Memory is a Political Act

I'm back reading Jesus Is Not A Republican, The Religious Right's War on America, and have come across some good quotes.

"How Americans remember their country's use of terror bombing affects how they think of terrorism; how they remember the first use of nuclear weapons has a profound relevance for how the United States behaves in relation to nuclear weapons today. If the long American embrace of nuclear "mutual assured destruction" is unexamined; if the Pentagon's treaty-violating rejection of the ideal of eventual nuclear abolition is unquestioned--then the Bush administration's embrace of nukes as normal, usable weapons will not seem offensive.

"Memory is a political act. Forgetfulness is the handmaiden of tyranny. The Bush administration is fully committed to maintaining what the historian Marc Trachtenberg calls our "nuclear amnesia" even as the administration seeks to impose a unilateral structure of control on the world. As it pursues a world-treatening campaign against other peoples' weapons of mass destruction, that is, the Bush administrations refuses to confront the moral meaning of American's own weapons of mass destruction, not to mention their viral character, as other nations seek smaller versions of the American arsenal, if only to deter Bush's next "preventive war" war. The United States' own arsenal, in other words, remains the primordial cause of the WMD plague. (Quoted from James Carroll's book Crusade, pages 113-114.)

In the Cloud of Unknowing and Unreason promoted by the Bush administration, the past is a grab bag of ahistorical Bible lessons, mostly from the Old Testament, which Bush uses in his role as prophet to justify his actions. In the same manner that Christians see the Old Testament as the back story of the New Testament, for Bush the past is only a prelude to the now, the arrival of the New Messiah bringing forth a new birth of freedom: omnibeneficent American-style democracy.

Many of Bush's fundamentalist followers believe the War on Terror is part of the march toward Argmageddon, an Armageddon they welcome and embrace. In the best tradition of the politics of resentment, they believe they will be transported to Heaven and that those "left behind" will be subjected to the real terror, care of His terrible swift sword. What better reward for fundamentalists, resentful of dislocations caused by the modern project and the "liberal elites" who they believe run it, than to watch the destruction of their enemies in an orgy of blood and fire?

Now that's the ultimate "sacrifice" for this crowd!