DEAD PARROT

Number 24 -- Saturday, May 10, 2003

ALL GOOD NEWS ALL THE TIME

Boston Globe readers were certainly relieved to learn on April 25 that the United States "SHUNS IRAN-STYLE THEOCRACY FOR IRAQ." This headline topped the day's lead story, in which Rumsfeld assured reporters that we would never permit "an Iranian-type government with a few clerics running everything in the country." The question that remained unspoken and unanswered was what the Bush administration would think about an AMERICAN-style theocracy in our newest imperial outpost.

Who can doubt that America is a theocracy in the making? The weight of religiosity in high places has not been so oppressive since the Salem witches unlucky enough to escape hanging were crushed to death, slowly, under piles of stone. That Jesus saved George Bush from alcoholism is something for George Bush and his family to celebrate. That this small miracle should become the basis for a system of government does not exactly, as logicians say, follow.

The White House prayer breakfasts and Bible-study groups, the repeated enlistment of the deity in our military adventures, the howls of indignation at the possibility that infidel judges might remove "under God" from the pledge of allegiance--it would be fair to say that the climate of piety has become a little...close. And piety has its benefits. By hitching his wagon to a system of faith that requires unquestioning obedience and submission, Bush encourages a culture of passivity; by aligning himself with icons of the good, he demonizes anyone who challenges him. What else but a dragon could find itself on the wrong end of St. George's spear?

There is even a fiscal benefit: the problems that we might otherwise have to pay good tax money to address, Jesus may solve for free. This was the message Bush sent by inviting Tonja Miles to be a guest of honor at the State of the Union address. Miles runs a drug treatment program called Set Free Indeed, which shares space at the Healing Place church in Baton Rouge with such other ministries as Cruisin' for Christ (target audience: motorcyclists) and Growing Kids God's Way (parents at their wits' end). Set Free Indeed is "religiously sectarian, unlicensed, untested and not clinical in its methods" (NY Times, 2/23). If Bush gets his "faith-based" plans through Congress, Miles can take money that would otherwise go to treatment programs run by professionals. If not, he can at least claim that the revival tent approach doesn't cost the federal government one red cent.

Muddling science with religion is an intermediate step pending the happy day when science withers away altogether. Two recent stories about AIDS illustrate the trend. The public health departments of Florida, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia have printed and distributed a 16-page pamphlet called "A Christian Response to AIDS" (Times, 4/4). The pamphlet pushes a Bible-based line about "human suffering and its relationship to God" but does not stoop to giving mundane advice about how to prevent the disease. Meanwhile, federal health officials have warned scientists writing grant proposals that in order to protect themselves from the mullahs in Congress they should remove politically sensitive language from their applications (Times, 4/18). With words and phrases such as "gay," "homosexual," "sex workers," "anal sex," and "needle exchange" on the red flag list, proposals quickly get lost in a fog of euphemism. As the dean of the public health school at Johns Hopkins explains, "If people feel intimidated and start clouding the language they use, then your mind starts to get cloudy and the science gets cloudy." But that's not a problem for Bush & Co. First cloudy science, then no science.

Education is another target-rich environment for the faithful. "All things equal," Education Secretary Rod Paige told an interviewer for a Baptist University last month, "I would prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community" (Times, 4/10). Working his way in deeper, he explained that "In a religious environment, the value system is set. That's not the case in public school, where there are so many different kids with different kinds of values." Soon Paige was attempting to assure reporters that "This has no connection to how I perform my duties as secretary of education." Court moralist William Bennett jumped in to cover Paige's back: "He'd prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation of the values of the Christian community. Who's opposed to that?" The framers of the Constitution, among others. A bumper sticker from the National Organization of Women puts the point succinctly: "Don't Pray in My School and I Won't Think in Your Church."

Bush, the Commander-in-Chief of Christian soldiers, does not hesitate to send his faith abroad--literally, on the barrel of a gun. One of the most memorable photos to come out of Iraq (Times, 3/25) mirrors the fundamentalists' crackpot focus on the Book of Revelation. Amid a desolate scene of sagebrush and sand hills, a single Iraqi prisoner prostrates himself on a road, his head raised just enough to stare at the Abrams tank that has stopped, loomingly, twenty feet in front of him. On the tank's enormous cannon, at least three times as long as the man, soldiers of the Third Infantry Division have stenciled "APOCOLYPSE" (sic). The spelling is shaky, but it's the thought that counts.

