German observers of the US political scene are increasingly perplexed by the growing influence of the religious right. As noted earlier, the strident religiosity of President Bush has contributed to his unpopularity in Germany. Germans are astonished that 53% of adult Americans consider themselves fundamentlist Christians who believe in the immanent return of Christ and the inevitability of the apocalypse. 89% of Americans say they believe in Heaven, while 72% believe in Hell and Satan (although only 4% see this as their own fate). 90% believe that evolution is not a proven scientific theory, and that alternative, creationist theories need to be taught in schools as well. Susan Heiman recently wrote about the power of the religious right in Die Zeit and concludes that “the language of faith now dominates politics” in the United States.
Heiman is alarmed by the amazing success of the Left Behind books – a series of 14 novels that depict the Second Coming of Jesus and the ensuing apolcalypse. Over 60 million copies have been sold so far. This is bad news for Europeans, since the Devil appears in these books as a “well-dressed, multi-lingual European” who is trying to create an “empire of evil” – namely the United Nations. THe introduction of the Euro is proof positive that the end is near. Heiman is very disturbed by this emphasis on the destruction of the world as our inevitable fate and quotes a theologian:
“In einer Welt mit Kernwaffen sei das von den Fundamentalisten vorgestellte Armageddon eine reale Möglichkeit. »Mich als Christen«, sagt Müller-Fahrenholz, »beunruhigt zutiefst, mit welchem Zynismus der Tod der Schöpfung akzeptiert wird, als wäre alles Leben vom Bösen vergiftet und müsste im weltvernichtenden Feuer gereinigt werden. Das ist in frommen Triumphalismus gekleideter Nihilimus!«
If anything, the current political campaign in the United States has only emboldened the religious right. Rainer Sütfeld, blogging the campaign for the Tageschau, describes a dinner with some Jewish friends in New York City, where the conversation turns to emigration in the event of a second Bush administration:
Dieser christliche Fundamentalismus macht meinen juedischen Freunden Angst. Schon bei dem Debatte-Dinner im Waldorf Astoria war ich ja auf ein liberales juedisches Ehepaar gestossen, dass ueber Auswanderung bei weiteren vier Bush-Jahren laut nachdachte. Am Tisch im Scalini Fedeli hoerte ich, dass dies keine Einzelueberlegung ist. Leben laesst sich auch in Kanada.
How justified are these fears? In the current New York Times Magazine Ron Suskind has an article on the “faith-based presidency” which should be required reading by all Americans or anyone who wants to understand America under Bush. A government run on faith does not need facts or empirical evidence to justify its policies:
This is one key feature of the faith-based presidency: open dialogue, based on facts, is not seen as something of inherent value. It may, in fact, create doubt, which undercuts faith. It could result in a loss of confidence in the decision-maker and, just as important, by the decision-maker. Nothing could be more vital, whether staying on message with the voters or the terrorists or a California congressman in a meeting about one of the world’s most nagging problems. As Bush himself has said any number of times on the campaign trail, ”By remaining resolute and firm and strong, this world will be peaceful.”
The religious right believes that President Bush is doing God’s will in the White House. And if God has chosen Bush, that means that Bush’s opponents are on the side of Satan. For this reason, it doesn’t matter that Bush lost three debates, that the war in Iraq is a disaster, that Bush has created massive fiscal deficits throught gross mismanagement of the economy.
Commenting on the Suskind article in Salon, Michelle Goldberg equates the Bush administration’s manipulation of the religious right with a nascent toltalitarian movement. Here she quotes Hannah Arendt on totalitarianism:
“The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error,” she wrote. Later, she continued, “The stubbornness with which totalitarian dictators have clung to their original lies in the fact of absurdity is more than superstitious gratitude to what turned the trick,…Once these propaganda slogans are integrated into a ‘living organization,’ they cannot be safely eliminated without wrecking the whole structure.”
The United States, of course, has not gone fascist under Bush, even if it’s less free that it was four years ago. But he’s not done yet. Besides, in the above quotes, Arendt wasn’t writing about totalitarian societies. She was writing about totalitarian movements that were gaining power but had yet to take over. It’s important to maintain a sense of proportion when talking about this administration, which, for all its awfulness, is light-years away from Hitlerian. Finishing Suskind’s article, though, there’s not much reason for those of us in the “reality-based community” to trust that American democracy can survive intact if this man gets another four years to try to bend the world to his illusions.
