Abused By Illusions

By Maynard Chapman

The power behind President George W. Bush is a witch’s brew consisting of generous potions from Machiavelli’s The Prince, a simplistic application of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, and a presumptuous, arrogant interpretation of the Christian Bible.

Kevin Phillips identifies the first ingredient in his latest book, American Dynasty. It turns out that the late Lee Atwater, chief political adviser to the elder Bush, and Karl Rove were both devotees of Machiavelli and his famous work The Prince. “Hardly a coincidence,” says Phillips.

The brew begins to boil when one misuses Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations to justify a kind of economic Darwinism in which a so-called “free” market justly chooses those most deserving and capable of surviving in a dog-eat-dog world. And this sour nectar begins to make those with power thirst for more. Worse, those with power begin to suffer from the delusional rationalization that the poor deserve to be poor and the rich have earned every penny they possess.

This self-serving recipe turns into a man-made cauldron of hypocritical, pharisaical, religious hyperbole when George W. adds a “born-again” label to an emotional experience that supposedly gives him a direct line of communication to God Almighty. And by coincidence, Mr. Bush’s direct line turns out to be a party-line connection to an anthropomorphic God that won him 84 percent of the evangelical vote in the 2000 election and a similar percentage in 2004.

Out of such a brew comes an information “dark age” in which the United States sees itself as the center of the world, rather than an integral part of it.

It is an information “dark age” that actually endorses the axiom that “perception is reality.” Although linguists can correctly observe that perception is a particular kind of reality, it is most commonly used in the Machiavellian sense that “the great majority of mankind is satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities.” Perception (appearance), in the latter sense, may be something that politicians must deal with (or promote), but it is not reality. Reality usually exacts a huge price--very often in human lives--when the superficiality of perceived truth evaporates in the face of verifiable facts. How many Iraqis have we killed trying to save them? How many brave soldiers and civilians will die making Iraq safe for democracy? Will our troops also be asked to make North Korea and Iran safe for democracy since they are part of the “axis of evil”? If not, why not? Isn’t the threat of nuclear war much greater from these countries? How much is the war actually costing, starting with the hundreds of billions already paid to private military corporations such as Halliburton?

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