Faith in the White House

[Petra]

Now on DVD: The Passion of the Bush


This New York Times, op-ed/critique of George W. Bush: Faith in the White House is a good read, even though it's utterly terrifying.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/ar...partner=rssnyt

<quote/article>

Of the many cultural grenades being tossed that day, though, the one must-see is "George W. Bush: Faith in the White House," a DVD that is being specifically marketed in "head to head" partisan opposition to "Fahrenheit 9/11.

[...]

Though you can buy the DVD for $14.95, its makers told the right-wing news service WorldNetDaily.com that they plan to distribute 300,000 copies to America's churches. And no wonder. This movie aspires to be "The Passion of the Bush," and it succeeds.

[...]

More than any other campaign artifact, it clarifies the hard-knuckles rationale of the president's vote-for-me-or-face-Armageddon re-election message.

[...]

Its Bush is not merely a sincere man of faith but God's essential and irreplaceable warrior on Earth. The stations of his cross are burnished into cinematic fable: the misspent youth, the hard drinking (a thirst that came from "a throat full of Texas dust"), the fateful 40th-birthday hangover in Colorado Springs, the walk on the beach with Billy Graham. A towheaded child actor bathed in the golden light of an off-camera halo re-enacts the young George comforting his mom after the death of his sister; it's a parable anticipating the future president's miraculous ability to comfort us all after 9/11. An older Bush impersonator is seen rebuffing a sexual come-on from a fellow Bush-Quayle campaign worker hovering by a Xerox machine in 1988; it's an effort to imbue our born-again savior with retroactive chastity. As for the actual president, he is shown with a flag for a backdrop in a split-screen tableau with Jesus. The message isn't subtle: they were separated at birth.




[...]

"Faith in the White House" purports to be the product of "independent research," uncoordinated with the Bush-Cheney campaign. But many of its talking heads are official or unofficial administration associates or sycophants. They include the evangelical leader and presidential confidant Ted Haggard (who is also one of Mel Gibson's most fervent P.R. men) and Deal Hudson, an adviser to the Bush-Cheney campaign ...[...]... As for the documentary's "research," a film positioning itself as a scrupulously factual "alternative" to "Fahrenheit 9/11" should not inflate Mr. Bush's early business "success" with Arbusto Energy (an outright bust for most of its investors) or the number of children he's had vaccinated in Iraq ("more than 22 million," the movie claims, in a country whose total population is 25 million).


"Will George W. Bush be allowed to finish the battle against the forces of evil that threaten our very existence?" Such is the portentous question posed at the film's conclusion by its narrator, the religious broadcaster Janet Parshall ...[...]... Anyone who stands in the way of Mr. Bush completing his godly battle, of course, is a heretic. Facts on the ground in Iraq don't matter. Rational arguments mustered in presidential debates don't matter. Logic of any kind is a nonstarter. The president - [...] - is divine. He may not hear "voices" instructing him on policy, testifies Stephen Mansfield, the author of one of the movie's source texts, "The Faith of George W. Bush," but he does act on "promptings" from God. "I think we went into Iraq not so much because there were weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Mansfield has explained elsewhere, "but because Bush had concluded that Saddam Hussein was an evildoer" in the battle "between good and evil." So why didn't we go into those other countries in the axis of evil, North Korea or Iran? Never mind. To ask such questions is to be against God and "with the terrorists."


It's not just Mr. Bush's self-deification that separates him from the likes of Lincoln, however; it's his chosen fashion of Christianity. The president didn't revive the word "crusade" idly in the fall of 2001. His view of faith as a Manichaean scheme of blacks and whites to be acted out in a perpetual war against evil is synergistic with the violent poetics of the best-selling "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins and Mel Gibson's cinematic bloodfest. The majority of Christian Americans may not agree with this apocalyptic worldview, but there's a big market for it. A Newsweek poll shows that 17 percent of Americans expect the world to end in their lifetime. To Karl Rove and company, that 17 percent is otherwise known as "the base."


[...]


Far more startling is the inability of a president or his acolytes to acknowledge any boundary that might separate Mr. Bush's flawed actions battling "against the forces of evil" from the righteous dictates of God. What that level of hubris might bring in a second term is left to the imagination, and "Faith in the White House" gives the imagination room to run riot about what a 21st-century crusade might look like in the flesh. A documentary conceived as a rebuke to "Fahrenheit 9/11" is nothing if not its unintentional and considerably more nightmarish sequel.

<end quote/article>


Jesus H. Christ.

Or is that a W?






For those who don't have access due to not being registered, it's really well worth the free registration there. Honest.

[seebs]

I have always wanted to know more about what exactly Bush believes. For instance, is he a Rapture believer? I know some people who might vote against him if I could provide convincing evidence that he buys into all the apocolyptic eschatology.

[beyelzu]

oh my fucking god.


Every time I think that I know bush and he cant scare or piss me of more, he does.


he is like a cornucopia of intolerance, stupidity

I have always thought that bush saw himself this way

Its Bush is not merely a sincere man of faith but God's essential and irreplaceable warrior on Earth.

but the fact that he and/or his supporters has made a video showing that is just fucking obscene.

separation of church and state isnt something that the president is supposed to try to get around.

and this bothers me to no end

they plan to distribute 300,000 copies to America's churches

the people behind this movie are obviously a special interest group. how many fake ass right wing special interest groups are we going to see bush use in order to avoid campaign finance laws. passion of the bush, swift boats for bush, am I the only one that sees a fucking trend here.

[Petra]

What Bush is really about: http://bushfan.com/BushLegacy.html


He sure knows how to play the Christian right, though, eh? Scares the bejesus outta me!

The man is a con, through and through. Doesn't have a straight bone in his body.

[Goliath]

Yet another side-effect of the cancer that is religion.

[lpetrich]

This makes me wonder where all the non-fundie Xtians have run off to -- why do so many of them go into hiding when fundies go on the march?

Where are those bluntly and publicly calling the Bush Administration un-Xtian and an embarrassment to Xtianity?