Posted on 02/11/2003 8:57:29 AM PST by tictoc
Driven by fear of failure, strengthened by fundamentalist religious delusion: George Bush is obsessed with conducting an even better war than his father, according to psychoanalyst and theologian Eugen Drewermann. In his interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, Germany's most controversial critic of the church takes apart the US president's psyche.
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Drewermann: His rhetoric betrays his attempts to win over the public to his ideas of how to exercise power, in particular the monumental possibilities of a crusade against evil.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What are the consequences of separating mankind into Good and Evil?
Drewermann: Such a bipolar view of history is extraordinarily dangerous, and psychologically practically blind. The myths of Persian dualism are used to justify absolute unscrupulousness. Doesn't he realize that everything he calls evil has long since been incorporated into his own actions?
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you really intend to equate Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush?
Drewermann: If, like Bush, you fight terrorism, you only multiply misery. Americans should set an example of effective disarmament for the world, and they should use the vast sums of money that they are investing in war to fight the causes of war. The United States has just reduced its spending to reduce poverty in the world to 1.7 billion dollars. That is less than what they spend on the military in two days.
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Drewermann: He who reads the New Testament to mandate a preventive war, and he who uses the sermon on the mount to legitimize gratuitously killing hundreds of thousands, either has not understood Christianity or is running away from it by leaps and bounds. You cannot have corpses littering your path if you want to follow in the footsteps of Christ.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: If that is so, why is Bush using religious language?
Drewermann: It is being done in order to win the votes from America's Bible Belt. They are religious and hold the balance of power. It has become commonplace for presidents to affect an aura of having been chosen by G-d. This is related to the portrayal of the U.S. as "G-d's own country". People there live in the delusion that they, as a magnificent nation, were specially appointed by G-d to direct the course of world events.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Does this explain the intolerance of the American administration for the German stance in the Iraq conflict?
Drewermann: Bush transfers the religious claim of totality to goals having to do with power politics, geostrategy, and economics. That explains his stance: You are with us or against us. It also explains the incredible hubris with which Bush refuses to shake hands with a chancellor who does not respond like a dog to his every beck and call. One can only be frightened at such a chauvinistic, pseudo-religious claim to total beatitude.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is Bush alone responsible for this stance of the U.S. administration?
Drewermann: In a certain sense Bush is a victim of a mental attitude that runs extraordinarily deep among Protestants, the political right, and fundamentalists with a Christian background. Moreover, he has surrounded himself with cabinet ministers dating back to his father's Gulf war. [...]
SPIEGEL ONLINE: If indeed fundamentalist positions fall on fertile ground with Bush, what is his psychological makeup?
Drewermann: From a psychoanalytical point of view we can assume that the basis religious attitude follows the internalized values of the parents. [...]
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are you really telling us that Bush's policy on Iraq is a synthesis of a "father complex" and religious fundamentalism?
Drewermann: The religious component may be connected with the termination of his alcoholism problem
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SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is there any hope that the president can free himself of this psychological mess?
Drewermann: You would have to talk to the potential opponent -- Iraq -- and together look for ways out of the crisis. The Europeans are trying to do that. However, Bush feels that he alone possesses wisdom and power, and he defies the world. He is a well-trained puppet of the Pentagon and the oil industry.
[...] SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you see any difference in the fact that the U.S. has a democratic constution, while Iraq is ruled by a dictator?
Drewermann: This difference is becoming ever more irrelevant. In the U.S. you can buy power. The result is that now Bush has to pay homage to the interests of the arms industry and oil industry, who financed him. In the United States there is no democracy, only a plutocracy (plutocracy: rule of the richest - tictoc). Campaigns are a content-free propaganda show. A large part of the American electorate does not even vote in presidential elections.
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(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
Glad they threw the bum out.
...Then the Radical Priest came to get me released,
and we were all on the cover of Newsweek Der Spiegel.
"Studied Psychanalysis."
I have also studied psychoanalysis, as well as homosexuality, French cooking, unarmed combat, the female orgasm, driving cars manufactured in Yogoslavia and taxidermy.
I have the good sense to not practice any of them. I suggest the Reverend Mr. Drewermann do the same.
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This is one of the saddest collections of biased tommyrot I have ever had the agony to read on FR.
This "psychoanalyst" should be the subject of a good caning.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
Any time they make references to "Persian dualism" or "Manichaeism" they are mocking the whole notion of good and evil.
And it misses the point. The Gnostic conception was that good and evil each required the existence of the other. That is not our position at all. Our position is that evil must be opposed, and destroyed. You do not appease it, and you do not seek common cause with it.
And you don't waste time with empty-cups that do not recognized the difference.
Got it. We need to disarm.
(And this guy calls someone else nuts?)
He infers that poverty is the root cause of terrorism, of course that is wrong as bin Laden is from a very rich Saudi family and the 9/11 hijackers were not poor either. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world and they are among the poorest, yet they conduct almost no terrorism against Western nations. Africa is dirt poor yet not many terrorist acts against the west are commited by poor Africans.
The root causes of terrorism is the manipulation of an enslaved populous by dictators, totalitarian regimes and organizations to do their dirty work with promises of rewards and riches either in this world or the next or they are hitman for hire, well trained and well armed by third parties, hired to cause havoc and chaos in the freeworld, which is a threat to their rule.
The true solution to eradicating terrorism is freedom and democratic rule.
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