Reader Submitted Article

A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE W. BUSH

A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 1
A P S Y C H O L O G II C A L
ASSESSMENT
OF
GEORGE W.. BUSH
AND THE MOST DANGEROUS ENEMIES OF THE LATE GREAT
AMERICAN REPUBLIC AND ITS VANISHING MIDDLE CLASS
By
JARD DeVILLE *
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 2
Introducing The Author
* Jard DeVille, after his World War II era service in the Seventh and Fifth Army
Air Forces, studied, ministered to several congregations and taught college psychology
for almost two decades within a far right fundamental Christian denomination. He
voted as a Republican until the G O P abandoned it’s A. Lincoln and T. Roosevelt
virtues and values for the egregious ruthlessness it uses to raid America today. DeVille
was Psychology Department Chair at Westminster College, Director of the Kenosha
Child Conservation Center in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin at Madison
and taught leadership psychology for years in the Executive Development Program for
the University of Arizona at Tucson. He served as Manager of Engineering Research,
Methods and Training for an eight thousand employee, twenty thousand-acre UniRoyal
chemical complex and as Vice President of Manufacturing for automated farm tools in
Derardean Corporation. He has published more than a score of psychology books,
seminars and psychological assessment instruments. His book NICE GUYS FINISH
FIRST was powerful in English, Japanese and Spanish editions. THE PSYCHOLOGY
OF LEADERSHIP was New American Library’s offering in their Executive Development
Series. For twenty years he was considered by many to be America’s foremost
leadership scholar. THE PASTOR’S HANDBOOK ON INTERPERSONAL
RELATIONSHIPS and THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WITNESSING are book length study
courses that are being used as training programs by virtually every national and foreign
leader of the International Seventh-day Adventist Church that is growing by a thousand
or so new faith communities annually. During his years as pastor, professor and clinic
director, Jard consulted for thousands of hours with psychospiritually wounded,
frustrated and aggressive or apathetic souls. DeVille studied an average of five books
per week for thirty years. One Arizona colleague quipped, only partially in jest, this gave
him the sum totally useless knowledge of a dozen or so doctorates. Be that as it may, he
is currently writing, producing and publishing the ebooks shown at his web site,
http://www.fulfillmentforum.com
Content
NARCISSISTIC ILLUSIONS AND DELUSIONS
REACTIONARY POLITICIANS AND POWER
FUNDAMENTAL PREACHERS AND PRESTIGE
CONCLUSION
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 3
NARCISSISTIC ILLUSIONS AND DELUSIONS
During no election since the crucial one of 1860, when Abraham Lincoln defeated
Douglas and Breckenridge who split the Democratic vote to trigger secession and start
the ghastly Civil War, has the American Republic faced such a dangerous assortment of
villains. We are now teetering on the brink of an unmitigated financial, political and
spiritual disaster that can change forever the very character of the America we know and
love. The worst enemies of our Republic have never been the Soviets, tax and spend
liberals, Saddam Hussein or even Al Qaeda terrorists. Our wicked enemies are our home
grown abusers, are an evil cabal of neo fascistic plutocrats, neo conservative politicians
and neo zealot preachers and orthodox priests. Richard Cheney, Tom DeLay, Rick
Santorum, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, many fundamental Protestant preachers and
orthodox Catholic bishops and George W Bush’s handlers, have seized control of
national policies for the benefit of a small robber baron minority. These narcissists are
doing everything possible to deliver we citizens bound and gagged to a handful of
totalitarian autocrats who are making ruthless choices that are shifting our democracy
into a wicked American Empire by destroying the middle class.
Most spiritually bankrupt manipulators who are creating their own selfish empire,
are wicked flag waving and psalm singing frauds. These users and abusers have already
orchestrated the theft of America’s wealth. The richest one percent of Americans already
control ninety percent of the nation’s wealth, are now ripping the last ten percent from the
rest of us. Of course, many of these abusers cannot help themselves without intensive
psychotherapy -- their narcissistic yearning for wealth, power and privilege reveals a
throbbing neuroticism that borders on psychopathy. People who are wounded so deeply
psychologically and spiritually that they cannot support and trust anyone except a
superior class of aristocrats that God supposedly loves best, before whom the poor plebes
of society must kneel humbly, are deliberately creating a work force of obedient serfs.
Obviously, every loyal American should oppose the wicked triad of abusers who are
devouring the affluent middle class and creating an obscenely wealthy minority at the
expense of an increasingly large mass of poor peasants for whom blood, toil, tears and
sweat have become their daily fare.
In a recent speech, Bill Moyers reported that the users and abusers of America are
propagandizing naïve Americans with a flood of misinformation, are lying constantly to
convince us that global capitalism and the resultant collapse of the middle class and the
rise of a ruthless American Empire, are the result of natural economic forces. The greedy
robber barons insist that the new American economic system, developing without a
corresponding increase in decent jobs or livable wages, is another step in the upward and
onward march of a laissez faire free market that raises all boats equitably. Their always
clever spin doctors counsel us to be patient, to trust their vassal economists who
understand these complex issues better than we the middle class dolts. In time, perhaps
decades of poverty, a new generation of American workers may recover some of their
lost affluence and shall revere the names of the wealthy aristocrats who brought them the
benefits of globalized capitalism with a few obscenely wealthy winners and a great host
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 4
of financial losers. They shall have recreated a new empire of lords and laborers in the
manner of the Hohenzollerns, Hapsburgs, Mings, Romanovs, Mayas and the Windsors.
Everything important that the founding fathers of our Republic labored so hard to create
will be lost.
As Moyers said about the robber barons’ propaganda blitz to persuade people to
sacrifice themselves in order to enrich the ruthless cabal, this mind-bending assault is all
a fraud. To which I add - This destruction of the American Republic through the
crippling of the middle class has been carefully orchestrated. There is nothing the least
bit natural about it, for it destroys the very purpose of civilized living -- the protection of
its people from the vicissitudes of nature and from the always greedy nobles who are
determined to steal everything they can carry away. The robber barons’ scheme returns
us to the law of the jungle, to a society in which might makes right and the majority of
people are used and abused to benefit the rich and ruthless. The loss of our national
affluence that afflicts everyone except the financial aristocracy and their wannabe
vassals; the resulting loss of medical care, raiding of Social Security, the explosion of
homelessness, poor public education and ever declining decent jobs, is the result of clever
planning by a cynical administration that is in the clutches of George W Bush, his greedy
vassals and the Texas Mafia that serve the robber barons of the looming American
Empire.
Obviously, the aristocracy’s wicked schemes are propagandized to seem like
natural economic phenomena by the legions of spin doctors and mind benders pandering
to the financial aristocracy. Actually, the robber barons buy reactionary politicians like
Gingrich, DeLay, Santorum and scores of others for a cent or two on the dollar, rather
than paying living wages to thirty million families. Such politicians are still enacting
laws that serve the wealthy and powerful plutocrats, those ruthless and privileged men
and women who bought the government right out from under the middle class while we
were too propagandized, too naive and too preoccupied to sack the politicians who are
selling us into serfdom. We elected people we trusted to do good for America and they
betrayed us by doing damned good -- for themselves! And by supporting George W
Bush, naïve Americans are adding the last few nails into the coffin of the late great
American Republic.
Many naïve Americans are so propagandized into trusting their worst
enemies that they use the same level of judgment of chickens who follow
Colonel Saunders of Kentucky Fried! The slippery mind benders find
ways to harness the near universal human resistance to change, to push
every sexist and racist button, to make multitudes fear and despise the
wrong people rather than the wicked and narcissistic manipulators who
are abusing them. Many persons remain so distracted by the clever
propaganda, with less than half of our citizens voting that we are
blundering onto the down slope of a failing civilization. We are making
the choices that are swiftly shifting the world’s trade from North America
to Europe and Asia.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 5
As a recovering Christian fundamentalist, I agree with Moyer that along with
reactionary politicians, the fundamental religious right neurotics who prey on the middle
and lower classes for the benefit of their robber baron liege lords, came to power through
the explosion of religious orthodoxy that inevitably accompanies threatening times. Most
frightened persons seek certitude and an illusion of security through immature beliefs,
shopworn traditions and primitive ideologies, even when they are self-defeating. Many
men and women follow aggressive political and religious abusers who promise them
stability, safety and prosperity in return for their blind loyalty and unconditional support.
And no political campaign in history has been more cleverly designed to keep Americans
from thinking about the vital issues facing us, than to the 2004 Bush propaganda blitz.
The campaign has been orchestrated to trigger paranoia, prejudice and rage rather than
offering honest insight. The reactionary Republican mind benders practice Barnum’s
observation -- “There’s a sucker born every minute,“ -- and Robert Benchley‘s quip --
“No one every went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
I empathize with confused and frightened men and women but I detest the
reactionary politicians and fundamental preachers who use and abuse them while serving
the aristocratic robber barons. Our reactionary political and fundamental religious
abusers, for half a century, flirted with the destruction of our civilization through the
military and political doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. An entire generation of
children learned to crouch fearfully under their desks while their neurotic politicians
schemed to melt their schools and homes down around them. Billy Graham blessed our
MAD nuclear arsenal while naively endorsing men as mad as Joe McCarthy, John Foster
Dulles, J Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon and their ruthless hatchet men Only late in life
did Graham finally realized that he had been used by men to whom unthinkable nuclear
policies were part of their scam to protect the robber barons from the threat of collective
ownership. His ego betrayed him. When Billy eventually visited Russia and met the
people he’d long considered sub human and wicked enemies of God, he discovered that
the Soviet Union had many more practicing Christians than Communist Party members.
Unfortunately, by that time he had contributed significantly to the reactionary paranoia
that set the stage for the Cold War, the Vietnam disaster, and the collapse of the Republic
and the crippling of the middle class. He was welcome in the counsels of rich and
powerful robber barons who had learned to pander to his ego, even as they glided
smoothly past everything taught by the Jesus Graham so easily called on.
History teaches us very clearly that the narcissistic rulers of every empire
quickly become as cruel and manipulative of their own serfs, as they are
with the slaves they seize in military or commercial conquests. They create
a private world of cosmic importance, are convinced that they are
superior personages, with whom God is especially pleased as he showers
them with great wealth, privilege and power to use at every whim. Their
delusions of self-worth are established almost completely by their net
worth.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 6
While reasonably well adjusted people remain willing to let others live and
prosper, narcissistic persons have seized control of American governance in order to
dominate the world through several fascistic schemes. Every shred of honest conservative
debate and compassion has been banned by the ideological abusers of the Republican
Party. Virtually every G O P supporter of the middle class has been tarred and feathered
and ridden out of the Party on a reactionary rail. No lie by the reactionaries is too
preposterous to be trumpeted loudly on hate radio and shouted from right wing pulpits in
the furtherance of their scheme to create their private American fiefdom in which the
peasants labor for crumbs in the cane fields. No political protest, although encouraged
under the Constitution, is too innocuous to attract the paranoid scrutiny of the completely
politicized F B I.
Just recently, David Bonderman, founder and managing partner of the investment
firm, Texas Pacific Group, who enthusiastically supported George Bush with his time
and money during the Bush campaign for the governorship of Texas and through the
2000 presidential election, commented for the Wall Street Journal;
George is a nice guy personally. But his policies are really terrible. He
had an opportunity to bring the country together -- which was his modus
operandi in Texas. But for reasons only his psychiatrist would know, he’s
chosen to do just the opposite as president. He is turning out to be the
worst president since Millard Fillmore -- and that’s probably an insult to
Fillmore.
