Poshdeluxe

this article
about bush and his evolving, faith-based presidency is FASCINATING (not
to mention frightening). it’s long, but it needs to be. MORE than worth
the read. but if you don’t have time (tsk), here are some compelling
excerpts:

The [Bush] 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.”
……
And for those who don’t get it? That was explained to me in late 2002
by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs
his own consulting firm and helps the president. 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.
……
Can the unfinished American experiment in self-governance — sputtering
on the watery fuel of illusion and assertion — deal with something as
nuanced as the subtleties of one man’s faith? What, after all, is the
nature of the particular conversation the president feels he has with
God — a colloquy upon which the world now precariously turns?

That very issue is what Jim Wallis wishes he could sit and talk about
with George W. Bush. That’s impossible now, he says. He is no longer
invited to the White House.

”Faith can cut in so many ways,” he said. ”If you’re penitent and
not triumphal, it can move us to repentance and accountability and help
us reach for something higher than ourselves. That can be a powerful
thing, a thing that moves us beyond politics as usual, like Martin
Luther King did. But when it’s designed to certify our righteousness –
that can be a dangerous thing. Then it pushes self-criticism aside.
There’s no reflection.

”Where people often get lost is on this very point,” he said after a
moment of thought. ”Real faith, you see, leads us to deeper reflection
and not — not ever — to the thing we as humans so very much want.”

And what is that?

”Easy certainty.”