The Iraq mission throbbed with religious fervor. According to the American Prospect (5/03), a group called In Touch Ministries produced and distributed to thousands of Marines a prayer book including special prayers for the president, designed to be "torn out along a perforation and mailed to the White House." The New Republic (4/21-28) reports on Josh Llano, a chaplain with the 5th Army Corps. Llano's control of a mobile 500-gallon baptismal pool gave him a certain evangelical leverage over soldiers who had not been able to bathe for weeks in 90-degree heat. "They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized," he blithely told the Miami Herald. "You have to be aggressive to help people find themselves in God."

DP'S POLITICAL LEXICON

credibility (noun) -- the perception that one's threats are not idle. If one's announced intentions seem so reckless and destructive that people regard them as empty bluster, one must carry them out in order to achieve credibility. For example, the Bush administration has won credibility for its doctrine of pre-emptive war. Everyone must now believe that the United States will attack even the weakest countries on the basis of fabricated evidence and in defiance of worldwide opinion.

political capital (noun) -- a fund of good will, earned by carrying out reckless and destructive acts, that may then be invested in building support for more such acts. For example, Bush now plans to spend the political capital from his invasion of Iraq on an effort to enact tax cuts that will make rich people vastly richer, deprive poor people of necessary services, and bankrupt the federal government.

moral clarity (noun) -- a rigid belief in the self-evident goodness of one's own reckless and destructive acts. Moral clarity is often asserted by the generous application of high explosives or the passage of strong electric currents through the human body. Explaining why Bush was "happy to have the messy diplomacy behind him" as the killing in Iraq began, an aide offered, "This president likes clarity" (Newsweek, 3/31). Compare moral relativism, a disease of liberals, hand-wringers, and intellectuals who insist on confusing things by pointing out contradictions and asking difficult questions. See also evil, a rigid belief in the self-evident goodness of one's own reckless and destructive acts.

[Political Lexicon, an occasional Dead Parrot feature, investigates the often euphemistic language that politicians and the media use to blur the outlines of real-world issues.]

TIN SOLDIER MARCHES ON

From: Karl Rove

To: POTUS

Subject: Things to be said for setting your victory speech on an aircraft carrier 30 miles at sea

1) You'll be completely safe--the tailhook is sure to catch one of the four cables.

2) With the right camera angles, no one will notice the California coastline in the background.

3) You'll look way cool in the flight suit; people will think you were once a combat pilot.

4) You'll have a captive audience that can be counted on to cheer at the right times.

5) The event will generate great footage for campaign commercials.

6) Any protestors will be at least 30 miles away.

As Maureen Dowd points out (Times, 5/4), the Abraham Lincoln had to go into a holding pattern to make the stunt possible: if the ship had continued in a straight line for another couple of hours, Bush would have been forced to board her by walking up a gangplank, sharply reducing the effect of the photo-op.

What does it mean that the President of the United States speaks only to soldiers, sailors, and defense contractors? The day after the Lincoln speech was supposed to mark a shift of attention toward domestic concerns, but there he was again at United Defense Industries in Santa Clara, posing in front of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and playing at battle on an electronic simulator. "As soon as he touched the controls yesterday," the Globe reported (5/3), "explosions thundered through the room...With the help of a United Defense engineer, [Bush] began firing. He destroyed at least one [enemy tank]." Then, to show how each made-for-TV moment builds on earlier ones, he regaled cheering UDI workers with the tale of how one of their Hercules Tank Recovery Vehicles had assisted in toppling "the statue" in Baghdad. The protestors got a little closer this time; hundreds of them gathered outside the plant under the watchful eyes of riot police. Unemployment in the Santa Clara area is officially eight per cent; economists believe it is actually closer to ten per cent.

There is a name for the relentless celebration of martial toys, the decking out of civilian leaders in the togs of war, the cultivation of a sentimental rhetoric of sacrifice and glory. The name is militarism. Ironically, by using the armed forces as props in his own political melodrama, Bush demeans them as much as he aggrandizes them.