Bush wields the Sword of God

I was reading this article from Harper's on the world view of fundamentalist nutcases by Jeff Sharlet and had some thoughts that partially explains Bush's thinking. (Or at least I think it does.)

Talking of the fundamentalist God, he says:

His invisible hand is everywhere, say His citizen-theologians, caressing and fixing every outcome: Little League games, job searches, test scores, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, the success or failure of terrorist attacks (also known as “signs”), victory or defeat in battle, at the ballot box, in bed.

Discussing how their thoughts of God relate to their thoughts of America, Sharlet says,

The Christian nation of which the movement dreams, a government of those chosen by God but democratically elected by a people who freely accept His will as their own, is a far country. The nation they seek does not, at the moment, exist; perhaps it could in the future.

I'm not sure why those passages struck me, and maybe I'm just making a trite observation, but thinking about those statements it occurs to me that Bush actually thinks that his decisons don't affect the future, that outcomes are determined by God, not by his actions. His actions are just a way to implement God's will.

Free will to him is just the ability to choose to do God's will or to not do God's will. God controls the outcomes of his acts.

To Bush The Rapture is coming no matter what he does. His role is to simply do God's will so that he's on the right side when The Rapture does come. Bush thinks he doesn't have a role in whether or not the Middle East explodes and so there's no reason to think about the earthly consequences of his acts.

For some reason that line of thinking comforts me. It provides me an explanation of who that guy thinks, something I've struggle with and havn't been able to come to any conclusion about.

Even insane people have some sort of internal rationality. Their insanity is about their world view, not about their behavior. Their behavior is usually perfectly rational within thier irrational world view. Having a history of bipolar thinking I'm aware of this in a way most people probably aren't. So it's never been satisfactory to me to just write off nutcases like Bush as insane and irrational. That's not really an explanation.