fractal god

Frank Rich on a new DVD featuring the Lord's little underdog:

It transforms the president that the Democrats deride as a "fortunate son" of privilege into a prodigal son with the "moral clarity of an old-fashioned biblical prophet." Its Bush is not merely a sincere man of faith but God's essential and irreplaceable warrior on Earth.

This is exactly what came through Bush's voice during the debate (see preceding post).

In this pious but not humble worldview, faith, or at least a certain brand of it, counts more than competence, and a biblical mission, or at least a simplistic, blunderbuss facsimile of one, counts more than the secular goal of waging an effective, focused battle against an enemy as elusive and cunning as terrorists... .

Far more startling is the inability of a president or his acolytes to acknowledge any boundary that might separate Mr. Bush's flawed actions battling "against the forces of evil" from the righteous dictates of God.

It may be that we are dealing with a Manchurian President. Bush no longer seems like someone who is being shaped by handlers to seem like a prophet. He is that prophet, crazed, but not crying in the wilderness, rather, coming undone at the center of a discombobulating gyre.