There are too many unexplained coincidences in BushWorld. Today I consider the consistently horrible character of events under the Bush administration and seek an explanation. To give this discussion some rigor, let me define horror as Webster's dictionary does: "painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay." My thesis is that the Bush administration generates and uses horror deliberately for two reasons: first because it expresses the psychological drives of its leaders, and secondly because it strengthens authoritarian rule in America.
It is important to distinguish between "terror" and "horror" at the start of our discussion. Bush has often been called a terrorist by his opponents, but terror is a tactic aimed at generating specific fears for a specific purpose (e.g., expelling the British from Ireland). The horror that Bush spreads is an amorphous cloud that undermines the public's ability to reason and to govern itself. My argument follows:
The latest scene in the horror show is the killing of Saddam. Call it whatever you wish in terms of a procedural matter, but the swift distribution of horrible images of the killing were clearly the work of the Bush administration. Their control of Iraq is sufficient that not a single image would have escaped had the US wished to suppress them. Students of the macabre in Iraq will recall the similar parading of images of Saddam's dead sons. The message of these grisly images is that horrible things happen in the world, especially to those who oppose America.
Who is putting on the Bush horror show, and why? To answer the Who question, One need look no further than the Rumsfeld Defense Department to see that psychological operations have been made a major component of the Iraq war. PsyOps is now a major area of emphasis in the Pentagon, supplied with substantial budgets and enshrouded in secrecy. We know that the DoD has bribed and Spammed news media in Iraq and overseas, and increasingly we suspect that our national media have also been targeted for PsyOps. But the Defense department supplies, literally, only the footsoldiers of the horror show. The great impressarios are Bush, Rove, and a handful of nameless operatives who have drenched us in horror for six long years. They have done this for two reasons.
The first reason is the expression of mental disturbance. Although I am not a psychologist, my general experience is that emotionally disturbed people often view the world as a frightening and dangerous place. (Cheney travels with a protective bio-suit.) They project their fears and dreads on others. I believe that Bush and his inner circle are mentally disturbed and are projecting their internal haunted houses of horror onto the world stage. Thus, I believe that the horrors of Guantanamo, the secret prisons, Abu Ghraib, and Iraq are all consistent expressions of their dark, and arguably evil, view of the world. Stated differently, I believe that the Bush administration has created a theater of horror as an expressive byproduct of their collective mental illness.
The second reason for Bush's horror show is that it undermines opposition to his authoritarian rule. People who are traumatized by an incessant stream of horrible images lose the will to think for themselves and simply wish to be protected - at any cost. That is why the WTC towers are shown collapsing, again and again. That is why we will see Saddam's dead body, again and again. That is why the horror of Iraq will continue until Bush is no longer President.
In summary, I believe the Bush administration has deliberately created a public theater of horror, because it expresses the dark psychology that warps their minds and because it serves the political purpose of undermining anti-authoritarian values, values that they do not share. A frequent question in progressive circles is "what is going on in Bush's mind." If my theory is correct, the answer is something horrible.