Church of Bush: What liberal infidels will never understand about president (FREEPERS quoted)

Here are some things that Christopher Nunneley, a conservative activist in Birmingham, Alabama, believes. That some time in June, apparently unnoticed by the world media, George Bush negotiated an end to the civil war in Sudan. That Bill Clinton is "lazy" and Teresa Heinz Kerry is an "African colonialist." That "we don't do torture," and that the School of the Americas manuals showing we do were "just ancient U.S. disinformation designed to make the Soviets think that we didn't know how to do real interrogations."

Chris Nunneley also believes something crazy: that George W. Bush is a nice guy.

It's a rather different conclusion than many liberals would make. When we think of Bush's character, we're likely to focus on the administration's proposed budget cuts for veterans, the children indefinitely detained at Abu Ghraib, maybe the story of how the young lad Bush loaded up live frogs with firecrackers in order to watch them explode.

"He's very compassionate," says Chris, an intelligent man who's open-minded enough to make listening to liberals a sort of hobby. "If you look at the way he's bucked the far right: I mean, $15 billion for AIDS in Africa!" He speaks at the church services of blacks, and "you don't fake that. That's not just a photo op."

Of course, two years after Bush made his pledge, only 2 percent of the AIDS money has been distributed (in any event, it will mainly go to drug companies). And appearing earnest in the presence of African Americans has been a documented Bush strategy for wooing moderate voters since the beginning.

So what does a conservative say when such "nice guy" jazz is challenged? Say, when you ask whether a nice guy would invade a country at the cost of untold innocent lives on the shakiest of pretenses? Or, closer to home, whether he would (as Bush did in late 2000) go on a fishing trip while his daughter was undergoing surgery, and use the world's media to mockingly order her to clean her room while he was away? Doesn't signify with Chris. "If you're in one camp, the idea of being firm, 'tough love,' is very popular. If you're in another, you can say, 'Well, that's just mean!' On my side, well, I like the whole idea of 'tough love.' "

This is a journey among the "tough love" camp. The people who, even in the face of evidence of his casual cruelty, of his habitual and unchristian contempt for weakness, love George Bush unconditionally: love him when he is tender, love him when he is tough—but who never, ever are tough on him.

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On July 15, the Bush-Cheney campaign organized 6,925 "Parties for the President" in supporters' homes nationwide. I chose to attend in Portland, Oregon. The right love to believe the whole world is against them. In a county where Ralph Nader got a quarter of the votes of George Bush and Al Gore well over double, the sense of martyrdom is especially fragrant: Portland's conservatives are like others anywhere, only more so. One leader told me that here, it's the conservatives who are oppressed by the gays.

Twelve people gather on the houseboat of Bruce Broussard, a perennially failed candidate popular among local conservatives for, well, his race: He is African American. First the group hears Laura Bush on a conference call. ("All of us know what makes George a great president. He has the courage of his convictions, the willingness to make the tough decisions and stick with them.") Then, they get a bewilderingly disjointed address from their host (he hits some key points from his recent Senate platform: presidential terms of six years instead of four, a cabinet-level Department of Senior Citizens with himself as secretary). Finally, beef-and-cheese dip loading down a plateful of Mrs. Broussard's homemade tortilla chips, I open the floor to the question of why they personally revere George Bush.

Ponytailed Larry, who wears the stripes of a former marine gunnery sergeant on his floppy hat, bursts into laughter; it's too obvious to take seriously. "Honesty. Truth. Integrity," he says upon recovering. "I don't think there's any difference between the governor of Texas and the president of the United States."

Gingerly, I offer one difference: The governor ran for president on a platform of balanced budgets, then ran the federal budget straight into the red.

Responds Larry (of the first president since James Garfield with a Congress compliant enough never to issue a single veto): "Well, it's interesting that we blame the person who happens to be president for the deficit. As if he has any control over the legislature of the United States."

Larry's wife, Tami Mars, the Republican congressional nominee for Oregon's third district, proposes a Divine Right of Eight-Year Terms: "Let the man finish what he started. Instead of switching out his leadership—because that's what the terrorists are expecting."

Larry is asked what he thinks of Bush's budget cuts for troops in the field. He's not with Bush on everything: "I hope he reverses himself on that."

Faced with an existential impossibility—giving the Democrats credit for anything—he retreats into a retort I'll hear again and again tonight: Nobody's perfect. "I don't think we're going to find a situation in which we find a person with which we're 100 percent comfortable."

Then he reels off a litany of complaints about Bush. "Horrible underemployment situation . . . the big-business aspect of the Republican Party I have some issues with."

The next thing I hear is the last refuge of the cornered conservative: a non sequitur fulmination against the hippie Democrats.

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The vibe at my next stop is different. None of the people at Kitty and Tom Harmon's bungalow are stupid. Instead they are the kind of "well-informed" that comes from overlong exposure to conservative media: conservatives who construct towers of impressive intellectual complexity on toothpick-weak foundations. My hosts are Stepford-nice (Mom sports "Hello Kitty!" seat covers in her car and loads me down with shortbread for the flight home; Dad shows off the herb garden he'll use to season my eggs if I consent to stay the night). But everyone present shows a glint of steel when their man's character is challenged.

