George Bush and the "Theory of Grotesques"
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota

Whether we are talking about Democracy (Deism), Judaism, JudeoRomanism, or Islamism, it is true that everything cultural has traditionally begun with values (nevermind the truth). The Bush administration, for example, would certainly argue that the JudeoRoman religious values beneath their right wing agenda are truths consistent with the values of family and community. They would certainly argue that the values beneath crony capitalism and influence-for-a-fee government are truths consistent with the values of democracy and the struggle for freedom and human rights. Once reinstated and acted upon, the Bush Administration hopes that JudeoRoman values would ultimately establish a "controlled" and forcibly obedient society. The rich would be justified and secured in their wealth and the poor would accept their lot in life, or wish they had. It just a matter of values.

In 1919, Sherwood Anderson, a small town lawyer, wrote a fascinating book entitled "Winesburg, Ohio - A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life" (B.W. Huebsch, NY, 1919). In a somewhat round about way, Anderson considered human values and proceeded to establish a theory that embraced their general nature, regardless of the culture within which they emerged. No one has ever produced a more insightful or relevant examination of the limitations of values.

Anderson pointed out that "in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself," basing them on the values predominant in a given locale. It was these value-based "truths" which invariably made the people "grotesque."

The "Theory of Grotesques," as it can be called, was based on the concept that "the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood."

In other words, whenever anyone takes a given set of values unto himself as a truth to live and die by, whenever anyone comes to see himself as the living personification and self-appointed defender of those values, no matter how wonderful those values might seem, one becomes a grotesque. The best way to understand this is with a few examples.

Consider the value of thrift. A young college student realizes that he has limited resources and he subscribes to the value of thrift. He studies hard and works on evenings and weekends and he adopts a frugal life style. This works well enough and gets the young student through college with savings to spare and ultimately into a good job. But the student sticks with his chosen values as a way of life and continues to make and save more and more money as he maintains his frugal life style. At the end of his life, he dies a weathy and lonely man. He has taken a useful value in one circumstance, made it into a way of life, and he dies an old miser. The miser's "truth" has become a falsehood in everyone's eyes but his own.

Now, consider the sanctity of human life, a value central to JudeoRoman "Christianity." What a wonderful thought, to consider every human life as sacrosanct (nevermind the fact that JudeoRomanism tends to see life beginning at conception and ending at birth). We take this value as truth unto ourselves, we decide to defend these values by placing a few pipe bombs in the local family planning clinic, we kill a few doctors and nurses and we have become a grotesque. We have made a mockery of our own values and become precisely the opposite of what we have claimed to be. The murderer's "truth" has become a falsehood in everyone's eyes but his own. Do you see how this theory works?

Now, consider the Bush administration's introduction of "compassionate" conservatism (neo-JudeoRomanism) into American government, in flagrant violation of Jefferson's contract between church and state. Ostensibly promoting the values of Christianity and Democracy, the Bush administration has taken the truth of these values unto themselves, made these values their very own and defended them in the JudeoRoman tradition, with self-righteousness, vengeance and belligerence in action, not to mention the use of fabrication and falsehood to clinch their deals.

With this mindset, which has nothing to do with the values of nascent Christianity and Democracy, the Bush administration launched a pre-meditated, unprovoked, preemptory war on a nearly defenseless Iraq. The Bush administration promoted this action as emanating from the highest moral ground, based on the most certain evidence of upcoming foul play. In truth, particularly in light of fabrications and falsehoods, the Bush administration's war emanated from the bottom rung of the western moral hierarchy, essentially the same fanatical rung where Hussein and bin Laden are usually found. The Bush administration has made a mockery of the values of nascent Christianity and Democracy and their despotic "truth" has become a falsehood in everyone's eyes but their own.

The Bush administration has thusly fulfilled the various established criteria of fanaticism (Arianna Huffington, The Psychology of Fanaticism, www.tompaine.com, June 18, 2003). The same is true for Islam as well, where religious fanatics, e.g., bin Laden, have taken the values of Islam unto themselves as truth, made these values their very own and defended them with preemptive, self-righteous aggression in downtown New York and Washington DC.

No matter how wonderful the values of Democracy might be, no matter how important the quest for freedom and human rights, when we take even these values upon ourselves as truth and impose our version of Democracy on others, we become a grotesque, simply because in imposing our version of democracy on others, we deny others the right to their own democracy. Within the values of Democracy, there is intentional room for enormous cultural diversity.

The Bush administration has thusly become a grotesque in the country they were ostensibly out to liberate. This is made even more awkward, of course, by the fact that the Bush administration has no qualifications or abilities to nourish anything but JudeoRomanism and crony capitalism. This is why the Bush administration appears so short on logic to those preferring Democracy and the freedom to think for themselves.

In the beginning when there was no truth, truths were derived from chosen values. Now, we understand that there is simply no set of values that stands as a truth to impose on others. Democracy must come from the inside, not the outside (On Democratizing the Middle East, www.newsinsider.org, June 11. 2003). While all cultural value systems have necessarily emerged from some grasp of the truth, they do not serve as a basis for deriving additional truths. The only truths are found in truth itself.

If we are doing it correctly, we adopt new values as our grasp of the truth evolves. For example, prior to the emergence of the Germ Theory of Infectious Disease in the 19th century, it was commonly held among adherents to JudeoRomanism that disease was the reward of sin, an act of the gods. With the discovery of pathogenic microorganisms, our grasp of the truth improved and rather than blame the victims of disease when they were down and out (JudeoRomanism's approach to ethics), we adopted new values, those of preventive medicine and public health, and we proceeded to eradicate most epidemic infectious diseases along with the notion that the gods were somehow involved in causation. Had we stuck with the "truth" derived from the values of JudeoRomanism, we would still be stuck in that dark, ignorant, self-serving world.

It is the difference between deriving our truths from our values or deriving our values from the truth. The only human belief systems on this planet which base their values on the honest human truth are nascent Christianity (Enlightenment Deism), Science and its political philosophy, Democracy. Even these truth-based values cannot be imposed, they can only be nourished and honored from the outside.

America's fathers were not theists and they were not atheists. They were Deists who genuinely admired the values of nascent Christianity, but they saw little in this ethical morality about which to get "religious." Why would they do that? They were not fanatics. Rather, they used these truth-based values to build a new nation, of, by and for the people. That this effort was compromised from the start by Tory mercantilism and is now momentarily subjugated by right wing crony capitalism, is simply not their fault. Point of fact, both Jefferson and Franklin warned us about the dangers of a corporate "aristocracy" and the despotism that would likely come from following a Constitution too far removed from the spirit of the Declaration.

Our fathers gave both authority and responsibility to the people. With that authority usurped by a corrupt corporate aristocracy, it is the responsibility of the people to reclaim what is rightfully theirs. Nothing about such an effort would be grotesque. Everything about such an effort would be the work of Jefferson's God, the one inside the "head and heart" of every person, the one whose authority is found in "the will of the people."