Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/10/president-george-w-bush-expla.html
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To think people we’re sniggering about his way of speaking…
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I think that was his last television address as POTUS. It was a perfect way for him to have gone out. It pretty much summarized everything about his horrible, failed administration. If you can recall he was trying to get citizens to pressure their congresscritters to vote for the financial bailout after they voted it down.
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One minute in, and already I’m thinking “Wow, I took so much for granted.”
- I’m fairly convinced that he understands the things he’s saying.
- He’s saying it in a clear, understandable manner without repeating himself.
- He’s not smirking smugly at his own jokes.
- He’s not directly attacking anyone for his own jollies.
- I think he’s actually concerned about the situation, and understands people’s concerns.
I did not have a high opinion of George W Bush. But the current holder of the position makes Bush look like an intellectual titan and a master diplomat.
And frankly, I don’t like being reminded of that.
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I was no fan of Bush or his policies, but I’d take him any day over the fat orange poser in the White House now.
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Plus, can you imagine T-bone ever admitting there was a negative situation? Or, once it became too obvious to ignore, can you imagine him not casting it as the work of his many “enemies”? And somehow “the semi-considerable (they used to be greater!) Fake News Media” would be dragged into it.
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He already tried blaming the Obama administration for not preparing and he blames the fake news every day. It’s only a matter of time before it comes to light that Hilary’s e-mails might have had information about the virus and how to cure it, but she sat on them to ruin his presidency in an election year.
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One thing about the guy is that he genuinely made efforts to court minorities into the GOP and to fend off the virulent bigots in his group.
As opposed to the current guy who courts neo-nazis and the GOP declares all cities “Democrat controlled” because they have concentrations of minorities.
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Pneumonia looks downright ‘appealing,’ when compared to having Stage 4 Cancer.
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Well, if the nostalgia gets too much, you can always look up his total body count.
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In 2003, before going into Iraq, I was out protesting against going to war and demanding W be impeached for trying to lie us into a war. I got nothing good to say about his precedency, but there is nothing that could reposition my sense of scale for presedential conduct more than Trump. W was bad at the job, and I will never forgive him for the wars, the response to Katrina, or his legacy of eroding trust and investment in science - but if my only options for 2020 were W and Trump, I’d fully support W and celebrate if he won.
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GWB always struck me as an atrocious President (and not even that compared to the current guy) but not a particularly horrible human being. He’s not the kind of person I’d choose as a friend, but he’s the kind of person I wouldn’t mind having over to my house if he lived next door and I was hosting a neighborhood barbecue. We’d never see eye to eye on our political beliefs, but I can respect that he actually has beliefs that extend beyond his own immediate self-interest.
Trump is the kind of person I can’t even imagine a dog being fond of. If he tolerated dogs. Which he doesn’t.
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Really, though? Pick the war or Katrina or even the record number of executions in Texas under him. Have we really reached the point where those are just disagreeable politics, and not anything that can be taken to reflect on character? Because I can’t imagine an even half-decent human bringing so much suffering into the world and not being absolutely destroyed by it, and suffice to say, he doesn’t seem to care.
All this stuff about Bush as an ok guy makes me think of nothing so much as how people always describe serial killers as seeming quiet and nice. Yes, he went to a nice school and didn’t quite get nothing out of it. The principles you’re praising him for having were still those of making earth into hell.
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I said he wasn’t a particularly horrible human being— meaning he’s horrible in the ways that countless ordinary Americans are horrible, including his enthusiastic support for things like capital punishment. Millions of other ordinary Americans would be just as awful if placed in a similar position of power. Which is why we should never settle for a “regular person” to put in such a position of power.
Trump isn’t just horrible in the same ways that countless people you meet on the street are horrible. He’s got some next-level shit going on.
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Placebo politics.
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I just can’t believe we’ve hit the point where an otherwise sensible person might say “well, I mean, he’d still be welcome to come to my barbecue” about full-on war criminals. I am never going to defend Trump as a person, but at that point, why not let him in too? Just seat him with Kim Jong-un in the far corner and they’ll keep each other busy. Your yard is going to need multiple exorcisms either way.
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The horrible truth is that we’re surrounded by people who would commit war crimes if they were suddenly put in a position to run a war. In a reasonable timeline George W. Bush never would have been put in any position of power in the first place. He’d just be another neoconservative doofus drinking (near) beer on the porch.
Trump has always been a fucking sociopath bent on ruining the lives of his fellow human beings.
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In some ways I wish Trump had happened back in the early 2000s. One way or another we would be past him by now, if it happened before 2006 there wouldn’t have been a Twitter, and I would have been younger with the energy to deal with his shit.
I hated Bush, knew he was driving us to a bullshit war, and it drove me nuts. BUT! I could envision a better tomorrow if we managed to get past him. The tomorrow I envisioned is a far cry from today.
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If anyone would have been capable of breaking the world worse than Bush did in the immediate wake of 9/11 it would have been the current guy.
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True, but would it be worse than he’s doing now? Either way, an ideal existence is a Trump-free existence, but that ship has sailed.
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