Mr. Bonderman’s operative statement is -- Only his psychiatrist would know. I
know what drives George Bush. For half a century, I have pondered the research of
many world class emotional and spiritual health researchers. Soren Kierkegaard,
Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Karen Horney, Otto Rank, Carl Rogers, Laura
Perles, Dugal Arbuckle, Viktor Frankl, Melanie Klein, Carl Rogers, Anna Freud, Ernest
Becker, Medard Boss, Eric Berne, Muriel James, Wayne Dyer and Thomas Harris are
some of the brilliant scholars whose discoveries are important to understanding human
atitudes and behaviors. Since all work and no plagiarism makes Jard a dull writer, I have
shamelessly looted the best psychological minds I could find. I have assessed Bush’s
attitudes and activities and examined his choices that puzzle David Bonderman; I have
examined the symptoms of pain, guilt, rage and the death dread that lurks in the
unconscious aspects of each neurotic person’s mind. And with more books, seminars and
assessment tests published than any one of my sources, the assessments offered herein
have obviously passed through my own mill. As a result, this report expresses my
understanding of the fear, greed, rage and open aggression that relentlessly flog
narcissistic robber barons and their neurotic political and religious vassals to
compulsively use and abuse everyone who falls into their clutches. As F Scott Fitzgerald
reported, those men and women who connive and raid to become rich and powerful
enough to dominate society, are indeed different from the rest of us. With very few
exceptions they are wounded souls who seek illusions of cosmic significance who assume
they deserve to be treated with awe and reverence by the serfs of society. They are
driven by tumultuous furies that flog them on and on in an often futile quest for selfesteem.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 7
It is obvious that the common avenues to wealth, power, and prestige --
commercial, political, military, and religious careers, attract not only normally ambitious
achievers, they also appeal greatly to greedy men and women who suffer serious ego
wounds and are driven compulsively to find illusions of relief from their pain. I remain
convinced that men and women, like George W Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld
and others behave narcissistically because of two kinds of ego wounds deep in their
souls.
First are the distorted psychological choices that lead to neurotic and
psychopathic values, attitudes and choices.
Second are the secular rather than spiritual choices that limit love and
acceptance and cause consistent indifference toward the needs of others.
In his superb history of the British Empire, Lord Macaulay, Charles Babbington,
pointed out the major reasons so many failures occurred within his commercially wealthy
and militarily powerful homeland. In a lesson that is fraught with implications for
America today, Babbington explained why England was filled with multitudes of ragged,
homeless and hungry families who were treated far worse than hunting dogs by a few
extremely wealthy nobles and their ruthless political and meek clergy vassals. Charles
Babbington’s England was always muddling through its problems, was never willing to
meet the needs of its loyal citizens, and was fearful of a strong middle class. In a
destructive pattern that is being repeated across America today, a smaller and smaller
percentage of the vast wealth created by England’s military might and international trade
was shared by the working people who worked so long and hard to make the British
Empire financially successful and a few nobles very wealthy.
Macaulay was warning us that virtually each successful human
organization eventually freezes so many vested interest groups in place,
that it cannot surrender its privileges when the world shifts and the group
must adapt swiftly or perish. We have reached that precise point now, as
the robber barons freeze heaven and earth to protect their possessions,
power, prestige and privileges, regardless of what happens to every other
segment of the American Republic.
During the American Revolution, our national founders struggled hard to reach
the compromises among rural and city delegates, slaveholders and abolitionists and
scholars and frontiersmen that made possible their escape from the autocratic nobility of
Macaulay’s British Empire. As they negotiated among themselves, the sagacious Ben
Franklin saw several potential American disasters, similar to England’s failures, arising
out of human selfishness. When a Philadelphia woman asked what he and the other
delegates had accomplished, he answered; We have given you a republic, Madam. If you
can keep it. Franklin understood that the price of freedom was eternal vigilance by rank
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 8
and file citizens, as well as from honest political, religious and commercial leaders, but
he didn‘t stop there. He followed up with a vital insight that virtually every historian and
biographer has ignored. Franklin said, and I paraphrase;
These compromises and decisions shall hold for a while, but the real test
of our wisdom will occur when home grown American despots devise
clever ways to raid our national treasury, to ravage the people we
represent, by seducing their own representatives into betraying the people
they are sworn to protect and serve.
Thomas Jefferson also understood that this greedy flaw of too pragmatic, secular
minded and narcissistic humans, is a constant threat to civilization. He anticipated the
dangers posed by the triad of narcissistic robber barons, reactionary politicians and
fundamental preachers. He said in essence;
The only way we can guarantee our continued independence from a selfselected
ruling elite is by engaging in a new revolution every generation
or two.
We don’t have to look far to see Babbington’s insights unfolding. The great East
India Company, Penn Central Railroad and Pan American Airways have vanished. The
corporations that built my glorious 1938 side-mount, straight eight, four door Packard
phaeton convertible, my futuristic Hudson Hornet, and even my comfortable American
Motors camper could not adapt in time to survive. Romanov, Hapsburg, Mandarin and
Hohenzollern power and prestige is seen nowhere except in history books. Long gone are
the Egyptian and Messopotamian societies, the Romans and the Helenic Greeks, the
Aztecs, the Incas, the Mayas and even the British and Soviet empires. And yet, few of
them suffered greater self-induced political and religious stresses than the United States
does today. Their vested groups simply wouldn’t or couldn’t surrender one iota of
privilege in time to save themselves. The crippling of our own Republic and several
potentially fatal environmental disasters, were initially presented in the seminal book,
THE WEALTH OF NATIONS from the eighteenth century. I interpret the author’s thesis
this way:
When every selfish person or organization subordinates ethics to net worth,
when every ruthless power broker and narcissistic manipulator insists that
greed is good and rips everything valuable from weaker persons and from
the earth itself, when companies, governments and political parties take
every advantage of each subordinate, leaving the people with only enough
of the profits of production to survive and to work ever harder without
retirement programs, medical care, good schooling and decent housing,
the wonderful free market magic starts working. In some miraculous
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 9
manner, perhaps like the loaves and fishes Jesus blessed, everyone benefits
from countless ruthless abuses. We can destroy the middle class goose that
produced the golden eggs through its vast purchasing power but society
shall still be considered prosperous because the robber barons and their
narcissistic vassals remain affluent, prestigious, and privileged.
So, here we are, getting ready to choose a president, manipulated by a cabal of
narcissistic aristocrats, reactionary politicians and fundamental and orthodox clergymen,
that is determined to turn America over to the tender mercies of obscenely wealthy, white
establishment robber barons. If these narcissists succeed in their scheme to turn the
Republic into a cruel echo of the Roman Empire, the neo-fascist financial nobility shall
continue to raid everything fair and decent that made America great. Everything great
that empowered the American Republic is being destroyed in order to squeeze the last
dollar out of society to enrich and empower the robber barons. And George W Bush is
their point man.
REACTIONARY POLITICIANS AND POWER
According to Kitty Kelley in her scathing book THE FAMILY: The Real Story Of
The Bush Dynasty, few people allowed to circulate in society without close psychiatric
supervision, are more convinced that their accomplishments and relationships have
greater cosmic significance than George W Bush. Unfortunately, rather than the result of
personal excellence and well developed powers of his mind, I am convinced that his
resolute convictions of self-importance and perfection are the self-defeating ego defense
mechanisms of a spiritually bankrupt soul. Through much of his life, Bush pursued
satisfaction through illicit pleasures of the flesh. He was in such pain and turmoil from
his ego wounds that he sought relief through alcohol, quickly becoming an addict. He
was also a compulsive womanizer who was swiftly destroying his marriage and family
with his sexual betrayals of Laura. He was so compulsive in his quest for satisfaction
through pleasure, that he needed an act of God in order to develop a reasonably decent
life-style. Unfortunately, that spiritual awakening and the prestige of owning a major
league baseball team weren’t enough to heal the suffering in his wounded ego. He still
yearned narcissistically for more than the simple pleasures of family life, a great many
possessions and more aristocratic privilege than any neurotic abuser deserves. When the
pursuit of pleasure failed him, and his born again euphoria faded, George searched for
political power in order to win the self-esteem that had eluded him all his life. It was a
logical progression from pleasure and possessions to power, with even a modicum of
purpose thrown into his worldview by choosing reactionary ideologies in order to justify
the use of power over the insignificant peasants who inhabit the narcissistic World
According To Bush. When George H W made a few calls to bail his floundering son out
of his repeated disasters, the entire robber baron establishment snapped to attention and
the great mind bending machine of the aristocracy began spinning out the images that
would give him all the possessions, power and prestige he could possibly use.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 10
Unfortunately, as with so many emotionally wounded men and women, the damage had
been done, his spiritual bankruptcy couldn’t be healed by secular choices.
I realize that George W isn’t stupid, in fact he is an excellent campaigner among
a strange pair of political bedfellows. With his radical messages, he appeals on one hand
to the country club set that yearns for a tax free society of powerful lords and
insignificant laborers who doff their caps and bow -- By your leave Sire. On the other
hand, Bush is also very popular with the neo-Confederate working people the aristocracy
despises but uses and abuses by pandering to their prejudices. Bush is quite clever in a
street-smart manner -- look at how Karl Rove has him pictured with an ax, expounding
on the joys of clearing his ranch of brush, just like any other working stiff. There are,
however, several crucial elements missing from his mind set.
Because I gained much experience directing a learning and learning disabilities
clinic in conjunction with the U of Wisconsin, I perceive Bush as suffering from a serious
dyslexic disorder. He learns new concepts very slowly but everything he allows through
his constricted perceptual screen is frozen in place forever. He seems almost incapable of
relearning anything important or changing his mind. The way he scrambles his words
and blocks verbally when forced from his memorized script, his discomfort during press
conferences and debates and his lack of concentration when reading and an inability to
focus well enough to mentally manipulate complex concepts, are symptoms of dyslexia I
saw at The Child Conservation Center. And while these conditions are not neuroses per
se, I have never seen a single dyslexic person who didn’t suffer emotional trauma
triggered by his or her learning disabilities. Bush is a frozen man who lives and dies by
his assumptions, traditions and ideologies. It has become obvious to me that Bush is
limited to a single focus mindset that protects him from confusion and self-doubt by
playing all its tunes on one string of his intellectual instrument. Because George cannot
manage ambiguous issues that require sophisticated logic in order to understand them, he
selects two or three themes and plays them so incessantly that thoughtless people like the
neo Confederates, accept them as truth incarnate. George functions intellectually by
reducing virtually every issue to its lowest common denominator. Of course, this actually
gives him an advantage over John Kerry who sincerely wants to educate men and women
to the issues facing them. George’s simplistic decision making and his swaggering
persona and tough sounding rhetoric resonate well with the psychologically and
spiritually naive men who identify with the good old boys of West Texas who hate pointy
headed intellectuals and despise political nuances. These form the NASCAR bunch that
has never forgiven Democrats for forcing them to accept civil rights for black Americans
and gender rights for women whom they really want to tend their sexual needs and see
the food is cooked. They fear blacks and despise women who are not humble little
drones and brood mares. They have not a clue about blacks or women who command
space shuttles, lead corporations, conduct nuclear research, perform heart surgery, fly
night fighters from aircraft carriers or win election to the U S Senate. Or why do you
think the NASCAR bunch fear and hate Hillary Clinton so vehemently? Her entire life
has been seen as an insult of their shaky masculinity and primitive worldview. Bush gets
a great deal of traction by using such simplistic concepts as;
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 11
You are with me and the good old boys or against America; voting for
Kerry will enable the terrorists to kill more Americans; ending handouts
to lazy people (investments in society) will create better jobs; you are
either a loyal patriot who believes as I believe or a wicked traitor; the
people of Europe are too cowardly to stand up to danger with us; the men
of Iraq will be too grateful for their liberation to resist my plans for
military bases in their country.