"One of the reasons I respect this president is that he is honest. I believe that after eight years, the dark years of the Clinton administration, we finally have a man in the White House who respects that office and who speaks honestly."

I don't mention recent poll figures suggesting that more Americans believe John Kerry than Bush when it comes to terrorism.

After affirming "I still believe that there are weapons of mass destruction"—the commonplace is beyond challenge—Christina displays another facet of the conservative fantasy: Going into Iraq, she says, "is not the sort of thing one does if one wants to be popular. . . . He doesn't stick his finger in the wind." I don't challenge that point, either—though if I did I might ask why Bush scheduled the divisive debate over the intervention for the height of the 2002 campaign season, more certain of what Andrew Card called "new products" than his father, who held off deliberation on the first Iraq war until after the 1990 congressional elections.

Chirps the reporter: Certainly not on the part of John Kerry, who once entertained dreams of entering the priesthood.

I ask why Kerry goes to mass every week if he's trying to get rid of God. "Public relations!" a young man calls out from across the room. "Same reason he does everything else." Cue for Delores to repeat something a rabbi told her: "We have to stand together, because this is what happened in Europe. You know—once they start taking this right and that right. And you have the Islamic people . . . "

She trails off. I ask whether she's referring to the rise of fascism. "We're losing our rights as Christians: yes. And being persecuted again."

I ask why so many liberals believe the administration lies, if there might be anything to the suspicions. What about the report of the Los Angeles Times that morning, that the State Department dismissed 28 of the claims the White House demanded Colin Powell bring before the U.N. as without foundation in fact?

Delores: "You make mention of a paper in Los Angeles that made such and such a report; well, that doesn't mean it's accurate or complete or unbiased."

I respond that the report came from a memo reproduced in the recent report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican-dominated. I'm not sure whether she hasn't heard me or just has decided to change the subject. "John Kerry attended a party in which there was bad language, bad humor, being evidenced in all quarters!" she cries. Kitty chimes in: "And Kerry said it reflects American values!"

I ask Tom what role he sees in America for nonbelievers. "Well, if people are of an opinion that their God is supreme and are willing to burn your house down to prove it or dismantle your car to prove it or make all sorts of loud noises, disturbing the peace, and say that they have a right to do that in the name of God. . . ." he begins, in his best Mr. Rogers voice. Later I parse out what the hell he was talking about. I was asking about atheists. But Tom understood "nonbeliever" according to the premise that God is exclusively Judeo-Christian. It wasn't about whether you believe in anything, but whether you dared diverge from his belief.

Walking me to my car (he insisted), Tom, who works for a construction conglomerate, reaches for a favorite metaphor to describe George Bush: linoleum. "You know: Usually you get a microfilm of the color, and if you drop a plate on it you discover it's an ugly-looking floor. Then linoleum came out—the pattern goes through the entire one-eighth of material. You can drop a plate on it, and the color is true all the way down!"

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What all does it mean? The right-wing website Free Republic is infamous for galvanizing harassment campaigns against ideological enemies, but it also has a lighter side: a robust culture of George W. kitsch. "Freepers" display and study the famous photograph of Bush embracing Ashley Faulkner, whose mother perished on 9-11, a woeful, iconic look on his face ("The protective encirclement of her head by President Bush's arm and hand is the essence of fatherly compassion," Freeper luvbach1 writes); the ladies exchange snaps of the president in resolute pose, rendering up racy comments about his sexiness; they reference an image of Bush jogging alongside a soldier wounded in Iraq like it's a Xerox of his very soul. "He's the kind of guy who's going to remember to call a soldier who's lost a leg," one citizen of the Free Republic reflects, "and go jogging with him when he gets a replacement prosthetic." Revering Bush has become, for people like this, a defining component of conservative ideology.

Once I interviewed a Freeper who told me he first became a committed conservative after discovering the Federalist Papers. "I absolutely devoured them, recognizing, my God, these things were written hundreds of years ago and they still stand up as some of the most intense political philosophy ever written."

I happen to agree, so I asked him—after he insisted Bush couldn't have been lying when he claimed to have witnessed the first plane hit the World Trade Center live on TV, after he said the orders to torture in Iraq couldn't have possibly come from the top, all because George Bush is too fundamentally decent to lie—what he thinks of the Federalists' most famous message: that the genius of the Constitution they were defending was that you needn't base your faith in the country on the fundamental decency of an individual, because no one can be trusted to be fundamentally decent, which was why the Constitution established a government of laws, not personalities.

