George Is Nonliterate

by Bruce Schimmel

Michael Moore is surely riffing a bit in Stupid White Men when he taunts President George W. Bush about his ability — make that inability — to read and write.

No, Bush is not illiterate, but there is ample evidence that he is nonliterate. As in, I'm pretty sure that Bush, if pushed, can read and write reasonably well. He just simply chooses not to.

Being nonliterate affects how people make decisions. In Bush's case, simplified thinking brings stark choices that are leading this country into ruin. Even in critical matters of life and death, Bush reportedly prefers to be briefed verbally. In Texas, complex legal briefs on behalf of those about to be executed were routinely offered to the governor for his signature entirely through oral presentation.

Too busy to read, many voters identify with Bush when he admits, almost defiantly, that he doesn't read newspapers. He's got people who read for him, who tell him what he needs to know. In some ways, we live in a post-literate age. Many people prefer the cut-and-thrust of talking heads to a careful written analysis. Hearing instead of reading is fine if you're looking for some excitement, but if you get your information almost exclusively by spoken word, delicate ideas are often obscured by flashy images. History is lost in a haze. The nonliterate's landscape is primarily two-dimensional.

Through the eyes of someone who reads very little, the world outside resembles a comic book. It is a world filled with good guys or bad, white knights or black, a sharply divided cosmos of friends or enemies.

And with comic-book thinking comes comic-book speaking. This is one way to view the verbal entanglements into which Bush often stumbles whenever he leaves his script. It is difficult for the thought of a nonliterate thinker to reach much beyond a sentence, much less to a paragraph.

For Bush, it's even worse because his diminished thinking is further reduced by his adherence to the only book he admits to reading: the Bible. And for fundamentalists like Bush, the Bible is more than a true story of the past; it is a looking glass into the future. So, in their eyes, the Bible provides the stage on which contemporary actors play out predetermined turns of an ancient plot.

No wonder Bush says he doesn't belabor his decisions, that he acts from his gut. For a nonliterate person, decision-making is not a process of cognition, but of revelation. And with the Bible as his template, Bush's future is a terrifying place, filled with bloodshed and war.

It is a dangerous and horrific vision for those who do not yearn for the end of time.