Matt Yglesias has a good, spooky column at the American Prospect today on Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld's Own Private Iraq, free of any unpleasant facts on the ground, or facts in general. As Ron Suskind made clear in his NYT stunner, easy certainty such as that demonstrated by Bush is not a sign of genuine faith, but rather evidence of a total perversion of religious values, which, in one more thoughtful, breeds reflectiveness, moral deliberation, and the capacity for humbleness and doubt (qualities more reflected in fact in Bush's opponent). Bush practices religion the way he exercises on the treadmill and the way he used to drink - automatically, thoughtlessly, as a way to escape something deeper and absolve himself of responsibility for his own conduct and its consequences. He cheapens it. And as James Wolcott reminds us, the people around Bush trying to telegraph Bush's professions of faith for political gain are hardly saints, and display an unusually deep -- and hardly Christian -- contempt for humanity. As Wolcott reminds us, "Karl Rove's shouting into the telephone about a political operative with whom he was not pleased, 'We will f*** him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever f***** him.'" He wasn't talking about Saddam Hussein either. Some Christian, huh?

Update: The American Prospect's Ayelish McGarvey has more on Bush's faith as evangelical agit-prop. The Washington Monthly's Amy Sullivan also questioned why Bush who makes such a show of his religious faith doesn't go to church in this piece in The New Republic earlier this month.

Posted by Laura at October 19, 2004 12:50 PM