LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

The latter part of this Petty-Larseny [sic] blog goes into some interesting observations of Bush's faith-based behavior:

All of this, though, leaves us with the question of why does Bush now, after Sept. 11, after Katrina, after Michael Brown, still feel comfortable relying on trickle-down cronyism to fill spots of vital national security?

Oddly, John Kerry unknowingly provided the key to understanding this pivotal part of Bush's personality. In a debate discussion utterly unrelated to this one, he said: "The president and I have a difference of opinion about how we live out our sense of our faith. I talked about it earlier when I talked about the works and faith without works being dead."

Pres. Bush is a faith-based president. More importantly, he's a faith-based person. He's a new breed of Christian; seeing the world and everyone in it solely through the lens of personal salvation. I don't mean he literally has a religious litmus test. I mean that he's embraced a viral, mutant strain of Christianity that pays no heed to the teachings or works of Jesus, but focuses exclusively on a new, ephemeral, poorly defined notion of faith: Personal acceptance of (something you call) Christ as (something you perceive as) your savior. That's it. That's how you get to heaven. You don't even have to accept the biblically defined Jesus, you just have to think you do.

And once you understand that Bush has, in effect, annointed his subconscious as his internal Christ, then everything else makes sense. That's why his eyes can see Vladimir Putin's soul. That's why he's comfortable appointing buddies (those in whom he has "faith") to positions of importance despite their lack of qualifications (i.e., "works"). That's why we saw the following non sequitur in the 2000 debates:

GORE: I believe there are 1.4 million children in Texas who do not have health insurance. 600,000 of whom, and maybe some of those have since gotten it, but as of a year ago 600,000 of them were actually eligible for it but they couldn't sign up for it because of the barriers that they had set up.

MODERATOR:
Let's let the governor respond to that. Are those numbers correct? Are his charges correct?

BUSH: If he's trying to allege that I'm a hard-hearted person and I don't care about children, he's absolutely wrong.

Bush was fundamentally (pun intended) incapable of even understanding that the issue was performance and works. He can only see himself (and others of "faith") through the lens of "faith." That he means well (i.e., is not hard-hearted, i.e., has faith) is all that matters. That's why he could issue the following flabbergasting observation about the Katrina response: "I am satisfied with the response. I'm not satisfied with all the results."

It's a hugely revealing, staggeringly cognitively-dissociative statement to make. A normal, reality-based person understands that when the results are not satisfactory, you change the response that yielded them. It is, in essence, impossible for a satisfactory response to yield unsatisfactory results. The only person who can't intuitively see that is one who deals exclusively with internal states, with intentionality, with "heartedness," with "souls," with faith. When Bush called Jesus the most important political philosopher in his life, he wasn't just covering for his lack of familiarity with actual political philosophers, he was sincerely identifying the person (or, more accurately, the concept) that had freed him to make decisions based on a divinely-inspired "gut," rather than on the tough, grueling boring work of work. And works.

America has to understand that President Bush responds to everyone and everything in terms of this only-superficially-religious faith. Because until America declares it's unsatisfied with Bush's response, it will remain unsatisfied with the results.