in the human capacity to grow rather than regress, the re-election of George Bush is still a body blow.

“A man no mightier than thyself or me in personal action, yet prodigious grown and fearful…” Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

When a man so sullies the presidency as to bring shame upon not just the Executive Branch, but the United States itself, then “respect for the office of the president” no longer applies. Treating such a man with respect, as the complicit American media is doing during this week of tasteless celebrations for the bought-and-paid-for reelection, becomes part of the perversity.

George Junior has done irreparable damage to the presidency, as well as to the United States itself. The Republicans pilloried Clinton for the Lewinsky affair, but their boy has so fouled the Oval Office that respect for the office, and for America itself, are unrecoverable for the foreseeable future.

Have you noticed how W is looking more and more like the twisted, unctuous evangelical Christian preachers he so admires and who helped so much to install and keep him in the Oval Office? The emptiness, extremism, and egomania are now etched in the countenance of the man. Bush has become a pathetic caricature of himself, and of Christianity.

He’s begun to look a lot like people such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who are to religiosity what snake oil salesmen are to competent medical care. Their religion is not religious at all, but a deluded, injurious, and wretched perversion of the spirit and teachings of Jesus.

To this utterly false thing George Bush hews. It allows him to do anything, including starting wars. His fundamentalism cannot be morally and psychologically distinguished from bin Laden’s. Indeed, they are working together at the metaphysical level to destroy humanity.

Bush’s disingenuous smiles and smug shrugs, the inappropriate punctuations in his speech, the hollow reasons utterly detached from reality, and the willful adherence to wrongheaded thinking which he truly believes is virtue, make him, wielding the unparalleled power of the United States, the most dangerous man in the world.

And yet for all this, the spirit of Jesus still lives in the hearts of people who feel revulsion at the use of his name to justify violence, power, and domination.

I am not a Christian, and am sure there is no deistic God; much less that Jesus was “the son of God.” We are all, potentially, the sons and daughters of the ineffable intelligence called God. Making one person the symbol for everyone’s sins is a neat psychological trick, but that dodge no longer works.

Christianity is based on the ridiculous idea that Jesus was divinely sent to humankind in order to fail in his mission, and then die on the cross. It’s amazing how such an absurd notion could last so long, and rule and ruin so many minds. If one subscribes to such a fallacy, then in some twisted way it follows that George W. Bush is its highest expression. Perhaps that’s why so many Christians in the USA believe that God’s messenger flies around on Air Force One.

It all comes down to faith. Not belief, but faith. Bush and his kind are destroyers of genuine faith, whatever the religious system one happened to be raised. Now he’s about to begin another four years of obscene misrule.

Only fools still look to the United States for moral leadership; that is dead and gone. But do not give up on humanity. That’s what the conduit-in-chief unconsciously wants, serving the lord of darkness in human consciousness, and calling it Lord God.

Don’t mistake my disgust for hatred of the man, or for this country. That’s the favorite fecal charge of the far right. Hatred is what they want, and what the living-dead darkness feeds on. Disgust, and pity for the pathetic conduits, is what darkness and its instruments fear the most.

Faith in humanity must be sustained, despite all the evidence against it. For what is faith in humanity but faith in ourselves?

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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