Until I started teaching copyright law, I hadn’t had much use for science fiction since, oh, about the eighth grade. Copyright reminds us that the line between the conceptual and the material is pretty thin, and now I find that great sci fi authors have a much better grip on what’s real — and what’s not — than most of us.
So it is with William Gibson. Like a lot of people, I was blown back in my chair by Ron Suskind’s NYT Magazine piece yesterday on the faith-basis of the Bush presidency. Via boingboing and more importantly Gibson, I found Jeff Sharlet’s careful analysis of both Suskind’s work, and Bush, in The Revealer. Sharlet writes:
Believing, it seems, is more important to the President than the substance of his belief. Jesus Christ’s particular teachings — well, those are good, too. But what really matters is that if you believe you can do something, you can.
What Suskind misses, and what Bush’s more orthodox Christian supporters seem to dodge, is that this is not Christian doctrine by any definition. It is, in fact, a key element of the broad, heterodox movement known as New Age religion.
The New Age strains that Sharlet links to Bush hold that
certainty is easy, if you’ll just give up the illusion of reality, since certainty is as close to you as your own heart. One need not investigate with the tools of rationalism, but rather, simply — the simplicity of it all is key — feel.
Bush feels. The press, so far, does not. In grappling with Bush’s presidency, it has expanded its range, developed a more nuanced understanding of traditional Christian fundamentalism, recognized liberal evangelicalism, and acknowledged the limitations of Enlightenment thinking. But it still can’t account for the kind of magic that says, If you believe you can do something — become president despite losing the popular vote, launch a war without evidence, and maybe, if you REALLY believe, get re-elected anyway — you can.
In The Music Man, Perfessor Harold Hill conned an Iowa town into buying all the makings of a band — uniforms, instruments, and sheet music — on the promise that kids could learn to play using the “think” method.In the movie, Ron Howard saw through the con and forced Robert Preston to confess. He got Shirley Jones, and the rest of us got Seventy-Six Trombones and a happy ending. With George W., all we’ve got is Trouble in River City.