This macho approach, combined with his virtually limitless financial and military
power, has led Bush to make many disastrous choices. Half a dozen former assistants,
associates and cabinet members have complained how remarkably passive and uncurious
George is during his meetings. Thoughtful men like Bill Clinton, John Kerry and John
Edwards insist on examining all sides of an issue before making a choice. Bush
simplistically hears what he expects to hear about virtually all issues and then makes an
automatic decision that reflects his rigid worldview. To George, thoughtful and
deliberate men seem weak and incompetent, for every macho man intuitively knows what
feels important and refuses to be distracted by nuances. Bush has a frozen mind set that
passes for determination, is filled with immature beliefs, worn down traditions and selfserving
ideologies into which he inserts a question, pushed the enter button and out pops
the preprogrammed decision. George may have learned slowly but he internalized enough
West Texas machismo to never let anyone confuse him with unwelcome facts. His
insistence that the fundamental Islamic clergy and laity of Iraq would welcome as
liberators an infidel army betrayed his profound cultural ignorance about the billion or so
Muslims he challenges to bring it on. So was his assumption that Afghani warlords, who
defeated the Soviets and the Taliban, would rally around Hamid Karzai who is no more
than the Mayor of Kabul, to embrace democracy that also would limit their power.
Unfortunately, George Bush is at a level of governance where everything is
incredibly complex among the nuances he detests and their ramifications. There is
virtually nothing a president can do to please one segment of humanity that doesn’t harm
another group. The clamor of competing voices is incessant in the White House and Bush
handles that ambiguity by automatically making every decision with ideologically
answers that benefit his aristocratic contributors and their vassals. As H L Mencken
quipped in another context, Bush is a person who comes up with neat and simple
solutions for complex issues, solutions that have a long track record of being neat, simple
and wrong. I believe that virtually everything Bush says and does ultimately comes not
from his conscious desire to govern middle class America wisely and well, but
unconsciously to sooth his wounded soul and maintain his status among his aristocratic
class that to him personify America. George appears to me to be striving constantly to
convince himself that he really isn’t that inept little boy his family and teachers wounded
during a difficult childhood.
Of course, George has his moments. As both a reactionary politician and a
fundamental true believer, George boasted that God personally called him to become
president of the United States. No one, not even a lifelong incompetent, can absorb more
status than a call from the Almighty to rule America with the wholehearted approval of
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 12
his aristocratic peers. Of course, one doesn’t need to be as perceptive psychologically as
Otto Rank or Viktor Frankl to see several egoistic overcompensations popping up here.
As one ancient philosopher observed, We deceive no one else as easily as we deceive
ourselves -- our wicked yearnings are soon transmuted into commands from Mount
Olympus. J R R Tolkien, the brilliant and deeply spiritual author of arguably the most
successful novel of all time, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, based his epic adventure story
on his understanding of good and evil. Tolkien said;
Too ambitious men who are consumed by the neurotic greed for more and more
wealth, power and prestige, make so many emotional and spiritual compromises
in their quest for cosmic significance, that they destroy their moral ability to
distinguish between right and wrong. They can no longer tell the difference
between sound choices and destructive ones. And with all human egos being selfserving,
most abusers fail to see this trait in themselves. Anything that benefits me
myself is good -- while anything that cost me something I want is evil.
Bush really is a limited and largely incompetent man, is no more successful at
governing than he was when boozing and playing rather than studying at Yale,
occasionally flying weekends in the National Guard, compromising his marriage by
philandering and while running several oil companies into bankruptcy. Internationally,
Bush has pulled the United States out of crucial conventions and treaties, botched several
crises with North Korea, Iran, Iraq and virtually weakened the pursuit of Al Qaeda and
Osama bin Ladin in a resurging tribal Afghanistan. Bush squandered the near universal
sympathy the world felt for America following the 9/11 attack by scorning the United
Nations Organization and the European Union and has seriously crippled NATO. He cast
the European Union aside as Old Europe in a neurotic pique, when the leaders and their
people challenged his scheme to use the United Nations for his personal adventure in
Iraq. He hubristically claimed he needed no one and then found the E U unwilling to
pull his chestnuts from the Iraqi fires when the wheels came off his wagon in the
occupation. He couldn’t foresee the potential results of his decisions because he cannot
manage sophisticated logic, can only make decisions that worked for him in the past
during a more simple stage of his life.
When his Iraq adventure went sour, he handled the looming disaster as he
has every previous problem in his life. He has yet to find a challenge that
he cannot resolve by running away from it. At least, within his constricted
mind set. Even as Iraq is deteriorating into a morass of feudal tribal
barons with the prospect of civil war looming ever nearer, he and his spin
doctors tell the great lie, over and over, insisting that things are going
well, that we shall stay the course to bring the benefits of democracy to
our Arab brothers and sisters. It matters not at all to him that the recently
leaked C I A report gave him three choices; bad, worse and horrendous.
Bush has been no more successful with domestic policies. He has created
the worst financial deficits in history, falling from a five trillion-dollar
surplus to a four trillion-dollar deficit that our children and grandchildren
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 13
shall have to sacrifice greatly to pay. His administration has overseen the
worst loss of jobs since the Great Depression, and the growth of
homelessness presided over by equally ideological Herbert Hoover. The
Bush White House has supported the exporting of well paying jobs
overseas, calling their loss beneficial for the middle class and offered the
long-term calamity of high-end tax cuts. He praises our service men and
women and then raids Veterans Hospitals, limiting services and
increasing the cost of medications to veterans almost three hundred
percent.
One really is forced to admire the spin machine that propagandizes so many men
and women to lay their heads on the chopping block for the robber barons who are
devouring them.
Closely connected with the observation that narcissists lose the ability to
distinguish between good and evil, is the point made by Carl Rogers in his exceptional
book, ON BECOMING A PERSON. He wrote that in the final analysis, there are only
two kinds of people. On one hand, the world and its communities and institutions are
populated by many men and women who generously love and care about other people,
who live within open and accepting relationships. They nurture positive attitudes of
basic trust, On the other hand, there are also persons who are constricted in their ability
to love, who only care about those who pander to or reward they themselves. They are
the narcissists who live selfishly with closed and rejecting relationships. They live with
negative attitudes of basic distrust. This inability to love and to identify with anyone
except their lackeys leads to Karen Horney’s brilliant observation in THE NEUROTIC
PERSONALITY OF OUR TIME -- Most neurotic men and women will do anything to be
loved -- except become loveable. This is the defensive scheme of many men and women
who become so pragmatic, so narcissistic, and so opportunistic that they are indifferent to
anyone save themselves and the people who pander to them. This is why manipulators
who bubble to the top in the neurotic kettle, find it easy to insist that a kind and
thoughtful man like John Kerry is weak and too incompetent to lead. They cannot
understand his mind set, for they do not find much affection, acceptance and generosity
within themselves.
This isn’t necessarily hatred, although a great many primitives who become
reactionary or fundamental are filled with fear, rage and aggression. Hate is something
entirely different. This lack of concern about the rest of humanity is a major wound,
multiplied by anxiety and aggression, that leads to indifference about the needs of
society. Such persons don’t necessarily hate others, they simply do not care about
anyone who doesn’t contribute to their own wealth or power. I personally believe that
this is what George W Bush and his far right supporters feel psychologically and
spiritually. Of course, every psychologist who heard the neo Confederate demagogue
Zell Miller’s scathing Republican Convention diatribe against Kerry, realized that he was
simply George Bush’s enraged mouthpiece, the angry and bullying cop, while Bush
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 14
pretends to take the high road in an effort to rationalize the creation of a dictatorial
empire to the voters until they are subjects rather than citizens in a fascistic regime. The
vitriolic and hate filled Miller received a standing ovation from the Convention’s
aristocrats and their wannabes who, like him and many more radical abusers, simply
cannot care about anyone but themselves and their supporters.
Another major axiom of psychology is that each person has a vast mental
assortment of unconscious memories, ambitions, anxieties, joys, resentments and other
emotions that remain hidden and beyond conscious recall most of the time. We often
catch fleeting glimpses of this aspect of our thought lives. Something innocuous, perhaps
finding a ring worn by a lost lover or the sweet scent of wild flowers, will produce
powerful emotions. I recently had something far more painful pop out of my own
unconscious. A wedge of cheese in a grocery store, imported from the Assiago Plateau
of Italy, instantly reduced me to great pain and tears. Sorrow washed over me because it
was on the Assiago that a dear cousin bled to death under the barrage of a hunting pair of
Porsche Tiger tanks. I wondered where the images came from, for I hadn‘t thought
about Tobe’s lopsided grin for many years. After so long, one would think my grief
would have faded into the earth that has embraced him for sixty years. Still, virtually
everything we ever saw, heard, felt or read is still there, good, indifferent or bad, for as
long as we can function. It needs only the right stimulus to bubble up and in my case, to
grip me by the throat. Now, if the memories are good ones, if they do not devalue our
egos or lessen our self-esteem, we can remember them fondly and go on with our lives.
On the other hand, if they are from painful ego wounds, if they lessen our self-esteem, we
do our best to keep them buried in the secret recesses of our minds. We are seldom
successful, for even if we conceal them, they can cause red pustules on our faces, and
itches polite people don’t scratch in public and bitter conflicts we seldom win. Actually,
there are two aspects of the soul that we all should understand for our own good.
First, painful memories that threaten one’s self-esteem cannot simply be
stuffed away in the unconscious aspects of the mind and forgotten. They
are much like pieces of cork or plastic foam held under water. They are
under constant pressure to rise to the surface and demand attention. Just
as his need to defeat his challenger did when Bush was debating Kerry. A
moment of relaxation and anxieties can pop up, often at the most
inopportune times. Thus, each person with traumatic wounds from the
past, with racist or sexist views or great anxieties, must invest much of his
or her precious psychic energy in keeping them hidden from other persons
but especially from ones self. Therefore, the more wounds a person suffers
and the more psychic energy is wasted in ego protection, the less is
available for creating an open and accepting life-style. It isn’t accidental
that Bush flees from press conferences and debates, that he and Laura
almost never have social activities in the White House. Conflicted men
and women typically hold rigid beliefs, traditions and ideologies so they
can know in advance what they shall think and do without wasting their
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 15
psychic energy pondering the right or wrong aspects of their decisions.
The needs of other men and women fade in consequence when confronted
by one’s own clamoring insecurities and the ego defenses invented to cope
with them.
In the second place, the unconscious is much more like a bubbling kettle of
soup than a pantry with neatly packaged memories. Events and places
and faces all run together and with the passage of time become more
difficult to separate. Even worse, the more often we recall either good or
bad memories, the more they shift and change in order to offer a bit of ego
protection. The very act of recalling an event changes it ever so slightly in
our unconscious. Our conscious mind may remember some wicked scheme
we devised to deny a competitor a promotion at work and then our ego
shifts our memories around to insist that the person was a rascal who
deserved to be fired. And, the wounded ego usually wins hands down, so
we can maintain a modicum of self-esteem.
In both cases, the more anxiety, rage, aggression and violence a wounded person
must manage, the less he or she is able to live as an authentic man or woman of love and
basic trust. Researchers have only a limited understanding of how the brain works but
we do know that our unconscious emotions always affect how we think and feel and
interact throughout life. According to Michael Crighton, the psychologist and brilliant
novelist, not one narcissistic person in a hundred has the vaguest idea why he or she does
anything important. I am convinced that this includes George Bush. I cannot believe that
he has the foggiest notion why he makes his disastrous decisions, and then denies each
and every one, although he has an apparently unlimited number of ideologies and
rationalizations to justify his unconscious choices. I believe that he was forced by his
dyslexia and his defenses against criticism and judgment to play his tunes on just one
string. He simply cannot at this stage of his narcissism expand his mental or emotional
repertory. Of course, George didn’t spring full-grown into his narcissistic approach to
life and its relationships. He is the product of his heredity, environment and his
important choices.
