Democracy Under Assault
Theopolitics, Incivility and Violence on the Right

Michele Swenson

Harold Bloom Interview
George W. Bush Worships 'Jesus Christ, CEO'
The tyranny of the George W. Bush presidency


In an interview with Charlie Rose on 10/27/05, literary critic Harold Bloom assessed the "divinely ordained presidency" of George W. Bush. The author of "The American Religion" has described an American religion totally distinct from European or traditional Christianity, without which "we would not have the tyranny of a George W. Bush presidency....I find increasingly that I am living in a theocracy...and that is not what the Constitution called for." Bloom went on to describe the "effrontery" of Bush’s statement that Jesus is "his most influential philosopher"—contradicted by George W. Bush’s embrace of "Jesus Christ, CEO," who has abandoned the poor. Harold Bloom’s interview can be read at .
http://blog.zmag.org/index.php/weblog/entry/harold_bloom/

What Bloom names the American religion was largely shaped by the rise of fundamentalism in the nineteenth century—fundamentalism that is a reaction against evolving scientific knowledge and any move toward expanded civil rights.