I mean, you know I know that many ordinary people would happily do the same, right? I know many ordinary people were super cool with pogroms and lynchings and certain styles of genocide, too. I just think calling the ones who have actually done such things “not particularly horrible human beings” is maybe an awful way to apply that perspective.
If we can’t demand so much as people not soaking themselves in gallons of innocent blood before we’re willing to offer them respect, what’s the point?
Oh, I know. I marched against the war in 2003. I continued to march even after the war. I remember the discussions well.
At the time, the USA was in an odd place. Hurt, angry, confused - and convinced of its own military invincibility. There seemed a need for some people to lash out simply for the sake of vengeance.
The conflict in Afghanistan was perhaps justified, but badly managed. But the conflict in Iraq was unjustifiable, corrupt and almost became a new Vietnam.
The only good thing about Trump is that the Iraq experience now means only the truly loyal nutters wanted anything to do with actions against Iran. The vast majority of the USA recoiled from the idea, having learned from Iraq that “greeted in the streets by a jubilant people” isn’t going to happen.
There’s a case to be made that the only good thing about Iraq is that it’s recent enough - and raw enough - that people don’t want another one. Which stops Trump from doing anything too stupid…
To be clear, the timeline in which I’d consider inviting GWB to my neighborhood barbecue is the one in which he never became President (and thus never became a war criminal).
There is no timeline in which I’d willingly endure the presence of Trump.
I miss that guy only for his erudition.
I missed that guy with my shoe.
Yet…
So I listened to it now. He clearly outlines what happened, though he tells many lies that we knew were lies even back then. He’s honestly a better speaker than any Republican nominee in 2016, at least any I can remember.
GWB always struck me as more than a bit of a bully. E.g. he would come up with demeaning nick-names for people he didn’t know, he repeated said, when introduced to one radio reporter that he “had a face for radio” (i.e., that he was ugly), having forgotten he had previous met him and made the same joke, etc. Even without the presidency, he was an asshole.
The thing is, Trump is so extreme in his cognitive and behavioral issues, Bush starts looking normal in comparison, but he isn’t. Trump is actually pathological - if he wasn’t rich, he’d have been institutionalized, one way or another. His sociopathy, his criminality and his added cognitive decline of recent years would have put him in one institution or another if he didn’t have money shielding him.
I don’t want to veer too wildly off topic here, but the rehabilitation of Shrub in the light of 45s actions is utterly ridiculous.
To put it bluntly, preferring Bush to trump means that people value norms, institutions and civility in the US, over the lives of foreigners.
Trump probably doesn’t know how to pet a dog and if he did it would look weird.
If Trump had been President during 9/11 I think there’s a very real possibility that he would have launched a first-strike nuclear attack. And the country lost its collective mind so badly at the time that he probably would have gotten away with it. (Which country he would choose to strike is an open question. Ukraine maybe?)
Well, norms, institutions and the semblance of civility, anyways.
I don’t see how that follows. Preferring Bush to Trump means people prefer norms, institutions, and civility over the absence of those things. You get the deaths of foreigners either way.
I heard the best line the other week, from a guy promoting Sanders “movement” as opposed to Biden’s “campaign”. That, even if we could get somebody who would take us back to before Trump…that would just give us the America that elected Donald Trump.
From the predictions for this week’s primaries, this is also not the year for the great progressive counterattack. Labour movements around the world have all needed patience, but America’s going to be the slowest one.
Not to bum you out - major progress HAS been made since the Boomers thought they were the generation that would bring Peace and Love to world affairs - but there’s clearly a few more generations of work to do.
From what I’ve read of the biographies of that era George W. was actually pretty sharp. He’d often get ahead of people who were explaining things to him and ask questions on stuff they had not gotten to.
However, he surrounded himself with political operatives and got a lot of bad advice.
Trump takes a different approach of surrounding himself with toadies selected by extremist organizations and taking advice from cable TV news.
Oh how could you.
Wow. This takes me back to the first time I took a toddler to a demonstration, during the second Gulf War.
Imagine it’s been cold or raining for a while and it’s been ages since you’ve left the house. You open the laundry door and walk into the backyard to see devastation and a glorious collection of dog turds. Barkers’ nests all over the garden. Hooray! Which is your favourite? It’s that one!
Because that’s how I read any comparison between GWB and the cartoon incumbent.
Not caring about the people, the masses, as it were, has been GOP policy since at least the 1960s. All I’d say in Bushiest defense – and it’s a shitty one – is awful as mass impoverishment is (unspeakably awful), enabling peoples’ deaths is even worse. And you know Trump’s goal is to keep people from diagnosing cases of COVID-19. I’d also add in Bushiest shitty defense that everyone supporting politician is complicit and everyone who elects these pieces of unfit shit is complicit as well – and that’s so in both Bushie’s and the Don’s cases.
#MAGA!