It appears obvious to me that the Bush clan for generations has experienced many
emotional and spiritual failures. Kitty Kelley and Maureen Dowd have certainly
punctured their narcissistic pretensions for anyone who wants to learn the truth about
Bush family operations. To begin with, the family obviously suffers from many painful
doubts about its ability to win the trust of American voters through their own policies and
initiatives. Every Bush political campaign is organized from the beginning as a character
assassination of their opponents with an entire battery of deceptions, distortions and
outright lies. Each election is transformed into a blood feud; not one Bush office seeker
has ever campaigned on the serious issues that affect America and its people. The Swift
Boat Veterans’ scam to destroy John Kerry isn’t a new Bush tactic. Prescott Bush, the
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 16
family patriarch, when he was a member of the House of Representatives, railed
vehemently against and voted down every civil and gender rights bill, rejected every
investment in society to come before Congress. So did his son H W whom Prescott
bullied so badly that he has virtually stammered and stuttered all his life. A century after
the Civil War and emancipation from slavery, Prescott and H W still pandered to neo
Confederate voters by helping keep black Americans in sharecropping serfdom and
crippling segregation. George H has relentlessly crippled every affirmative action
program used to offer a bit of restitution for centuries of slavery, serfdom and
segregation. To the Bush family, millions of poor Negroes trapped by substandard
education, state sponsored police terror, homelessness, little or no health care and not
even the right to vote, were perceived as little more than cheap labor for the aristocracy
George H W destroyed Michael Dukakis’ candidacy with his racist Willy Horton
scam but that was only the beginning of his attack. H W also trashed Kitty Dukakis,
defining her as a psychopathic nut case who was in and out of mental hospitals and not fit
to be America‘s First Lady. The Republican concern about her fitness to occupy the
White House was a complete fabrication. Kitty was indeed known to drink excessively
on occasion, but she never garnered the drunken driving record that George W did. H W
also tried to destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton but failed because Clinton had prepared to
strike back with his own attack dogs. James Carville was too smart and too quick for H
W’s mind benders. He beat him at his own game. George W savaged John McLain who
showed signs of upstaging him in the 2000 campaign and crucified Max Cleland, both of
whom were patriotic warriors who were seriously wounded in Vietnam when George was
AWOL from the National Guard. I feel that the signs of W’s dysfunctional ego are
clearly visible in his scams. He is a man who professes great spiritual virtue, who was
hand picked by God to become the American president and -- perhaps even believes his
delusions. Nevertheless, some ego failure and emotional insecurity causes him to use
every illicit technique possible to hide his narcissistic schemes, while his spin doctors
propagandize the voters into accepting the creation of a fascistic empire without an
affluent middle class.
I can only conclude that the failure to prepare in advance for the Bush attacks as
Clinton and Carville did, came out of Kerry’s desire to campaign on the vital issues
facing America. He wanted a Marquis of Queensbury match, while Bush who
understood that an issues related campaign would scuttle him, chose a World Wide
Wrestling Federation blood feud to make Kerry seem inept to many voters. Neo
Confederate men still see someone like John Wayne’s movie character (he played the
same role in all his films), or John Rambo, as the quintessential leader of real men.
The truly decent and thoughtful Kerry, who lives with basic trust within his
character and in his personal relationships, is forced to submerge his tolerant
and accepting style in order to sound like the Hollywood version of a strong man.
Kerry has always managed his emotions wisely and well but that can make his
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 17
angry responses to Bush seem contrived. In contrast, as a deeply aggressive man,
Bush often launches missiles of neurotic rage and basic distrust. He remains
completely congruent within his frustrated mind set when he snarls, “Bring it
on!” to terrorist threats or lashes out at Kerry‘s “nuances.” He really believes
that any leader who doesn’t make his decisions without wasting time pondering
confusing facts, is a weak official. He, himself has never been bothered by
nuances at any time in his life. From the time he was a mediocre student at Yale,
through his spotty national guard service and his failures in business, to the
present day in Iraq, what you see in George Bush is all there is. He cannot
compromise with a challenger but must do his best to destroy him before he,
himself is wiped out. Such weaknesses have made him seriously limited, a
dangerous demagogue who controls a dozen or so nuclear armed aircraft carrier
battle groups, although his massive flaws are turned into apparent strengths by
his mind benders.
And while the vast number of ordinary men and women who are going about their
daily activities, who have been brainwashed by the media barons, can be expected to be
confused and seeking a strong savior to stop the middle class collapse, we really do need
a president who understands the sound quid pro quos of a peaceful and affluent nation.
The last thing we need is another four years of a two-gun cowboy who was neurotic
enough to stumble into a disastrous war between ourselves and a billion potential Muslim
enemies.
Few aristocratic couples in America divide the world more completely between
the important nobility and the insignificant plebes than George H. W. and Barbara Bush.
According to several former family servants, and Kitty Kelley, only the powerful country
club set with whom H W and Barbara play golf and tennis are accepted as peers. They
see themselves and the robber barons as America personified. At one Texas Republican
convention they attended, hundreds of expensively bejeweled and artfully coifed
reactionary women delegates stood and chanted; We are the true Americans -- we are the
real Christians. The entire Republican convention stood and applauded them, for they
were indeed spelling out the basic aristocratic ideology of the political and religious right
wing. America belongs to us, the nation’s wealth and power are ours and the plebes are
our servants!
As an outspoken proponent of the vested privileges of her family, Barbara
nagged, badgered, humiliated and dominated underachieving George W for years. She
was determined from the beginning to goad her handsome and glib but intellectually and
emotionally challenged playboy into becoming an important man among his elite peers.
Conflicts between successful parents and children who linger with juvenile mindsets are
common and they can simmer for a lifetime. The Oedipus legend is that an ambitious son
must destroy his powerful father in order to take over his wealth and prestige, including
his wives and concubines. At the very least, in contemporary America, he must devalue
him symbolically, which is what George did when he removed Saddam Hussein from
power. He was so determined to surpass H W that he refused to consult with the only
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 18
president who had already battled Hussein, about a second invasion of Iraq. Dowd writes
that George yearned for years to find some arena in which he could defeat or at least
match his war hero, Saudi Arabian partner and political father, could win his respect if
not his affection.
Because of the pain incurred while being socialized, all men and women use some
ego defenses in order to enjoy a modicum of self-esteem. It is when the pressures of life
are great that they may become indifferent to or aggressive with others. This damage is
revealed in two ways. It seems obvious to me that a wounded George, growing up in the
smothering shadow of a famous father was constricted emotionally and became deeply
aggressive. He must have felt that being the incompetent scion of an elite family was
both a blessing and a curse. The Bush family name offered him many undeserved
privileges in the Yale frat house and with sexually active middle class girls during the
sexual revolution, but it also demanded many personal responsibilities, which for years
he remained unable to meet. His pain from parental criticism, a consistent sense of
inadequacy, his rage about so much criticism; must have been bitter pills for young
George to swallow. His many failures had to have triggered much anxiety and many
rationalizations, must have been deeply conflicting as he struggled to cope with a mixture
of low personal esteem in a family that has for generations considered itself far superior
to the peasants and their plebian interests. His emotional and spiritual failures very likely
contributed to the alcoholism and drunken driving, to binges that gave him temporary
relief from feeling like a frog in a land of princes and princesses. The many women who
were enamored with his patrician image, were consumed sexually as casually he would
have devoured a good cigar, in a manner that gave him an illusion of privilege and
potency over women. Freud would have argued that his every seduction was a symbolic
defeat of the always-nagging Barbara. In any case, George finally had two splendid
opportunities, given him by the 9/11 attack to put the old man in his place.
First, he would unseat George H W as the clan patriarch, becoming the
premier Bush, by creating a dominant American Empire as the personal
treasure chest of his aristocratic supporters. His painful ego wounds
would be concealed forever.
Second, he would demonstrate a greater West Texas machismo than his
father’s wimpy patrician treatment of Hussein, by forcing the troublesome
Middle East nations to accept a pax Americana that would dominate the
Arabs who control so much petroleum.
In any case, traumatic events and relationships in Bush’s early years apparently
froze him with an anxious and aggressive mind set that still makes him unable to tolerate
criticism, correction or to accept responsibility for anything that goes wrong. At the
recent Republican Convention, he tried to laugh at himself, admitting that he had made
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 19
some mistakes but that was part of his orchestrated spin control. He didn’t believe a
word of it. During an earlier interview on a news show, in a moment of unscripted
candor, he insisted that he simply couldn’t remember a single mistake he has made since
becoming the American president. Virtually every politician would prefer being flogged
in the Capital Rotunda at high noon to admitting a mistake, but this delusion of perfection
is an ego defense measure of the first magnitude for Bush.
Every psychologist or psychiatrist worth his or her salt understands that
any delusion of personal perfection, the inability to admit mistakes and to
learn from them, to continue repetitively in self-defeating choices, in not
only neurotic in nature but bordering on the self-destructive. When a
young woman marries a brutal man or a young man enters into a business
partnership with a thief, the therapist considers the victim’s inexperience
and lack of knowledge as they work toward solutions. After two or three
bad marriages and several bankruptcies, however, the dullest clinician
sees a destructive pattern in action and handles the situation differently.
When Ronald Reagan discovered that his Reaganomics tax cuts were increasing
the national deficit exponentially, he engaged reverse gear, backed out gracefully and
made several crucial adjustments. He demonstrated flexibility enough to shelve his
ideologies and to restore taxes and establish a more responsible national budget. Some
economists have suggested that Reagan’s mid-course correction made possible the
Clinton era boom that lasted through the nineties. Now that George is faced with a
similar problem, as the huge tax reduction economic boom plateaus, as the creation of
new, well paying technical jobs is about twenty percent of the administration’s spin
doctors’ pipe dreams, he is calling for even greater tax reductions for the wealthy, leading
to what Paul Volker calls a looming financial catastrophe.
According to Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Commerce Pete Peterson, the best
economists with whom he consults are appalled by almost everything Bush is doing
economically. Bush‘s ideological rather than factual economic decisions, could well lead
European and Asian investors, who are subsidizing our economy with billions of dollars
every day, to decide that America is losing the commercial game. If they see that other
nations, such as China or India, offer a better long-term return on investment, we would
have more than a hard landing. We would crash into a devastating depression. One
more massive tax cut, which most economists including Peterson oppose vehemently,
could so cripple the Republic that the reactionary solution would be the completion of
their America Empire scheme that autocratically shuts down all social investments in
order to afford greater tax relief for the aristocracy and more military might with which
to dominate the world. When Peterson was pressed to answer whether he would hire
George as the C E O of a major corporation, he equivocated for a moment and then
admitted that he thought him incompetent to manage any large organization.
Even Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow of the very conservative, illogically named
Hoover Institute, told Charlie Rose when he was asked whether Bush should be replaced;
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 20
Given all the mistakes George Bush made, doing very little planning for
the occupation of Iraq, tolerating bad preparation with inadequate spares
for military vehicles, a limited supply of body armor, disbanding the Iraqi
military forces rather than using them to counter insurrections and failing
to reach an agreement with our traditional allies, we obviously need a
new president or at the very least, we must have a new cast of supporting
characters in the White House.
Once George makes decisions compatible with his narcissistic beliefs, traditions
and ideologies, he clings to them as if his self-esteem depends on never being criticized
or devalued again. And this is very likely true for him. This is probably why he has
never admitted that Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction were none existent when he
invaded Iraq, although his compulsive defenses make him appear petty and irrational.
And why, even as the 9/11 Commission reported that Hussein and bin Ladin had no
operational connection, did he and Cheney still protested that everyone except they are
out of step. Reasonably well adjusted men and women can tolerate the good and the
bad, can accept their successes and learn from their mistakes. That just doesn’t occur in
Bush’s case.
