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| have to give the word to the boys, and | get the word from God whether to bomb or not.” So maybe there’ s some kind of bipartisan theological tradition going on in the White House. But if these leaders are not delusional, then they’ re deceptive. And in order to deceive others, one must first deceive oneself until self- deception morphs into virtual reality. In any case, we have our religious fanatics, and they have theirs. In September 2007, on the eve of the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Osama bin Laden warned the American people that they should reject their capitalist way of life and embrace Islam to end the lraq war, or else his followers would “escalate the killing and fighting against you.” George Bush once proclaimed, “God is not neutral,” which is the antithesis of my own spiritual path, my own peculiar relationship with the universe--based on the notion that God is tota//y neutral--though I’ ve learned that whatever people believe in, works for them. My own belief in a deity disappeared when | was thirteen. | was working early mornings in a candy store across the street from our apartment building. My job was to insert different sections of the newspaper into the main section. On the day after the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, | would read that headline HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015071