Karl Rove: America's Mullah

This election is about Rovism, and the outcome threatens to transform
the U.S. into an ironfisted theocracy.

By Neal Gabler

10/24/04 "Los Angeles Times" -- Even now, after Sen. John F. Kerry
handily won his three debates with President Bush and after most polls
show a dead heat, his supporters seem downbeat. Why? They believe that
Karl Rove, Bush's top political operative, cannot be beaten. Rove the
Impaler will do whatever it takes u anything u to make certain that
Bush wins. This isn't just typical Democratic pessimism. It has been
the master narrative of the 2004 presidential campaign in the
mainstream media. Attacks on Kerry come and go u flip-flopper, Swift
boats, Massachusetts liberal u but one constant remains, Rove, and
everyone takes it for granted that he knows how to game the system.

(snip)

These values run deep in the American soul, and Rovism consciously
taps them. But they are not democratic. Unwavering discipline,
demonization of foes, disdain for reality and a personal sense of
infallibility based on faith are the stuff of a theocracy u the
president as pope or mullah and policy as religious warfare.

Boiled down, Rovism is government by jihadis in the grip of unshakable
self-righteousness u ironically the force the administration says it
is fighting. It imposes rather than proposes. 

Rovism surreptitiously and profoundly changes our form of government,
a government that has been, since its founding by children of the
Enlightenment, open, accommodating, moderate and generally reasonable. 

All administrations try to work the system to their advantage, and
some, like Nixon's, attempt to circumvent the system altogether. Rove
and Bush neither use nor circumvent, which would require keeping the
system intact. They instead are reconfiguring the system in extra-
constitutional, theocratic terms. 

The idea of the United States as an ironfisted theocracy is terrifying, 
and it should give everyone pause. This time, it's not about policy. 
This time, for the first time, it's about the nature of American 
government. 

We all have reason to be very, very afraid.

Neal Gabler, a senior fellow at the Norman Lear Center at USC Annenberg, 
is author of "Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality."

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times 
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-op-gabler24oct24,1,3948600,print.story

                                -==-

Full article at Information Clearing House ...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7154.htm


Cheers, Steve...

---