"If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary . . . "

Conservatives see something angelic in George Bush. That's why they excuse, repress, and rationalize away so much.

which received glowing reviews in National Review...
Here is a SHORT EXCERPT from www.nationalreview.com:

Voice in the Wilderness
Perlstein knows the significance of the Goldwater story.
By William A. Rusher, distinguished fellow of the Claremont Institute & former publisher of National Review
April 21-22, 2001

Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, by Rick Perlstein (Hill and Wang, 671 pp., $30)
s Alan Brinkley observed in the American Historical Review in April 1994, "American conservatism has been something of an orphan in historical scholarship." This should be no cause for surprise; most contemporary historians are liberals, and there was no obvious reason why they should devote themselves to the objective study of a phenomenon they found it positively painful to contemplate — especially since the tale, as it unfolded across the decades, turned out to be a success story. So the modern American conservative movement has been left, for many years, to the tender mercies of writers who had something very different from objective historical scholarship on their minds.
Sheer silence was the treatment of choice in the 1950s, though a few liberal commentators weighed in with snide observations. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., whose judgment in these matters is dependably poor (we shall hear from him again, later in this review), assured readers of the New York Times Magazine in mid-decade that the movement had no significance, being merely "the ethical afterglow of feudalism." John Fischer, the editor of Harper's, was kinder, writing in its March 1956 issue that National Review, the movement's leading (indeed, only) journal of opinion, might "serve a useful purpose in feeding the emotional hungers of a small congregation of the faithful, and it will have a certain interest for students of political splinter movements."
By the early 1960s, the growth of the conservative movement, and its consequent higher visibility, prompted certain other liberals to tackle the subject. Now the analysis tended to be clinical: Conservatism did not need to be understood so much as diagnosed. Richard Hofstadter, in The Paranoid Style in American Politics, turned to psychology for an explanation, suggesting that a sense of "persecution" characterized conservatives.
No doubt Barry Goldwater's landslide defeat by Lyndon Johnson in 1964 reconfirmed serious liberal historians in their belief that there was nothing here worth studying. In any case, another 16 years rolled by without any objective history worthy of the name. (An important exception, written by one of the few conservative historical scholars in the country, was George H. Nash's magisterial study, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, published by Basic Books in 1976.)
But one might suppose that the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, which ratified the ascendancy of the conservative movement in American politics, would surely inspire, at last, serious attention to the movement's history. Alas, no; another two decades passed in virtual silence, prompting Professor Brinkley's comment, quoted above.
It is only now, with the appearance of a whole new generation of political historians who were born too late to participate in the ideological wars of the 1950s and subsequent decades, that we are being vouchsafed the objective attention the conservative movement has deserved for more than forty years. And it is good news that one of the earliest of these studies, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, by Rick Perlstein, is comprehensively researched, well written, and basically fair...

I read this again at my leisure. I don't think it worth my time to dissect your article....however,as we are want to do I started to do just that ....
My inner dialogue lead me to reflect again on the word "bigotry." Growing up in Texas I had heard the word since childhood and had always assumed it meant racist. When I looked it up I was surprised to find this:

bigotry

\Big"ot*ry\, n. [Cf. F. bigoterie.] 1. The state of mind of a bigot; obstinate and unreasoning attachment of one's own belief and opinions, with narrow-minded intolerance of beliefs opposed to them.

It struck me then (I looked it up years ago) that one did not have to be a racist or stupid to be a bigot ... in fact the more educated I became the more I realized that the educated among us were the more bigoted.

Why do I reflect on this in regard to your article? Because clearly you went into it with your perms firmly in place and emerged with that same perms completely unscathed...and you discovered nothing in your journey ....So the next time you get with your friends and colleagues and chuckle snidely with your superior airs about "Bush" look around and ask yourself "Is anyone here a bigot ?"

Conservatives see something angelic in George Bush. That's why they excuse, repress, and rationalize away so much.
And that is why conservatism is verging on becoming an un-American creed.

You are a clever writer, and the interview of conservatives in your column twisted them to appear as mind-numbed religious robots.

The cult of personality is strong. I have never met Bill Clinton, but I am sure that I could speak to him while standing on a white carpet and he could convince me that it was black, or at least make me look down several times. Conservatives are not hypnotized similarly by Bush's persona. Instead, most of them feel straight, logical respect and admiration for him. Why?

In my case, I admire him for standing by his principles even at cost to himself and his career. I am relieved that he does not have needs and insecurities so great that they show to the American public and affect his duties.

I admire him for wanting to keep America safe and good more than wanting America to be liked.

I respect that he has a core, and I respect that his core is from what I believe to be the only core: The Torah or Bible.

I believe what his best friend has said publicly, that Bush arises and goes to work each day trying to do the best he possibly can in service to the American people, including yourself. It takes strength of spirit to put one's self aside and become a humble servant to us. Yet the point is that he does not awake and think to himself, "How can I and mine most profit from the world today?"

Plenty of us disagree with Bush on some issues. I know I do, on several. Who can agree on everything? And the few that seem to be worshiping him like an angel are completely misguided or being silly.

When I was very young, I believed what you believe. But you liberal journalists (almost an oxymoron) fooled me back then, telling me Reagan was stupid and bad, when in actuality he was divinely bright and very good indeed.

President George W. Bush's presidency is most likely also one that will be a beacon to future generations all over this earth. His actions have already improved and saved so many lives. The ripple of positive force is nowhere near over.

I know you liberals ascribe evil, selfish intentions to all Bush has done, but logically there is a great chance you are wrong. Can you face that? I have read your essays and books and tried hard to find the evil you see, but it is not there. Your torrid hatred, if not pure projection, might be nothing more than burning the witch to save her.

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