George W Bush and the Dark Side of Religious Fundamentalism

A mouth that prays, a hand that kills.
- Arabian proverb
"How do you find a lion that has swallowed you?" asked Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, commenting on the moral dilemma posed by the "shadow," his insightful term for the dark, hidden side of the human psyche.
The answer to Jung's questions is "you can't find or see that lion"--not as long as you are inside the beast. And therein resides the essential dilemma of a group's dark side or shadow: it is nearly impossible for those caught inside a group's belief system to see their own dark side with any clarity or objectivity. This hidden side grows over time, regressing, becoming more and more aggressive. It's the "long bag we drag behind us," says poet Robert Bly--where, as individuals, we dispose of all those things that are too uncomfortable to look at. "The long-repressed shadow of Dr. Jekyll rises up in the shape of Mr. Hyde, deformed, an ape-like figure glimpsed against the alley wall." Now imagine millions of Mr. Hydes and you have a sense of the group shadow of fundamentalist, right wing extremists dressed up as "compassionate conservatives," led by George W. Bush. It's like shifting from a hand gun to a nuclear bomb. And it began long ago in both the Moslem and Christian worlds.
The invasion of American Democratic institutions by fundamentalist, historically militant (as in crusades, witch hunts, inquisitions, and support of slavery) Christianity has significantly increased the stench coming from the already disturbing dark side of U.S. politics. It's like a nightmarish replay of the Christian crusades--politics with a militant, convert-the-heathens dark side. Potent, cult-like group dynamics combine with unacknowledged and unseen shadow qualities to easily overwhelm the individual's sense of right and wrong, often unleashing pure evil en masse.
As the political world and the media divided the U.S. into red and blue states, I found myself feeling uncomfortable even thinking about driving through one of those "red" states. I would imagine that every red-state person must be a card-carrying, right wing fundamentalist. From the other side of the mountain, those "blue" states are full of liberal, soft-on-terrorism, big government socialists. Both are examples of projecting our group's shadow onto the "enemy." And both views prevent us from "seeing" individual human beings. We see only that group, those people. With remarkable ease, we slide into a "programmed," either-or, group-think: we're the good guys, they're the bad guys. It's like seeing everything through red or blue-tinted glasses that color all we see and think--we've been "swallowed."
Group shadow dynamics can shift the focus of our beliefs with stunning speed to another "evil" enemy. Petty dictators are convenient "hooks" on which groups often hang their collective shadow, their dirty laundry; a perfect example being Saddam Hussein who, in 1990-1991 magically transitioned from being a relatively obscure U.S. ally (receiving military aid, weapons, satellite intelligence, and high tech equipment) into an incarnation of evil and a dire threat to humanity that we had to eliminate. Such is the hypnotic power of group paranoia combined with propaganda in stirring up a nationalistic, lynch mob mentality. In 1986, an article about Don Rumsfeld in the Chicago Tribune listed helping "re-open U.S. relations with Iraq" as one of his career achievements when he served as Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East. The State Department reported that while Rumsfeld was opening relations with Iraq, Saddam Hussein was murdering thousands of Kurds using chemical weapons.
Once a belief system gains control, those beliefs are much more likely to move us to action, propel us into roles and conduct we would never contemplate on our own. Voltaire warned, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Moreover, under the influence of any fundamentalist ideology, beliefs (often paranoid and delusional) tend to override facts--a very dangerous mental environment for making life and death decisions, or declaring war. Independent critical thinking and logic--qualities that are most threatening to any destructive group--expose absurdities. Consider this excerpt from a speech by the Nazi Party leader Rudolph Hess on June 30, 1934: "The National Socialism of all of us is anchored in uncritical loyalty..." (my italics). "What good fortune for those in power that people do not think," observed Hitler, who knew that thinking citizens were a real danger to his political ambitions.
Ignorance of the group shadow and its destructive consequences locks us into a mutually destructive embrace with our "enemies." In a perverse way each side needing the other--an ironic, group co-dependency on the others "evil" in order to perpetuate themselves. Thus the twisted rationale for a never-ending "War on Terror" that is the mirror image of the never-ending Islamic Jihad against the West. The president made this unending mission clear when he announced, "There's no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland." The notion of permanent war against a designated "evil" or "tyranny" is a classic dark side of Christian fundamentalism that mimics the Moslem worlds' fundamentalist doctrine that declares non-Moslem countries as "Dar-al-Harb," which means "The Home of War." It's no surprise to realize that George W's fundamentalist dark side also echoes Islamic fundamentalism's oft-stated goal of a global Moslem theocracy, which a prominent Iranian ayatollah made perfectly clear: "It will . . . be the duty of every able-bodied adult male to volunteer for this war of conquest, the final aim of which is to put Koranic law in power from one end of the earth to the other."