Like every emotionally wounded person, he consistently interprets life through
his painful experiences. Because George must often repress the throbbing childhood
traumas deep in his unconscious, any person who dares challenge his defense
mechanisms is feared and despised as completely wicked, as a dangerous enemy. He
identifies them with the people who pained him so much during his dyslexic childhood.
In addition, Bush has created so many neurotic defenses that he no longer commands the
psychic energy needed to let him deal with others through win - win relationships. In his
heart of hearts, his basic distrust of anyone who criticizes or confronts him or even
suggests alternate solutions to problems is, I’m OK -- but you are a contrary jerk. For
him, the only way to feel that he is a competent man is to dominant persons who oppose
him, even if they are the political leaders of Europe.
In his first debate with John Kerry, George Bush was unable to conceal his
narcissistic hatred of his challenger. His sulky tone of voice, his awkward body posture
and his petulant facial expression, formed the picture of a neurotic narcissist under great
pressure. He could barely control the deep rage that simmered within his soul when he
couldn’t go on the attack, couldn’t browbeat Kerry without alienating millions of voters.
The entire debate became a reprise of the way he felt during the years he was bumbling
through Yale and the National Guard, bankrupting several oil companies and breaking
the heart of his wife and family. If he cannot play a tune on his one string, he deals with
issues by ignoring them, as he does increasing poverty and homelessness, health care
costs, outsourcing jobs, looming environmental disasters and the financial bankruptcy of
America coming through enormous losses in revenue.
This inability to reconsider his choices and to find alternate solutions to problems,
is causing a potentially even greater disaster for the United States in the Middle East than
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 21
it did in Vietnam for Lyndon Johnson. Johnson’s wounded ego simply could not let him
be branded as the leader who lost Indochina to the communists. He sacrificed more and
more men and vast amounts of treasure and accepted more than two million dead
Vietnamese farmers and their families in a morass of futility, until our campuses and
cities erupted with a virtual revolution among the young. I cannot imagine that students
today would protest as their predecessors did during the Vietnam era of senseless
slaughter. Of course, they may eventually revolt, when Bush reinstates the military draft
as the National Guard and Reserve units collapse because the members refuse to reenlist.
Bush is too simply too neurotic to admit his mistakes and withdraw from the looming
disaster that a war between two civilizations would cause.
I have not one scintilla of hope that George Bush will control his egoistic
delusion that he makes flawless decisions, to admit that his war was a
terrible mistake that has caused great pain and suffering for thousands of
American and Iraq families, with little or no benefit for anyone save
Halliburton, Bechtel, et al. I believe that he is neurotically incapable of
recognizing the errors of his ways, cannot make plans to withdraw from
the tar pit of warfare and financial insolvency into which he has dragged
the American people. Should he remain in power, we can expect another
four years of suffering and vast expense in futile enterprises that create
more and more terrorists, continuing a war than makes America more and
more vulnerable to danger. George W cannot force himself to abandon
his great crusade and will apply more and more force until our
professional military is crippled as it was in Vietnam. He cannot see that
battling small bands of soldiers of the night with great military power, is
like fighting wasps with an elephant gun.
George’s indifference to anyone outside his family and the robber baron class, has
been nowhere as obvious as when he was Governor of Texas. He approved the execution
orders of some hundred and fifty forlorn death row prisoners. The majority of the
condemned really were guilty of capital crimes under Texas law, although criminal
justice attorneys and judges are now forced to admit that up to ten percent of the
minority men executed over the last fifty years were innocent of the crimes for which
they were slain. Some hundred and fifteen innocent men and women have recently been
ordered released from death rows across the country, despite the howling of the many
prosecutors who blundered, after they were incarcerated as the result of inept or criminal
law enforcement and prosecution. They seem to be saying; Hang all the suspects and let
God sort them out. George W obviously never has considered the possibility that the
deeply racist and hang-em-high, ram-shackled nineteenth century Texas criminal justice
system could make mistakes, that police, prosecutors and jury members often gain deep
satisfaction when minorities and troublesome poor whites are being executed by the
courts. As with everything else in his life, George took the easy way out and after a
perfunctory examination of the record, the complexities of which he may not have
understood, signed every execution order laid before him.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 22
I believe that an aggressive George unconsciously demonstrates something even
more sinister than mere unconcern about men and women outside his inner circle of
peers. I see several non-verbal signs of him enjoying the life or death power he wields
when using men and women as pawns. He surely reveals very little compassion about
wasting the lives of our service men and women in Afghanistan and Iraq. He must
repress such feelings, because admitting them would cause serious painful cognitive
dissonance for a true believing fundamental Christian. This emotional confusion and
uncertainty comes from holding mutually contradictory values, attitudes and
expectations. In Bush’s case, the dissonance would occur from holding a traditional
Christian compassion for all humankind and a simultaneous yearning to rid his upper
class peers of minority trouble makers. Bush rejected the last desperate appeal of every
doomed men and women to come before him. One woman, a confessed ax murderer,
committed her horrible crime while paranoid under the influence of angel dust. In a
prison ministry, she experienced the same kind of born again religious experience Bush
claims for himself, but for weeks after he rejected her plea, he regaled his friends by
mimicking her cries for forgiveness and commitment to a life sentence. He strutted and
smirked with his West Texas machismo routine at his country club and in staff meetings;
Oh, please, please Mr. Governor, don’t kill me! Don’t kill me! And he would laugh
uproariously about the coming execution of the terrified woman. There is obviously a
great psychological disconnect between the compassionate conservative Christian view
that George claimed during the 2000 campaign trail, now resurrected for the 2004
election and the aggressive man who could find no reasons to spare one life of one
hundred fifty one inmates in his Texas abattoir.
I am forced to conclude that this aggressive man really didn‘t want to save
any of the condemned prisoners, that he was playing hard ball with human
lives in order to placate the rage and resentment that has lurked in his
frustrated and aggressive soul since childhood. Until one Methodist
clergywoman said sadly, “I wish the President would stop claiming to be
a born again United Methodist -- he is giving us a bad name.”
His glee in the use of power to punish persons seems apparent to me from
George’s non-verbal communications during the 2000 campaign when he rationalized
the execution of the Texas prisoners. George debated Al Gore and answered reporters’
questions in his flat, emotionless West Texas monotone. He didn’t become animated
about anything until he started defending the executions. Only then did his voice become
crisp and enthusiastic, did his eyes flash, as if he really relished discussing the slayings.
This is the type of response psychotherapists look for in trying to gain an understanding
of a client’s motives and defenses. And there is another major consideration, especially
for a spiritual minded person claming a personal connection with God. Even if a
compassionate official believed sincerely he must authorize executions, or felt she must
commit soldiers into battle against national foes, any spiritually minded person would
have suffered much ambivalence. Even hardened wardens and prison guards become
sorrowful and depressed when inmates they have known for years are executed.
Emotionally and spiritually healthy men and women always agonize over difficult
choices. Only persons with psychopathic tendencies harm others without feeling guilt
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 23
and remorse. After the terrible slaughter of Union troops at Fredericksburg, when
regiment after regiment of U S infantry fell in the attack and a great many wounded froze
to death in a sleet storm that night, Abraham Lincoln almost lost his sanity for having
approved the assault. Over and over, the distraught president could be heard moaning;
Fire and ice -- fire and ice. Oh, my poor, poor boys! Obviously, George Bush is no
sensitive and compassionate Abraham Lincoln! He isn’t even a thoughtful John Kerry
who several times risked his life to save others, despite the egregious attacks George W
makes on his courage and compassion. Kerry repeatedly demonstrated grace under
enemy fire in Indochina while George was getting two cavities and a sunburn while
avoiding drills with the Alabama National Guard.
In addition to Macaulay, another perceptive English historian, Lord John Dalberg
Acton, made a crucial point about narcissistic abusers with his pithy observation; Power
tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Almost by definition, the triad
of robber barons, reactionary politicians and fundamental preachers, as opposed to quid
pro quo entrepreneurs, progressive politicians and spiritual pastors; crave power,
prestige and possessions neurotically enough to sacrifice everyone who can be profitable
to them. It isn’t just power that corrupts, however, but as Ben Franklin wrote into the
Constitution of the American Republic, it is unrestrained power, unopposed domination
that corrupts absolutely those persons lacking ethical virtues and positive attitudes, who
hold illogical beliefs and make irresponsible choices. It is uncontested power that
seduces users and abusers to, step by step, become tyrants, to reach a point where good
consistently seems evil and cruelty appears a reward. When Bush became the Texas
Governor, he was forced to work with the Democrats of the State Legislature but he still
made a mess of educational institutions and investments in society. He didn’t have the
political power needed to become autocratic overnight. When he became the American
president, with the Senate, the House and the Supreme Court all committed to the empire
scam, he revealed his true colors. “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts
absolutely.” He moved heaven and earth to give the robber barons the power of life and
death over the middle class, to shift their wealth into the business sector and to finalize
their control of the emerging American Empire that would be controlled by a ruthless
aristocracy. In other words, the compassion of executives, politicians and governmental
officials of all kinds, of cops and guards who are responsible to no one but themselves
and their peers, is a weak reed on which to build a society of middle class citizens.
We almost all want to do something important and interesting with our
opportunities, to be respected and valued by others. This is normal but narcissists cannot
accept themselves as being merely human. They need to compensate for their neurotic
pain by becoming god-like, to appear important personages. Nevertheless, despite their
delusions of superiority, relentless consumption and lack of compassion, narcissistic
abusers must cope with the common vicissitudes of life. They must cope with the
suffering, rage, guilt and the death dread which secular souls experience more severely
than spiritually minded men and women. Well adjusted people normally take others at
face value and treat us as we behave toward them. They understand that there are some
habitual abusers, of course, but normal persons consistently hook into our behavior to
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 24
give us good for good, indifference for indifference or evil for evil. The quality of our
attitudes, expectations and choices set the stage for a satisfying life or for a deeply
dysfunctional existence.
In the ancient Greek dramas, which foreshadowed contemporary life,
narcissistic power brokers were egoistically compelled to defeat their
fathers and sons and other challengers and betray their wives and
daughters. They sacrificed their soldiers and workers and crippled entire
societies and nations in a ruthless attempt to become godlike in wealth
and power, to become such powerful legends in their own minds, that they
would never again suffer the painful anxiety that traumatized them in
childhood. They cannot believe that their fifteen minutes of fame and
prestige have no more cosmic significance than summer thunder over the
Great Plains.
FUNDAMENTAL PREACHERS AND PRESTIGE
While reactionary politicians are common in American politics, leaping into the
pockets of the aristocracy by the evil system they themselves have created for financing
their campaigns, radical fundamental preachers remain a minority in most religious
denominations. Nevertheless, the media barons of the vast print and electronic chains
deliberately make fundamental clergymen appear the unchallenged majority of the church
when they are actually no more than those making the most noise. Obviously, many
pastors and lay persons remain conservative in their attitudes and assumptions, but most
have never become narcissistic users and abusers Few honest evangelicals and loyal
Catholics are bitter manipulators who are scheming to create an American State church.
No honest Christians are interested in destroying Social Security and Medicare, crippling
public education, exporting middle class jobs overseas, ending civil and career rights for
women and minorities, supporting the repeal of birth control laws and sending their kids
to fight preemptive wars around the globe. They don’t, as a class of people, project the
political and religious rage you find spewing from the low power television and hate
radio stations in every major city. Of course, many naive worshippers are seduced by
wicked scams disguised in snow white religious garments and peddled as great patriotic
or spiritual causes through the relentless waves of propaganda crashing over their heads.
