Kevin Phillips spoke in Seattle recently and I caught the re-run on
Seattle Channel. The link to the video seems to be malfunctioning now but I managed to watch on-line and take notes.
Phillips -- a long-term, hard-core old-style Republican -- set my last nerve on edge throughout the Clinton years with his annoying and off-base criticisms in his NPR commentaries. But he's seeming a lot less annoying to me lately as he's turned his sights on the complete failure that is BushCo: first with American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush and now with American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century.
Phillips seems to believe that Bush is suffering from "some odd form of megalomania" and that his religious delusions are driving American foreign policy. Pour yourself a drink and follow me....
Phillips began his talk with a look at other great economic superpowers and their declines: Rome, Hapsburg Spain, the Dutch, and the British Empires. In each, as the poplace began to sense decline, or a feeling of being "over the hill", two groups developed: the equivalent of liberal or progressives who were concerned with fairness and poverty, and another group demanding a return to "morality". A tax was levied on homosexuals in almost all of these examples.
Phillips talks about a "revival of religiousness toward a stronger creed". He says that the rise of militant Christianity undid the Roman empire. In Spain it was a militant form of Catholicism and a push to expand the Inquistion beyond the national borders to become "the cutting edge of Catholicism in Europe" (no pun intended, presumably).
Another hallmark of decline was the growing tension between science and religion: In Britain the evangelical Protestants objected to Darwin's theory of evolution; the Romans tried to shut down the Greek observatories and the library at Alexandria.
In each case, the Empire overreached, spread iteslf too thinly and incurred huge debt. He pointed out the the British went from "the top of the heap to a basket case in 40 years." He says when it starts to happen, it happens fast.
Phillips says that the top 10 fastest-growing religions of 250,000+ are all fundamentalist Christian sects. He said when Republicans took the South they began to pull from the most intensly religious part of the country, and where the Dems used to be the party of the "intensly religious", the GOP now is...
"because the GOP is the vehicle of expressing religious values, from abortions to foreign policy to global abstinence campaign as a solution to AIDS. You know, that's really a very practical thing," Phillips said, with heavy snark.
He continued:
"When I got involved in Republican politics 40 years ago we used to think it was the liberals that had all these ideas that were panaceas and didn't seem very realistic...now it's the Republicans. It's unrealistic stuff but a lot of policy is being affected by it".
Phillips said that we in the Pac NW don't understand the impact of Clinton, a Southern Baptist, and his scandalous behaviour in the Lewinsky affair. He said it moved people in the South very much more to the right.
The next big event was 9/11, and the way Bush coded it for the super religious as a biblical, good v. evil struggle. He says a Newsweek poll showed 45% of Americans believe in the End Times and the Apocalypse and if you look at Bush's constituency, the number is 65%. These people explain what is going on in the Middle East very differently than everyone else.
Phillips says there is "enormous tension" between "the old, mainstay Republicans" who think revelations are what come in SEC filings, and the Southern religious coalition. He doesn't think the GOP will resolve the conflict well.
The most interesting part of the talk focussed on GW's beliefs. The whole 'loser converted by Billy Graham' and now a true believer thing. Phillips points to who is in Bush's corner: the heavily theocratic types.
In '99 Bush would tell audiences that God wanted him to run. After 9/11 he'd say in private conversation this is why God wanted him to run. Religious right leaders thought so too and announced that the president of the US was also the leader of the religious right...this is the first time that has ever happened.
Phillips mentioned the Hersh article and while opining that Hersh certainly didn't go to any lengths to make the article favorable to Bush, he quoted Hersh:
"Bush has become messianic in his commitment in the sense that he can do this because he doesn't have to run again and it's important."
Phillips says this "rings true to" him based on his research into this current book after American Dynasty.
The Really Scary Part
He says GW sees the US in this global battle of good v. evil and that Iraq is just a part of this larger battle.
Woodward reported in his book the younger "Bush was casting his vision and that of the country in the grand vision of God's master plan"
Phillips put a fine point on it:
"If George W believes in this then he would believe in the Middle East basically coming unglued so that the Biblical predictions could be fulfilled."
And it all begins to make sense to me. Of course GW can't admit mistakes! God's calling the shots. He knows what He is doing, and GW trusts Him. (This blinding flash of the obvious inspired my little entry in Roddy McCorley's earlier "I'm the Decider" diary.)This also explains why lying, cheating, torturing and crapping on the Constitution are OK. God is above the rules!
Phillips says it's time for the press and Congress to start looking into whether Bush's messianic delusions are driving foreign policy. He says if so, they should look at invoking the 25th ammendment.
Phillips made other interesting points:
Why BushCo says Iraq is not about oil: If they admit oil is a consideration it tells the religious people it's not all about the biblical prophesies. The religious don't want to hear that oil has anything to do it. Phillips calls this denial of oil as a factor "mindboggling."
The Left Behind series sold 60MM books and in it the AntiChrist comes from the UN and lives in Iraq. A huge percentage of Bush's base thinks the Antichrist is alive right now and for a long time lots of them thought it was Saddam Hussein. Iraq is important in the minds of these people.
Phillips thinks the next politics have to come from the left, but that a lot of Dems get money from the same people as the GOP and were complicitous with the WMD thing.
"I think it's a really open question how well the Democrats are going to do in this election. And if they don't do well then the Repuplicans are going to pick up momentum just from having ducked a pretty bad bullet in a horrible year. (emphasis mine)
We've got "two parties half-owned by the same people so the differences they can muster tend to be artificial some of the time."
If you know a lot of Democratic politicians--see if you can find them and if you know where their "on" button is, push it."
Well, I hope I've captured his talk well and correctly. I've been mulling this over for days and I think Phillips is right in his assessment that Bush really does believe this stuff and isn't faking it. It explains so much.
As for Dems being able to drive the new politics, I just don't know. If the "inside the beltway" group get their way, expect nothing. My money and hopes are on Dean, the grassroots and true reformers.