This commenter on a Will Sampson post about the steady stream of lies by the Bush administration being exposed on a regular basis, is a perfect example of the accommodation of worldly politics (combined with an unhealthy dose of denial of what’s being exposed) with theology, and thus lends credence to the fears of those who express misgivings about the combination and label it theocracy. To attach lies and deceit to justifications like “in the long run” lays the way clear for the most hideous of crimes (as it was with Hitler). Yes, HITLER. I said it. I implied a comparison. Is Bush as evil as Hitler? I think not. But is he EVIL? I absolutely believe that he is. Is it because he’s stupid and a rich, spoiled, pampered elitist, totally intellectually uncurious, and greedy? Probably part of it. But he is totally given to that system that has been erected that is wreaking havoc and evil on this world. The mechanisms of propaganda they are using on the American people is a mirror image of the Nazi machine. Hitler crowed about the “coming threats” against which they must act “pre-emptively”, and grossly misused religion in order to underwrite the hideous politics they unleashed. The “Theologians Under Hitler” DVD I saw last year and just bought recently, asks the question, “Could it happen again?” Much of it is (I think it is obvious that the maniacal extermination of whole populations is not the method, and therein we have the only difference….all the rest, the dependence upon military means, and here I turn to the aforementioned commenter:
from a commenter:
In response to Will…
The issue here is motivation. You used my own words to compare the Hussein government to the Bush Administration. Though you made good use of rhetoric, you took my opinions out of context which is foolish and slightly comical. The Hussein government was evil in nature and in motivation. Like I said in early posts, I do not doubt the untruthful response to certain aspects of the war, but there is something moral and right in defending a helpless nation.
Source: willzhead: Pastoring People Post-Bush
What is interesting here is the assumption that the United States is exempt from being “evil in nature and in motivation”. Because OUR supposed cause is cloaked in rhetoric amenable to the liberal nation state, then our aims are pure, and theirs , being of that “other culture”, are “evil” and THEM, having the gall to actually fight back against alien occupation, are “purely terrorist-based”. Of course, what we are doing (bombing and killing tens of thousands of their citizens) is NOT terrorism, for WE have “worthy aims”.
The commenter also glosses over the immoral deceptive practices of the administration : “I do not doubt the untruthful response to certain aspects of the war, but there is something moral and right in defending a helpless nation.” and also failing to take his latter justification to its logical ends: why then no response to Darfur, to Israel ‘s callous treatment of the Lebanon citizens (well, there the response would be “but Hezbollah attacked”—oblivious to the fact that it was NOT the citizens, and certainly not any of them in Beirut….but in the prevailing “that’s war” wisdom, collateral damage is “regrettable” but “necessary”. (Going back to my prior post this morning about EVIL…this is the way it works. “Arguments” based on morality apart from God and fully tied to a nationalistic “rationality” allows people of nations to give assent to brutal and callous acts of barbarism upon humanity, for purposes manufactured by those in power for the benefit OF THOSE IN POWER. Noam Chomsky calls it “Manufactured Consent” (the title of one of his books).
In this way, Venezuelan president Chavez was not off-base so much as the American media is indicating as they ridicule his calling Bush a “devil” (and he also held up a copy of another Chomsky book, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance. Chomsky is not what you’d call anti-Bush. He has been writing on the propensity of various empires (specifically the US) to “manufacture consent” for anything they determine to do, in their own interests , always couched in terms of “the greater good”. Is such a history of justification a qualifier for “evil” empire? If you give any credibility to Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (which I do), the pattern is disturbing and indicative of the way in which power absolutely corrupts, and that the powerful always enlist God in their “manifest destiny”.
(Now , I know very little about Chavez’s history or credentials or real credibility; just suggesting that his charge is not necessarily that far off in a theological sense. In a political setting, such terminology doesn’t fit , nor is it appreciated. I even doubt that his motives are theological in any sense, so it’s not so much a “credit” to him at all.)
All of which makes it so abundantly clear that an alternative people is the way. The way of empires is most assuredly NOT the way of God’s people. The people of God MUST be the people whose existence and worship witness to an alternate reality, a “New Community” where we SEE and LIVE what it means to be God’s, and what life is all about.
