Dig down to the bottom of our American Psychosis and you will find that old bugbear of "Manifest Destiny" . It's not speaking out of turn to say that men who hear God telling them to invade certain countries are out of their freaking minds. The term "Providence" is a possibly delusional concept that was held by radically different Americans, prior to the Civil War. But former President Ulysses S. Grant wrote in his memoirs this warning: "Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions".
Not long ago an old friend of mine startled me. He said that this unsavory crew in the White House made him "nostalgic for Richard Nixon". I laughed in his face, with the thought that he was joking, since my friend Grayson and I are old lefties and Vietnam War protesters. But he said he was serious: "at least down at the bottom of himself, Nixon had some kind of conscience. At least Nixon could be shamed. He could not bear it if people thought of him as a bad man. But the outlaws now in power are a different breed. Men like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, George W. Bush: men like these are completely shameless. They cannot be shamed".
Who are Bush&Co?--who are these men? They are fundamentalists, true believers, who never question their assumptions.
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