George Bush, on the other hand, also understands this sacred American 'civic gospel' and has brilliantly merged it with Biblical Holiness and Holy War traditions. These traditions call for the emergence of the Righteous Warrior who will cleanse the land of its impurity. These traditions are rooted in the personal morality of righteous zeal and obedience.

Mr. Bush's teachings on terrorism: "you are with us or against us" cements for the hearer the apocalyptic world of good versus evil. There can be no neutral ground. You have to make a decision. Patriotism is now all or nothing: it is either total agreement or a slippery slope towards treason.

We know that Mr. Bush is not the cause of our problems. Rather, the point I am making is that Mr. Bush is a sincere front man for an emerging fascism.

The election will be determined by the candidate who can embody the deeply felt, often unarticulated religious yearnings of the populace. Yearnings such as "who will save us, secure us, lead us??? who will connect us with a power greater than the power of others?" Bush speaks this language.

The problem comes down to this: Democrats, liberals, and social progressives have simply not grasped how afraid, insecure and how deeply in despair the populace is. They keep speaking as if objective analysis and idealistic vision can win the day. What Bush and Rove, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Pearls, Abrams and Bolton, DeLay and Rice etc, have clearly understood is that truth is subjectivity.

One of the most popular fiction series making the rounds these days is the LEFT BEHIND series written by Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins. Multiple millions of people are reading these books which fictionalize the end of life as we know it. It used to be that the Church could control people through the fear of eternal damnation. Today it is through fear of the future. The theology is basically this: The Bible is a code book that when rightly interpreted reveals that we are living at the end of history. History is scripted and is about to come to a catastrophic conclusion. The only hope is to accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior so that you can be "saved" from the future apocalypse. God will "snatch you up" (Rapture) right before a seven year series of horrible events that will see the rise of Antichrist and the rebuilding of the Jewish temple. There will be world war with most of humanity dying. At that point Jesus will return to restore law and order. This theology of despair "fits" our current culture of powerlessness and fear. From SARS to weapons of mass destruction to the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict, to ecological collapse, the whole world seems to be on a "no exit" slide into an end times abyss. The theology of despair is very seductive. It is shaping the spirituality of Christians which provides a strong core from which Bush draws political strength.

And it has, at least, five political implications that affect each one of us here today.
FIRST: Israel is to be exalted and defended no matter what they do to the Palestinian people.
Secondly: institutions like the United Nations are not to be trusted because they are tools of the Antichrist.
Thirdly: since the world is passing away the environment is not of great importance. For Bush to act for sustainability would require a major shift in his religious narrative.
Fourth: the trust that Jesus died for "my sins" is far more important than the teachings of Jesus. This fosters a domesticated therapeutic religious expression that insists that "jesus in my heart" is more important than my lifestyle.
Fifth: a leader who loves Jesus is to be followed as God's man for the hour. The Christian leader is God's shepherd over the American flock. As stated before Bush sees himself as a Messiah figure

*** According to Vice-President Cheney: America "has the duty to act with force to construct a world in the image of the United States."

CONCLUSION: The point I'm trying to make is that we are not dealing simply with politics when it comes to the Bush administration.