…have nothing to do with the wholesale bashing of Christians. Jesus is just alright with me, and many of His followers have done, and still do, astounding works on behalf of a better world.

Ayelish McGarvey, however, writes that he sees few if any such evidence of good works among Bush and his team. McGarvey even suggests, “Bush is no devout evangelical. In fact, he may not be a Christian at all.”

Jeff Sharlet interprets Bush’s religion not as orthodox Evangelicism, but more like one of those PoMo spiritual melanges, made up of a little Jesus and a little New Age magic. Sharlet particularly notes the extent to which Bush and his team are absolutely certain they can achieve anything they want just by believing hard enough that it can and should be done:

“Bush believers long for absolutes, but they don’t care about empirical definitions. They’re not literalists, in the sense that they don’t cling to language. In fact, they don’t trust language, which is why they read clunky, soulless translations of scripture, when they read it at all. The Community Bible Study approach to biblical education through which Bush found his faith is not based on intense reading, but on personal meditations built around a sentence or two. Bush himself doesn’t study the Bible; he samples phrases and invokes them like spells….When he speaks of ‘wonderworking power’ (a reference to the gospel standard “Power in the Blood”), as he did in his now infamous ‘mission accomplished’ speech, he is drawing that power into being, to make his desires into reality. Politics, strategy, books, the Bible — everything falls away in the realm of magical realism.”

Suddenly, a lot of aspects of these past four years begin to make sense.

For I’ve been studying New Age thought factions on an amateur, part-time basis for the past almost-year. I’ve listened to, read, and in a couple of cases interviewed people who promote versions of the positive-thinking mantra. Some versions are more spiritual than others. Some versions are more individualistic and materialistic than others.

The British seminar leader and hypnotherapist Paul McKenna, loves to rhetorically ask his audiences, “What would you do if you absolutely KNEW you couldn’t fail?” Meanwhile, local ex-ad copywriter Rebecca Fine promotes “The Science of Getting Rich,” a “Certain Way” towards personal wealth, based on the teachings of 1900s pamphleteer Wallace Wattles. (To Fine, “certain” means both specificity and doubtlessness.) Follow the program, Fine says, and the dough will flow your way.

There are a few catches in Wattles’s plan. He didn’t like charity, antitrust actions, or organized labor; instead of forming schemes to redistribute wealth, he wrote that concerned citizens should help the poor learn to generate their own wealth. And you have to really believe you’re channelling the flow of material energy your way. As Fine writes: “Wattles says that instead of questioning how these principles work, you’ll need simply to accept them and begin to practice them.”

This ties in well with Bush’s famous refusals to admit ever having made a mistake. Christianity is big on self-doubt and self-denial; “not my will but thine be done.” But in the positive-thinking realm, doubting yourself’s about the worst sin you can make.

So: Bush isn’t really a Bible thumper; though he’ll gladly seek Bible-thumpers’ votes. He’s really one of the globalization-era spiritual fusionists. He’s part of the target market for Wayne Dyer pledge-drive books and Successories motivational posters. He could be a leader of “no money down” seminars. The Force is with him (albeit, in my opinion, it’s the Dark Side).

I imagine some voters have interpreted this insistant attitude, which scoffers such as myself have derided as “hubris,” as just the sort of can-do mindset they want in a leader. Top-heavy tax cuts WILL stimulate the economy! Iraq and Afghanistan WILL become stable democracies! Abstinance-only education WILL eliminate unwanted pregnancies! Privatization WILL make Social Security more solvent! Why? Because WE SAY SO, that’s why!

But I, for one, still belong to the skeptics (or, as a Bush aide quoted in the NY Times derided us, “the reality-based community”). I believe an acid-tripper, no matter how devoutly he believes he can fly, should be led away from the temptation of an open fifth-floor window. I believe the most assertive, positive-thinking management wasn’t enough to keep certain dot-com ventures alive.

And I believe corporate cronyism is neither good for government nor for business.

I believe no one country should, or even can, unilaterally impose military conquest and shock-therapy economics across the globe.

I believe marriage is not profaned but enhanced by being expanded to more possibilities.

I believe one-sided “news” coverage is not “fair and balanced.”

I believe freedom is not slavery. I believe war is not peace. I believe ignorance is not strength.

And I firmly, positively, believe we can do better.

…about the fairness of comparing certain politicians to fascists, Lawrence W. Britt at Free Inquiry has a handy list of 14 common characteristics of fascist regimes. Among them: “Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism,” “disdain for the importance of human rights,” “identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause,” “avid militarism,” “rampant sexism,” “obsession with national security,” “religion and ruling elite tied together,” and “disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.”

…about what he believes is Bush’s one true failing, a rigid belief in “easy certainty.”

Glenn Stout has a long but fascinating essay debunking the “Curse of the Bambino” legend, the idea that the Boston Red Sox have gone without a World Series title since 1918 because then-owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth’s contract to the Yankees. Stout claims the “curse” myth dates back only to 1986, and that in any case what drove Ruth, and later Frazee himself, out of Boston baseball was an anti-Semitic smear campaign against the non-Jewish Frazee, led by that notorious race-baiter Henry Ford.

…opening ceremony live on CBC (one more reason Canada’s a cooler place). The thing’s a big, gaudy, lovely performance-art spectacle (think Cirque du Soleil) with gods, lovers, classical art, philosophy, history, and huge nude male sculptures.