Everyone from George Bush to Dennis Hestert and Tom Delay and Rick Santorum use
conservative and fundamental religious jargon to persuade millions of Christians that
they are indeed looking after America’s spiritual, political and financial interests.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 25
Obviously, the fact that only a relatively few of America’s pastors and
theologians are compulsive fundamental or orthodox abusers is immaterial to the media
barons. It is to their financial and political advantage to make this neurotic and greedy
approach appear an irresistible tide sweeping across America. For example, when close
to a million women went to Washington recently to support freedom of choice and
women’s rights, over two hundred thousand of the marchers were born again evangelical
Christians who had come to demonstrate with their more progressive sisters. And to no
one’s surprise, not one of the media chains showed a flicker of interest in reporting on
them. The networks only briefly showed the million women in passing, and then focused
entirely on the anti-choice forces screaming insults when prompted by their handlers and
waving bloody abortion pictures in a well orchestrated protest. I have the distinct
impression these were largely frustrated and aggressive persons who had finally found a
cause through which to justify their frustrations and neurotic rage. Not a word about the
almost quarter million evangelical pro-choice demonstrators would have been reported
had not Bill Moyers shown them on Public Television.
For a long time, I naively assumed that the mass media was simply too secular to
understand the nuances of evangelical Christianity, but I underestimated their cleverness.
I now realize that this tarring of all evangelical and relational Christians with the
narcissistic fundamental brush, tying them to reactionary Republican schemes, is part of
the robber baron’s scam to promote ruthless ideologies that can be translated into
political power. By backing Bush, the narcissistic triad of neo fascist financial
plutocrats, neo con reactionary politicians and neo zealot fundamental preachers and
now, orthodox priests, have found their tough talking man on horseback who can
persuade both the country club set and NASCAR bunch to support him. He and his
supporters have created many financial, political and religious scams through which the
middle class is being reduced to political impotence and financial poverty.
To help complete the Empire scheme, the United States has been saddled with a
quasi-official fundamental/orthodox state church that combines medieval theology with
primitive political ideologies. And anyone who doesn’t see that rapacious commercial
interests, reactionary political and fundamental and medieval minded religious groups
have banded together into a wicked narcissistic triad, doesn’t understand any of them. Of
course, the growing fundamental church isn’t anywhere nearly powerful enough to satisfy
radical Protestant and orthodox Catholic clergymen. The end game of radical religious
manipulators is to create an official state church within the American Empire by
controlling the votes needed to elect neo con political vassals of the robber barons and
win their own control of American worshippers. To move beyond their painful ego
wounds, they yearn to dominate the entire church, to shape it in their own neurotic image
of faith, hope and love. The often glide smoothly past everything Jesus taught about
liberality and generosity. And, fundamental church leaders who crave power and prestige
far more than spirituality and humanitarian service, loom larger and larger in the
narcissistic scheme to cripple the American Republic by destroying the middle class.
Most are deeply primitive men emotionally, theologically and ideologically. They resent
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 26
change in any form. And many want women to remain subservient, sexually available
and brood mares. Fundamental preachers and theologians search the Bible assiduously
for logical sounding reasons to justify their racism and sexism. As the board of Jimmy
Carter’s Southern Baptist church did when it fired their young pastor for inviting a few
black Christians to attend the President’s church school class, fundamentalists typically
insist that the exclusion of black Christians from their neo Confederate churches and
women out of the clergy is God’s will. Actually, it is absolutely nothing of the sort. The
early church would have withered on the vine had not the women of the first several
centuries carried the load. The need to control women and to exclude them from anything
meaningful to society, stems from the hidden fear and hatred of neurotic and
psychopathic men. It is the mind-set that leads to the beating, battering and murder of so
many women. For, when a deeply wounded and consistently frustrated man can find
nothing else to offer him a modicum of self-esteem, he can at least gain temporary relief
by beating or at least humiliating his weaker wife. Obviously, the fundamental clergy are
more sophisticated in their assaults on their female worker bees but the second class
citizenship of women in fundamental Christianity, Judaism and Islam come from the
same neurotic causes.
The attempt by George Bush and his narcissistic supporters to subvert the
spiritual message of faith, hope and love, in order to transfer the nation’s
political clout to reactionary politicians and it’s middle class wealth to the
robber barons, crosses the crucial American line between church and
state.
During his recent trip to Europe, George Bush went hat in hand to Pope John
Paul’s handlers of the Vatican Curia. According to the National Catholic Reporter, he
complained to Cardinal Angelo Sodano and other Vatican officials that too many
American Catholics and even some priests and bishops were enemies of his spiritual
family life agenda and asked the Pope to make them toe the fundamental and orthodox
line he finds so valuable in his election campaigns. I find it hard to believe that gut
fighter George out-foxed wily old Sodano, but he gave it his best born again spin. Of
course, I personally feel that George W, when boasting of his family values plan for
America and of his personal spirituality, is about like a New Orleans hooker praising her
sterling sexual virtue.
As with all men and women, behavior is never its own cause, there are always
reasons why frustrated souls seek wealth and power with which to dominate others.
According to Karen Johnson who researched and wrote THE WAR FOR GOD,
reactionary and fundamental men and women, like George W and most of those who
dominate the current Republican Party and fundamental Christianity, are almost always
desperately fearful, consistently angry and actively aggressive men and women. The are
the people who have carved their way to power. Armstrong reported that every radical
group she studied in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, was motivated by a fear of attack
and annihilation by some enemy. This paranoia accounts for the way abusers worm their
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 27
ways into places of power where they can make preemptive attacks on their dangerous
enemies like communists, progressive politicians or even liberal mainstream worshippers.
They need enemies to justify the hidden turmoil within their souls like sweethearts need
lovers. Few neurotic power brokers personify this more clearly than neo Confederate
demagogues Zell Miller and Tom DeLay. Miller’s every verbal and non-verbal
communication at the Republic Convention was more than merely aggressive. He was
deeply enraged as he attacked every dangerous enemy who challenged his complex ego
defense system. Of course, DeLay has wrapped himself in both the American flag and
the Christian banner as he pretends that his service to the robber barons is God’s own
work. I have no doubt both men have gone far beyond indifference, are deeply enraged
men who cannot conceal their hatreds very well. Surely DeLay’s recent ethical lapses
have squelched any hope he had of becoming Speaker of the House. Everyone with a
modicum of wisdom, can see their wounded and bleeding egos throbbing in pain.
Johnson continued; at some time and place in their formative years, children and
adolescents who become reactionary and fundamental manipulators, suffered a loss of
support and basic trust that crippled their ability to live with faith, hope and love. They
over-learned that the world is a dangerous place, filled with people who cannot be
trusted, which is why so many combat veterans turn hard right politically and culturally
when they return to a civilian society. Of course, this basic distrust is a continuum, from
a mild suspicion of strangers to full-blown paranoiac rage that leads to violence.
Children at the high end may begin by torturing insects and animals, move on to bullying
other kids and then batter their spouses and children. Many become racists and sexists
who rage about dangerous minorities and ambitious women, while some actually
become psychopathic killers. Many abusers find esteem as cowboy cops and military
drill instructors and snipers or even as presidents who sent kids to fight preemptive
American wars during the last half century. Neurotic bullies really feel psychopathic
satisfaction when attacking people who cannot defend themselves, becoming fascists who
in politics gain a perverted joy by causing pain and humiliation for the peasants. Of
course, with life being the way it is, with most teachers, managers, merchants and
workers reasonably at peace with themselves and wary of people who use and abuse
others, most manipulators learn to conceal their aggression well enough to avoid being
ostracized or arrested and sent to prison. If you are a presidential candidate, you can
even tell egregious lies about your great dedication to education, Social Security,
Medicare and the brave lads spilling their blood in the sands of the Middle East for the
greater glory of the American way of life.
The traditional American separation of worship and governance is one of the
major frustrations of reactionary politicians, fundamental preachers and orthodox priests.
Not until they bridge that gap, shall the fundamental clergy be able to fully develop the
right wing church into a fully blown American politico/religious institution that
dominates life as clergymen did in Europe for centuries -- as Islamic mullahs and imams
do with a billion Muslims today. A few years ago the neo cons and neo zealots blamed
American problems on the Soviets, but the fundamental preachers and reactionary
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 28
politicians had to find new villains who could be called soft on terrorism, with whom to
frighten the voters when the threat of Commie ghosts at the gate sounded too silly to use.
George Bush, whose followers consider him a born again Christian believer and the most
spiritual candidate in a century, is running the most vicious and negative campaign in
American history.
A great many ordinary men and women, Americans who live in a society that
forces both fathers and mothers to labor long hours to avoid poverty and homelessness
suffer one dangerous flaw. They really do yearn to believe that someone they can trust,
some strong politician, pastor or plutocrat is minding the store, is looking after the nation
rather than growing more and more wealthy and powerful at their expense.
It seldom occurs to the ordinary worshippers in the pews, who are
confused and frightened by the many disquieting changes sweeping over
the world, that narcissistic and aggressive right wing clergy would betray
them in their lust for religious prestige and political power. Nevertheless,
that is just what the wicked cabal is doing in its determination to create
and control a powerful national church that shall dominate every aspect
of religious life within a capricious and ravenous American Empire.
We most often think of fundamental clergy as Protestant preachers, such as Pat
Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Franklin Graham, James Dobson and others no less dedicated
to a state church that they shall control. Now however, there are now a swiftly increasing
number of Catholic bishops joining them in spirit in order to support George Bush and
his ideological backers. As a result, many contemporary Catholic Christians, the vast
majority of whom endorse Jeffersonian democracy whole-heartedly and strive for an
affluent, middle class life-style, now find themselves challenging their orthodox clergy in
ways that few people ever imagined a dozen years ago. Many Catholic men and women
in most American parishes are now forcing the clergy to hear their voices from the pews,
to meet their contemporary needs, rather than regressing into a fourteenth century mind
set. I, myself, spent years teaching classes and conducting seminars from my books in
many progressive Catholic parishes. In this Christian humanistic approach, initiated by
Pope John XXIII’s Second Vatican Council a generation ago, American Catholicism has
largely ignored Vatican authorities who resist losing control of the peasants who meekly
paid and prayed and obeyed for centuries.
When John Paul II came to the Papacy, he arrived with two crucial regressions he
fully intended to enforce, although in retrospect as his life ends, he largely failed at both
of them. His current counter reformation never reached deeply into most American
pews.
First of all, this intellectually brilliant and socially charismatic but ideologically
obsessed cleric, was determined to exorcise John XXIII’s progressive ghost, to re impose
on Catholicism the fourteenth century East European theology that established his own
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 29
mind set about Christianity. John Paul had never known even a smattering of democracy
in Poland. His ideologies were fixed while growing up in a reactionary society of
military dictators, rapacious nobles and anti-Semite bishops who together dominated a
society of poorly educated serfs. Then, any touch of freedom the Poles had enjoyed in
their feudal land, vanished when the nation was conquered first by Nazi Germans and
then by Communist Russians. This was the totalitarian society in which John Paul formed
his assumptions about the relationships between lay people and their secular and spiritual
masters.
Second, John Paul was also determined to regain for his church that emerged
from World War II and the Holocaust in shambles, the secular power Catholic clergymen
had held within Europe for centuries. For a thousand years the priests were the church
personified, while the common folk did the scut work and paid the bills. Only in
America were the rank and file worshippers considered the church per se in the New
Testament sense. Although Poland is but a few hundred miles from Paris, Rome and
Amsterdam, it was until recently, two hundred years behind in social concepts and
practices.
The majority of Europe’s Catholics came out of the war devastated financially
and broken spiritually, realizing that their politicians and clergy had betrayed them to
Germany and as a consequence stopped attending worship services. Pope Pius XIII had
squandered the Vatican’s moral currency by pandering to Hitler, remaining silent about
the Holocaust in exchange for a tacit German agreement not to confiscate or destroy
church property. Pius, like most American and Asian leaders at the time, assumed that
England would be defeated and he should make the best deal he could with the Germans.
