De Amerikaanse presidentsverkiezingen 2004

Nog tot de presidentsverkiezingen van 2008


Home
About this weblog
Bronnen
Mail mij
Atom
This gif is freely copyable. Just right click, save Powered by
RSSify at WCC

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

donderdag, oktober 21, 2004
Portret: de zekerheid en het godsvertrouwen van Bush
Bruce Bartlett, een van de adviseurs voor binnenlands beleid onder president Reagan verwacht een "burgeroorlog" binnen de Republikeinse partij als Bush herkozen wordt, ene strijd tussen de modernisten en de fundamentalisten, tussen de pragmatisten en de ware gelovigen, russen rede en religie. Dat schrijft Ron Suskind, die Bartlett kortgeleden interviewde, in de New York Times.
Bartlett: "Just in the past few months," Bartlett said, "I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do. This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them…"
Bartlett gaat verder: "This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts. He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence. But you can't run the world on faith."
Leeft de president in een eigen wereld. Suskind denkt dan wel. Hij ontmoette een keer na een kritisch verhaal over de president een van diens assistenten:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Suskind verderop in zijn stuk, over de verkiezingscampagne: "George W. Bush and his team have constructed a high-performance electoral engine. The soul of this new machine is the support of millions of likely voters, who judge his worth based on intangibles -- character, certainty, fortitude and godliness -- rather than on what he says or does. The deeper the darkness, the brighter this filament of faith glows, a faith in the president and the just God who affirms him."

Meer over de wereld van de president hier in het stuk van Suskind.




© Marc van Gestel 2003 - 2004