The celebration of Greek history within the show, like most accounts of that proud nation, lingered on the ancient/classical days and rushed through everything since. As the ceremony’s parade of live tableaux depicted it, the fall of Greek creativity didn’t stem from the Romans’ conquest but from the rise of that late-Roman religion, Christianity.

PS: Yeah, the original Olympic athletes were all male and naked. But there were even more differences between then and now; some of which involved the eternal contradiction between democratic ideals and slavery.

Despite what you may hear, Jesus Christ is not necessarily a Republican.

The host of public TV’s The Frugal Gourmet from 1973 to 1997, who died sometime this past week, was one massive heap-O-contradictions.

He popularized world-fusion cooking, and devoted many episodes to travelogue footage, yet lived in Seattle and Tacoma all his life. (Even when he made his show under a contract to Chicago’s PBS affiliate, he commuted from here to there to tape it.)

He was a mellow, genial personality on camera, but could be a pompous brute in person.

He promoted fancy, exotic, and often expensive-to-make dishes on his show and in his cookbooks, but also enjoyed some of Seattle’s moderately priced restaurants (such as Mama’s Mexican Kitchen).

He was an ordained Methodist minister, working in “noncommercial” broadcasting, yet amassed quite a little capitalistic empire for himself.

And he spoke of family values, yet was dogged by allocations of boy-abuse and rape that, while settled out of court, led him to retire in disgrace. (This was five years before ministerial boy-abuse became a national scandal.)

Smith had a long-term heart condition, and in the past few years had used a motorized wheelchair (complete with a horn, which he used to belligerently honk at cars), but from all accounts remained active, participating in charity events and researching new cookbooks—despite having lost his show, his endorsement deals, his kitchenware line, and his reputation.

…what would happen if Jesus ran for President.

Amazing who you’ll find hangin’ out on Granville Street in Vancouver these days. Like Goldie Hawn and the Dalai Lama.

A WIDELY-REPOSTED online essay by Martin Cannon posits whether Mel Gibson’s movie version of Jesus is the ultimate bondage bottom.

ROBERT CARVER OFFERS the always appropos reminder that this never was a “Christian Nation.”

…recently posted a fake news piece about a “Creation Science Fair.” According to some of the emails I’ve received about it, many readers imagined this was an actual event. I guess the lesson is the site’s authors must have had some real “intelligent design” going on.

TERRY EAGLETON describes fundamentalists as “necrophiliacs, in love with a dead letter. The letter of the sacred text must be rigidly embalmed if it is to imbue life with the certitude and finality of death.” He adds:

“They see God as copper fastening human meaning. Fundamentalism means sticking strictly to the script, which in turn means being deeply fearful of the improvised, ambiguous or indeterminate.Fundamentalists, however, fail to realise that the phrase “sacred text” is self-contradictory. Since writing is meaning that can be handled by anybody, any time, it is always profane and promiscuous. Meaning that has been written down is bound to be unhygienic. Words that could only ever mean one thing would not be words. Fundamentalism is the paranoid condition of those who do not see that roughness is not a defect of human existence, but what makes it work. For them, it is as though we have to measure Everest down to the last millimetre if we are not to be completely stumped about how high it is. It is not surprising that fundamentalism abhors sexuality and the body, since in one sense all flesh is rough, and all sex is rough trade.”

This is written on Sunday, March 16. The day before the Irish Catholic Church’s sanitized substitute for the ol’ pagan spring equinox fertility rites. A time to honor nature’s cycle of renewal; the hope that comes from new life; and the libidinous, procreative spirit that makes it all possible.

But instead the world sits and waits for all hell to break loose, for wanton death and destruction to rain from the sky onto a small country already suffering under a brutal dictatorial regime, now to be decimated by the agents of another brutal dictatorial regime.

No, all you masculinity-bashers out there in alternative-land, this is not a war about penises or testosterone. It’s almost the complete opposite of that. Both the Iraqi and U.S. war regimes are fueled by an anti-erotic passion, an ultimately nerdy-geeky quest for abstract power. The U.S. neoconservatives are particularly addicted to this internalized, repressed, retro-pre-pubescent, anti-sex, anti-life state of mind.

This state of mind can be seen among censors who would outlaw images of sex but who don’t mind images of violence. It can be seen in a government that promotes abstinence-only “education” in the public schools, but refuses to decently fund basic education in these same schools. It can be seen in a national health care “policy” aimed solely at enriching the drug and insurance CEOs. Indeed, it can be seen throughout a federal Executive Branch whose every large and small decision is predicated upon rewarding big campaign contributors and/or silencing dissent.

A Guerrilla Girls ad in the Village Voice suggested sending estrogen pills to government officials, imagining that would immediately make them start seeing everything correctly. I suspect it would only turn them from sanctimonious, repressed men into sanctimonious, repressed women-in-men’s-bodies.

No, we need more passionately female females on the side of peace. And we need more passionately male males. (And, of course, more passionately queer queers, etc.)

In the eternal Dionysian spirit of life, we need to actively be out in the world with an intense, dedicated love. We need to sow the seeds of peace, to cultivate the fruits of true democracy. We need to do our share of initiating consensual, cooperative interaction here and abroad. We need to plow, thrust, pull, push, kneel, gaze, lick, caress, rub, nibble, sniff, and do whatever else it takes to help bring the planet out of its current frustration and toward greater serenity and satisfaction.

Or, to be Irish about it, to help the world become as ecstatic as the end of Ulysses.