3 November 2004

According to this morning’s news, President George W. Bush has won the popular vote in yesterday’s U.S. national election against Senator John Kerry, with 51.1% of the votes counted. In achieving this victory – which does not yet assure him re-election, though that outcome does also seem likely – Bush has surely proved the existence of the god in whom he professes to believe so deeply. Why else would Americans re-elect Bush, given the state of the economy, the disastrous war in Iraq, the horrendous tax cuts, the erosion of our civil liberties, and above all, Bush’s absolute inability to take responsibility for any bad decisions? Surely there must have been divine intervention on Mr. Bush’s side.

However, if a Bush victory in this election proves that the President’s god is real, then it also surely proves that this god is capricious, whimsical, cruel, and largely unconcerned with the fate of humankind. Only a god who believes in increasing the wealth of the wealthy would support George Bush. Only a god who enjoys greater destruction of human life and civilization – and the mindless slaughter of innocent people around the world – would aid Bush. Only a god who cherishes the destruction of the very planet we inhabit would think Bush is worthy of re-election.

Bush’s god is certainly not a New Testament god, a god with lineage traceable to Jesus of Nazareth. After all, Jesus preached peace, humility, the value of human life, and aid to the poor – all concepts and actions we have not seen from Bush during his first term in office. Nor is this an Old Testament god, the one often depicted as loving of his flock but capable of great cruelty, such as flooding the world or drowning the Egyptians in the Red Sea. How do we know? Because despite such acts of cruelty, the Old Testament god made clear that these were decisions made with great remorse and sadness – and that they were exclusively god’s decisions to make, not humanity’s.

When it comes right down to it, in fact, the works of Bush’s god look more like those of a hard-at-work Satan. Death, destruction, taunting humanity to go to war against itself, with little care for the outcome of such fights, and instead taking great, Rumsfeldian joy in the battles and the chaos that ensue.

Correction: President Bush has proved the existence of Satan, the Prince of Darkness. Now that makes a lot more sense, doesn’t it?