The war unexpectedly became England’s finest hour when their few airmen won the
Battle of Britain and then Russia joined in and so did America and Pope Pius had a lot of
backpedaling to do. Fewer than two percent of post war European Catholics worshipped
more often than Easter and Christmas and that remains about the same percentage today.
Because stamping out John XIII’s humanistic heresies was his first priority, John Paul
started his ideological crusade to recreate an Orthodox Church by replacing progressive
priests and bishops with clerics who met his standards of theological purity. He demoted
liberals and sacked Central and South American back country liberation priests who were
teaching peasants to farm profitably and form small cooperatives through which to
bypass the rapacious aristocrats who took most of the profits.
John Paul’s plan to re-introduce fourteenth century theology immediately ran
headlong into an unruly American church that had enjoyed John XXIII’s democratic
changes for a generation. Many parishes became more and more contentious when the
Pope’s newly appointed orthodox priests tried to dominate them. A Papal army of hand
picked orthodox pastors, bishops and cardinals marched bravely onward to the beat of the
John Paul’s ideological drum, but when they looked back, they found most American
Catholics quietly making their own way. American Catholics loved John Paul for his
charm and intelligence but to his great frustration, they failed to accept his East European
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 30
ideologies. Ninety percent of European and English speaking worshippers of child
bearing age use forbidden methods of birth control. They take part in ecumenical
programs and consistently ask for women to be accepted as first class leaders of the
church they themselves keep afloat with their labor and money, Contemporary women
simply do not accept the medieval view that sexuality is an evil that God only tolerates in
order to procreate children. They know from their own experiences that a deeply loving
sexual relationship does more to keep a marriage vital and strong than any other aspect of
life. And, in a society where two incomes are now needed to stay in the middle class,
they are not going to produce a flock of kids they cannot house, cloth or educate on a
husband’s income alone. Few of them are committed to life long chastity. One typical
American mother of Italian heritage recently snatched her twelve year old son away from
a Vocations Opportunity Booth at a parish fair. She snorted;
I’d take all this talk about the joys of abstinence more seriously if
everyone from Father James at St. Pauls, to Bishop Terrance and
Cardinal Law hadn’t passed on from parish to parish every celibate
pervert with a collar who buggered little boys and girls. I’d rather a kid
of mine become a Cosa Nostra wise guy than a priest. He’d have a better
chance of living a normal life as a street hood for Don Carlo.
The American Catholic church is doing extraordinarily well, but that is because of
the great enthusiasm brought to ministry by the men and women who are running more
and more of the show. It’s success has virtually nothing to do with the theological
regression of the John Paul Vatican and the desire of many of his hand picked bishops to
get in on the ground floor of a national state church.
I have said all of that about the fundamental and Orthodox Church to say this. I
find that most of the current celibacy, abortion and contraceptive assaults on John Kerry,
although concealed in theological rationalizations and ideological self-deceptions, are
little more than schemes being used to support George Bush. The vocal body of
reactionary bishops threatening to excommunicate Kerry, see the opportunity of seizing
much greater secular power in an autocratic empire than they do in a democratic republic.
I believe most are deceptive in their outrage about heretical politicians. There has not
been one hint of displeasure from the orthodox bishops about moderate Republicans
George Pataki, Rudolph Giuliani and other Catholic politicians, all of whom are as
outspokenly pro-choice and equally pro-contraception as Kerry. It is quite obvious that
politicized priests and bishops are using their theology as a smoke screen to promote
their schemes for greater secular power within the new American Empire. They see that
American democracy is being destroyed by the robber barons and they are quickly falling
into line as their East European predecessors pandered to the wealthy aristocracy from
time immemorial. They want their share of the spoils freed up by the impoverishment of
the middle-class. They have proved once again that politics do indeed make strange
bedfellows.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 31
The right wing orthodox bishops form but one aspect of a powerful faux populist
movement that purports to correct all that has gone wrong across America by using and
abusing the faith of naïve devout people for selfish purposes. In his book, WHAT’S THE
MATTER WITH KANSAS, Thomas Frank reports what he learned when he spent months
talking with and living and worshipping among many Midwestern voters who have
turned to reactionary politicians and preachers. He traveled across Kansas, Nebraska and
Iowa, in the America Heartland, where family farms and decent jobs are swiftly falling
by the wayside. Frank discussed this resentment with a swiftly computerizing and
outsourcing America that has less and less need for workers. The Midwesterners hate
and fear what is happening to decent people like themselves, the vanishing middle class
that worked so hard and so long, that went to church, gave to charity, fought the wars and
played by the rules -- only to see everything they value slipping away. Many families
can no longer afford to buy homes or send their kids to college. And if they do manage
to educate them, the children must abandon their parents and migrate to the cities for
jobs or go even further away by enlisting in the military services to fight the robber
barons’ wars of conquest in their cruel Empire. They have not quite figured out that the
radical Republicans are lying egregiously to them, are firmly under the heel of the vicious
cabal of robber barons and their reactionary political and fundamental preachers and
orthodox priests.
Many members of the Bush administration, including Colin Powell and
Dick Cheney and Bush himself, insist that workers are to blame, need only
to improve their skills, to become more valuable to the robber barons in
order to remain in the middle class. Because of computerized
engineering and outsourcing and the mass importation of virtually duty
free products and poverty stricken immigrants from Latin America, Africa
and Asia, there are simply not enough well paying jobs to employ the
people falling out of the middle class. When one skilled or competent
person finds a well paying job, a dozen more equally worthy are playing
musical chairs. The others are bumped aside, peering wistfully in from
outside or retraining and still working at fast food joints in order to
survive. When Colin Powell offered his spin about finding good jobs
through self-improvement, a reporter asked him to name the fields in
which those good jobs were being developed. Powell then had to confess
that he didn’t know the areas in which anyone should upgrade his or her
skills in order to become employable. He was merely repeating the
Republican Party line in order to conceal the administration’s shift from
democracy to a fascistic empire.
In a recent issue of The Nation, Dale Maharidge spelled out the rage simmering
within the souls of millions of Americans who blame the wrong people because they are
propagandized to do so. Maharidge wrote that the rage at being betrayed, is now mixed
with fear which forms what he calls a dangerous brew similar to that which swept
through Germany when that financially depressed nation swept Hitler into office in a
legitimate election.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 32
One cannot displace millions of workers from high paying jobs to low
paying ones without major sociopolitical and financial costs. This is a
fundamental reality that is ignored by the robber barons and their
political and religious supporters during the rise of the so called new
economy.
In 1950, no more than four or five percent of America’s citizens professed to
being born again Christians. Half a century later, by 2000, that percentage had climbed
to almost fifty percent. Most evangelical Christians are not necessarily reactionary and
aggressive, are not sexist and racist fundamentalists, but a great many of them do yearn
for the affluent past when jobs were stable, when companies and corporations shared
their profits with workers. And while most evangelicals love the American Republic and
are willing to contribute to its future, too many of their politicians and clergy have used
and abused them, have accepted the Empire scheme that will allow their ambitious clergy
to create a national church that they shall dominate through the power of the federal
government. These abusers succeed most often by pandering to the almost universal
resistance to change and a yearning for stability despite the vast social and technological
changes sweeping over the world as a result of industrialization, computerization and
consumerism. The booming evangelical movement which opposed secular humanism
but then immediately contradicted itself by embracing global capitalism, has captured the
attention of many men and women and taken a life of its own that does indeed meet the
spiritual needs of a great many souls. It didn’t take reactionary politicians and
fundamental preachers long to see this widespread yearning for a life of faith, hope and
love, to climb on the bandwagon and in fact, to muscle their way into the driver’s seat.
CONCLUSION
European Union leaders clearly realize that with the collapse of American middle
class purchasing power, their alliance shall dominate Western Civilization commercially.
John Kerry saw this and each person with a modicum of insight realizes that every major
European leader has quietly determined to do nothing that will help Bush win reelection.
The mind-bending hue and cry that followed Kerry’s statement, the demand that he
identify the foreign rascals, was pure George Bush spin doctoring. I know who the
European leaders are and so can any American by reading big city newspapers for a day
or two. Every honest economist reports that by 2015 or so, the European Union will
surpass America in virtually every financial category. Obviously, E U leaders and their
people now wonder whether the neo fascistic America robber barons and their political
and religious vassals shall allow that shift to occur without a military challenge. Given
America’s propensity for a dozen preemptive wars against weaker nations during the last
half century, no one knows what a reactionary American president under severe financial
and political stress might do.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 33
In a recent article for the Los Angeles Times, Frederic Morton explained how most
Europeans had long looked with great favor on the United States. Liberals loved our
freedoms while conservatives appreciated our entrepreneurial spirit. The elderly liked
our second careers and good health care while the young couldn‘t get enough of our
music, movies and even our blue jeans. Now, however, the straw boss of the robber
barons, George Bush and his hatchet men, have destroyed almost all of that good will. I
understand Morton to be saying;
If this rainbow array of hope from America dies completely, it is not the
terrorists’ fault. It is nothing Saddam Hussein could have done. What
might have been excused as wild oats sown by a young superpower has
now unmistakably hardened into a global bullying. Here is the ultimate
Godfather, enforcing with missile and aircraft carrier a protection racket
on all seven seas. Here is an administration with an iron grip on the
Republic, shrugging its shoulders at a looming environmental disaster that
may make the earth uninhabitable, exponentially escalating poverty and
homelessness, keeping forty million people without health care and
supported by a hundred million cultural neurotics who have been
propagandized to hate so vehemently that they cheer every time American
weapons wipe out anther rag head Muslim school or hospital, Here is the
land of milk and honey turned into the fortress of the bottom line and the
bomb.
Europeans distrusted George Bush as a West Texas primitive from the beginning
and he has given them no reasons to change their minds. He is seen by many as a modern
Oliver Cromwell, who isn’t able to foresee the consequences of his ideologies. Many
fear his hubristic use of American military power if their own middle class prospers as
ours collapses. And while our European allies long made a clear distinction between the
compassion and generosity of many American citizens and the policies of our reactionary
politicians, that distinction is fading. Many Europeans and virtually all Muslims now
blame American voters for supporting reactionary and fundamental leaders because they
feel we are too ignorant or too selfish to understand that we are condoning some very
dangerous policies. Many insist there are no longer any innocent Americans that we
deserve what we are getting from our robber barons. Or why do you think the European
Union is quietly planning its own nuclear equipped aircraft carrier battle groups? They
fear that a wicked sea change has occurred in the United States, that the neo cons are
scheming to dominate European finances in ways they cannot accept. E U voters are no
longer willing to remain lashed to a crippled ship with its autocratic captain and officers
throwing the middle class crew overboard. According to Harold Meyerson of the
Washington Post;
When Europeans now look toward the United States, they see about the
same thing we see when we look at China; millions of low wage workers
who have lost the right to organize for protection and a government intent
on keeping them poor in order to enrich a narcissistic elite.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 34
Western Europeans do indeed contrast their thirty to thirty-five hour work weeks,
their generous retirement and medical benefits and their four to six week annual
vacations to our shrinking wages and benefits and want nothing to do with our ruthless
robber barons. In fact, they are much more completely in tune with Thomas Jefferson’s
call for ballot box rebellions against ruthless leaders than we Americans are, even while
our ruthless mind benders constantly boast of our moral, financial and political
superiority.
