Glenn Greenwald has an interesting discussion going on over at his Salon column. In his new book, Glenn details the black-vs.-white, us-vs.-them mentality of the Bush White House and shows just how deadly it's become to American interests.
The big folderol is happening over Glenn's contention that evangelist Christianity is a red herring when it comes to understanding the mechanisms of Dubya's personality. It doesn't matter, he says, whether Bush is genuinely evangelist Christian or just a sad sack of spouting sh!te, crassly using religious cant to gain profit and power. Several people have taken issue with Glenn saying "It just doesn't matter, folks." But the most interesting part, and the one I'm thinking about, is under the fold.
Greenwald writes (quoted at length):
(a) By all accounts -- including his own -- George Bush had a severe addiction to alcohol for many years. Yet he was able, suddenly and with great resolution, to conquer his alcoholism and give up drinking entirely. At the same time, he transformed his life quite fundamentally -- from a carousing drunken hedonist into someone who, again by all accounts, began attending church very frequently and focusing on his businesses and career (usually with very little success, but his priorities nonetheless clearly changed). Whatever you think of George Bush, however many insulting adjectives you want to hurl at him, those are just facts.
People do not easily overcome severe addictions like alcoholism and change their lives. Some kind of very potent force is required to achieve that. The 19th Century philosopher and psychologist William James argued that religious belief was a potent substitute for harmful and addictive behaviors, a belief which is the underpinning of Alcoholics Anonymous and similar groups which contend that a belief in some universal or stronger and higher power is a necessary tool for conquering addiction.
So for those who are so certain that George Bush does not really believe in God and that his evangelical fervor is a mere act: what accounts for his ability to overcome his alcoholism and re-structure his life? It is true, of course, that one can do so without religious beliefs -- one can find other means for summoning that strength, including within one's own will -- but that requires a strength of character which many people, certainly those offended by the notion that Bush's religious beliefs are authentic, would be loathe to attribute to him. So, if he is not really religious, what accounts for the fundamental changes he made to his life?
Dubya didn't stop drinking because he got God. Getting God was a way for him to mitigate the social cost of his drinking once it became too "expensive" for him to explain away by being a rich wastrel son.
Alcoholism is far too complex for us to say a simple substitution of addictions will counter it for everyone. Still, James had a point in that religious fervor is a classic addictive behavior for most folks, and substituting it for other addictions can sometimes work.
But I don't think that's what happened. I think Dubya reached a point where even his money and family name couldn't overcome the social stigma of being a drunken coke fiend. In evidence, I would offer the only issue he's never flipflopped on--as Molly Ivins so eloquently pointed out. It's capital-gains tax relief for the rich. Bush is first and foremost a member of a certain American social and economic class, and the cost of no longer being able to cover up his drinking problem with other members of that class probably had more to do with his "conversion" than anything else.
Evangelical neoconservative Christianity has become fashionable as a means of covering up all sorts of transgressions. If you're a complete dickwad, you get out of jail free-at least socially--by having a "conversion" and finding the redneck God who requires you to hate furriners and adore bombing brown people in the Middle East, as well as cutting away at women's rights and any sort of relief for the poor. Instantly you have a whole new vocabulary as well as several social benefits kicked your way for being part of the clique. It's high school all over again.
Only these Mean Girls are playing with people's lives, and they have the power to make millions uncomfortable, to say the least.
I don't think Dubya has the intellectual horsepower to discern this process in himself--he's not a nuanced thinker, by any means. That doesn't make his adherence to the evangelical party line any less thorough, because he gains a great deal of legitimacy within his small social circle by being a born-again. I also don't think Dubya has the intellectual horsepower to be Machiavellian enough to use the evangelical right for his own purposes. He doesn't have to--he has Rove and Cheney to do so for him.
I agree with Glenn that whether or not Dubya actually believes the cant is irrelevant. The point is, the cant he mouths and the policies he espouses are built on a set of assumptions that are gutting our Constitution and washing our military in blood, as well as squandering decades of patient diplomacy and making the average American less safe, less free, and less prosperous.
To call Dubya's espousal of these principles religious is an insult to religion--though organized religion often insults itself, it is still a powerful force for good in many people's lives. No, Dubya and his cabal espouse these principles for class reasons--because they are looking out for others in their income bracket. Whether they do so consciously or not is irrelevant as well. The effect is that the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class gets screwed.
That's the bottom line.
Note: Edited to add the codicil that I am, of course, analyzing someone I don't know. But I think Bush is such a public personality that the analysis is warranted and the conclusions supportable.