Religion and Secrecy in the Bush Administration

Bush himself, I will argue, lies at the intersection of these three (and other) forces, and his political persona has in turn been constructed in multiple ways by his advisors and constituents: he is thus at once the Gentleman, the Prince, and the Simulacrum. The first of these is Strauss’ term for the political figure who serves as the public voice of religion and morality for the wise man or philosopher, who is in fact the one with the real knowledge and power. For Strauss, both secrecy and religion are necessary to the functioning of society: the former protects the “vulgar” public from harsh truths that would endanger them, while the latter gives them faith in the laws that govern society.[17] The second term is of course from Machiavelli, whose work has been taken up by Neoconservative thinkers like Michael Ledeen who call for a neo-Machiavellian use of both religion and deception in American politics.[18] And the third is the term developed by Baudrillard to refer to the new era of simulation and hyper-reality that characterizes much of culture and politics in media-driven, late capitalist consumer society. For Baudrillard, the age of the simulacrum in which we live is one in which “the secret” no longer conceals some hidden truth, but simply conceals the fact that there is no truth or reality beneath the appearance.