Unfortunately, the American Republic faces yet another threat of the most
profound nature. Few Americans even consider the possibility of a political coup as Dale
Maharidge discussed in The Nation recently. Americans simply do not understand how
powerful and ruthless the robber barons have become now that they control the White
House, the Congress, the media and the Supreme Court. According to Michael Isakoff of
Newsweek, there is already on the drawing boards in the White House a scheme afoot to
postpone the November presidential election. Or to cancel it entirely if sufficient danger
can be conjured up to stampede a terrified populace. The most logical pre election scam
would be a major air strike on nuclear facilities in North Korea or Iran during the last
week of October, followed by a red alert and a canceling of the election because of
fabricated terrorist threats against polling stations. Homeland Security Director Tom
Ridge and Attorney General John Ashcroft have already selected attorneys, police chiefs
and several generals for a governance committee that shall replace congress and
governmental administrators should it seem likely that serious trouble is brewing And I
personally cannot imagine anything more serious in White House circles, except perhaps
a nuclear attack, than the realization that Bush is losing to Kerry. The scheme is to
frighten the voters and blame it on terrorists in order to cancel the election. Should Al
Queda make another attack of the magnitude of the 9/11 assault, or simply become
restive and vocal, or is propagandized to appear on the march, the presidential decree
would go out to shut down every polling station, allegedly in order to protect the citizens
from terrorist threats in the precincts of Dubuque, Helena, Duluth and Lexington. Call it
paranoia if you will, but Ridge and Ashcroft already have their marching orders should
they receive the word to end even the pretense of an election. The robber barons have
the bit in their teeth, have enjoyed complete freedom during the Bush administration and
have an intense determination to maintain their control of American wealth that the Bush
presidency offers them. Compare this latest scheme to come out of the minds of Cheney,
Rove and Bush, to the same demand made of Abraham Lincoln prior to the 1864
elections. The Great Emancipator scoffed and refused to consider delaying the vote in
his day, even as he had many doubts about the way the election would turn out. Lincoln
in essence said; Should we distrust the people of the Union this much, the Confederates
have already defeated us. Of course, we would be battered by so much sounding
rhetoric coming from this White House, that a great many of those who need to believe
that someone powerful is watching the store for us, would line up for the abusers. The
professed desire to protect innocent citizens from Al Qaeda, when the entire scam is to
maintain power long enough to cripple the Republic beyond redemption, would take its
toll.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 35
There is a group of reactionary hired guns now working in every swing
state to pull off the same scam Jeb Bush worked so successfully in Florida
in 2000. Actually, Florida already leads the way in declaring tens of
thousands of black and poor white Democrats ineligible for the most
flimsy of reasons. One list recently surrendered after the ACLU fought the
secrecy in court, revealed that while the list barred almost ten thousand
Negro Democrats, it names less than a hundred Cuban Republicans. The
Ohio Secretary of State tried to throw away tens of thousands of absentee
ballot requests from his citizens because they came in on less than eighty
pound paper stock. The Minnesota Secretary of State has tried every scam
imaginable to block Democrats from registering. The disruption teams
are seeking ways to have as many suspect plebes as possible taken off the
voter registration roles; to declare them illegible for arrears on property
taxes, because they have names similar to felons who have lost their
voting rights, because some clerk made a minor mistake. If there is a
black felon named Henry Jones who lost his right to vote in Colorado,
every black Henry Jones in Florida will be unable to vote in the election.
And there is no procedure through which he can be reinstated. There was
a Florida form with which to apply for relief but Jeb Bush, as quick as
every Bush to win by illicit means, withdrew it from circulation.
The abusers also plan on stationing police at inner city polling places in
order to intimidate minority voters, many of whom fear cops as an army of
occupation. The police would slow down the lines in order to turn away
as many working Democratic men and women as possible, people who
must hurry away to their jobs. Republican operatives have recruited
teams of computer experts to develop electronic voting machine viruses
that can shift up to fifteen percent of Democratic votes to the Republican
column in computerized voting systems and then cover their tracks at the
end of the day.
The reactionary scenarios become even more cynical, should radical Republicans
be blocked from replicating their 2000 Florida voter elimination plan and fail to rig the
election in swing states. If he loses the popular election again, Bush could and possibly
would order a Homeland Security Red Alert, declare a national emergency, launch a
carrier attack on some luckless target, give Ashcroft unlimited powers to deal with
dissent, apply martial law for internal order, appoint a Star Chamber judiciary for
incarcerating protesting citizens as he already has for foreign combatants, win quick
approval from a narcissistic Congress and the professional military and simply barricade
the White House. In such a situation, the reactionary Supreme Court quartet would
quickly rule in the president’s favor for no one could challenge their decision. Absolute
power corrupts absolutely.
There would be no recourse from local, state and national police who always
support the power brokers because they clearly understand the primary principle of law
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 36
enforcement and criminal justice. According to former Minneapolis Chief of Police,
Tony Bouza, cops know very well that they are hired first and foremost to protect the
persons and property of the aristocracy. Only if there is time available after this first
duty, Bouza said, will they protect and serve the lesser persons of their jurisdictions.
Virtually all police departments, authoritarian bureaucracies to the core, behave as did the
cops of almost every European nation when the Nazis seized control of Europe. Only in
Denmark and Bulgaria did the police remain loyal to their own people. Every other
European police department lined up for role call as usual, twitched a bit as the cops
reoriented their moral compasses and started beating six million Jews, Gypsies and
Jehovah’s witnesses into box cars in accord with German laws imposed from Berlin. The
Nazi justice system made it a criminal offense to protect these doomed people and the
vast majority of European police enforced every illegal German law as a legitimate
statute. There was no moral quibbling. German dictates were followed, even though
they came from the Nazi monsters who were wading through a sea of blood. Not even
Pope Pius XIII offered a single world of protest. An appointed American dictator could
maintain the trappings of democracy, might even hold elections to several debating
societies permitted by the robber barons, but our liberty shall have been lost forever. It
would be the end of the great experiment in democracy -- lost because we the citizens
forgot or ignored everything Washington, Franklin and Jefferson cautioned us to watch
out for.
By sacrificing every honest conservative principle; such as reducing the excesses
of government, balancing the budget, making peaceful pacts among nations to increase
quid pro quo trade and promoting the expansion of democracy, the robber barons are
destroying the American Republic. The sun would continue to shine and the rain to fall
after the collapse. The land and the rivers and the cities would not vanish. People would
continue to work and play, to study and love, but life would surely deteriorate under the
unrestrained and increasingly violent control of the robber barons as it did in Orwell’s
novel 1984. Very quickly, the Empire could collapse into five or six small nations that
war constantly with one another for the scraps of American prosperity that remain.
In case this screed hasn’t been clear, most psychologists believe that bleeding
emotional and spiritual wounds motivate compulsive manipulators and their obsessive
vassals. They then live with narcissism enough to commit long term national suicide by
killing the middle class goose that lays the golden eggs. Their rationalizations allow
them to ruthlessly use and abuse others, while professing the highest standards of
spiritual and patriotic virtue. The only survival tactic possible, is for determined citizens
to become aware of the crucial issues and grow angry enough to start one of Jefferson’s
revolutions -- at the ballot box, and in the selection of pastors. We can save the Republic
only by rejecting constant mind-bending propaganda and by putting the fear of voter
revenge into the hearts of reactionary politicians and fundamental preachers. We need a
widespread rebirth of a fiercely politicized citizenry that opposes the autocratic empire
scheme of the robber barons to keep all the wealth and power for themselves. Only the
professional dismembering of reactionary politicians and fundamental preachers,
replacing the thieves with honest leadership, can restore the strong checks and balances
that Ben Franklin and others devised. With powerful blue and white and brown collar
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 37
unions and associations, Americans can win the political clout needed to end the middle
class genocide now being waged by the robber barons. Would the manipulators resist?
With all their clout, for everything a narcissist holds dear is at stake! Only recently Bruce
Bartlett, a loyal staff member for Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush and now a
fellow at a reactionary think tank, wrote for the New York Times. He had thought, he
said, along with most reactionary men and women:
Once in control of the three levers of government, the administration
could fix the budget and tax system (that he believes invests far too much
in human development), rein in the bureaucracy, (which is never
ideological enough for true believers), neuter the unions (that created
middle class affluence) and cripple the lawyers (who win awards from
abusive corporations).
In other words, he was disappointed that Bush is failing to deliver the Republic
more completely into the hands of the plutocrats who want to get rid of all the
impediments to an American Empire. Would a Jeffersonian revolt work? Very well
indeed, for there is nothing like the threat of a career-level sacking to bring a dishonest
politician or a pandering clergyman to his senses. He may be deeply in debt to the
robber barons but one thing is clear -- when one’s career is on the line, reactionary
politicians and fundamental preachers can execute U - turns with great alacrity, can find
all kinds of ways to placate the people.
The working poor and the increasingly tattered middle class shall have to choose
politicians and preachers who shall not sell them down the river in vile servitude and
organize for protection as their ancestors did, forcing the financial aristocracy to pay
decent wages for jobs that cannot be exported off shore. They can start by electing John
Kerry, for George Bush is the most neurotic manipulator of all. The rural and small town
worshippers must understand that their faith, hope and love are being spun for all they
are worth by cynical and ruthless mind benders who talk a sound spiritual approach to
life -- while they sacrifice everything and everyone for the benefit of their robber baron
liege lords. Make no mistake about it, the late great American middle class was the
product of nothing but a powerful labor movement that supported its own political and
religious leaders. Had they been able, earlier robber barons would have strangled the
middle class at birth -- as they certainly tried to do with hired goons, cops, National
Guard units and even U S Army Regulars armed with sabers and bayonets. The
aristocrats failed in their empire scheme for generations, fuming about men like
Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Bill Clinton, until they learned
it was much less expensive to buy off a few thousand politicians for a cent or two on the
dollar rather than pay living wages to the millions of families that kept the commercial
pot boiling and the wealth passing from family to merchant and back again. They have
created a wicked system to corner all the wealth and power and they have pretty well
succeed as they now strive to destroy democracy so they can never be challenged again.
There are several crucial challenges to be resolved if we are to survive at a time
when our beloved Republic is teetering on a slippery slope created by a relatively few
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF GEORGE BUSH 38
ruthless robber barons, no more than could be carried in a single Boeing 727 and their
reactionary political and fundamentally religious vassals.
We must choose our American identity for the twenty-first century -- must
decide whether we shall be a uniting and inclusive republic or a divisive
and exclusive dictatorship that serves only the aristocracy and their
greedy vassals.
We cannot survive as the Republic the world admired for so long, as we
have been over past generations, unless we stop our users and abusers
from bullying other nations and maintain an affluent middle class through
sound quid pro quos that lead to a vast purchasing power.
We must oppose and defeat the reactionary politicians and fundamental
preachers who have agendas that lead directly to a state controlled
religion supporting a &wicked American Empire ruled by autocrats who
sacrifice our affluence for their own benefits and our children’s lives in
their preemptive wars.
We must convince anxious, frustrated and naïve people that the rascals
waving the flag the highest and praising God the loudest, are almost
always the ones robbing them blind with their mind bending psychological
and electronic propaganda.
Obviously, the survival of the middle class and the preservation of the Republic
would require thoughtful citizens who care enough about the American Republic to reject
the endless mind bending propaganda of George Bush and the Republican spin doctors
and defy the greedy politicians and preachers who are doing everything possible to render
us financially, politically and spiritually subservient peasants. This would work of
course, but only after enough voters become an informed citizenry and recreate the
middle class through political clout. Neo Confederate Bible Belt true believers shall have
to resent their political and religious abusers more than they hate ambitious blacks and
despise successful women. Decent, spiritually minded men and women shall have to
realize that the aristocracy and their vassals are only pretending to share their social,
cultural and spiritual values and virtues. This could succeed, for in the words of the
irrepressible Jess Unruh, late Speaker of the California House;
Government works for the people only when legislators learn that if they
cannot drink the lobbyists’ whiskey, eat their steaks, bed their easy women
and take their campaign contributions -- and still vote against their
interests, they just don’t belong in politics.
FINIS

Drop by the DbP Liberal Shop