RIP, George HW Bush: a mass-murderer and war-criminal

Very good point. So my best hope is for both of them to be impeached or mauled by bears. Go Mueller or bears!

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Are you disappointed with BoingBoing?

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Is all the virtue signaling over with, yet?

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I hope so. But seriously when the best thing I can say about HW is I didn’t hate him as much as I hate W and that is as generous as I can get.

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Why? He’s not going to be any less dead.

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I actually believe the Bushes were decent enough human beings - and GHWB managed to do a few good things while in office (like the ADA) - not that it redeems his presidency, or forgives any of the horrible things he did but I can at least separate the person from the job to some degree. It still doesn’t make me care any more or less about his passing - I just simply can’t be bothered to give a shit.

Trump on the other hand seems like an absolutely shitty person through and through with zero redeeming qualities (about the only good thing he ever did was save the Wollman Rink I would guess he only did that was because it was an eyesore for one of his properties and/or to get his name in the news as some sort of great guy). I can’t wait for his funeral so I can have a huge party.

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Understood.

I don’t ‘rejoice’ over his death, but I still can’t remember ever being less moved by someone passing on.

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Meh. I celebrated when Thatcher died. I even took my daughter with me. We had a lovely time, as did everyone else. Bush was in the same league, and so is his son. There aren’t many world leaders who aren’t amoral scumbags with blood on their hands. Why pretend otherwise they day they stick him in the ground? I’s not like any of us were invited to the funeral and therefore have to pretend in order not to make a scene.

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This is a good point which a few others have echoed; the requisite place for ‘decorum, no matter how despicable a person was in life’ is when one is actually paying their respects, in person at the services, or while in the presence of the deceased’s loved ones.

Expecting the same level of gravitas from the random masses of people online who are physically nowhere near the bereaved is highly unrealistic.

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If someone was lying, shouting “YOU LIE” at them would be justified whether or not they were president. If someone wasn’t lying, it wouldn’t be justified whether or not they were president.

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Limbaugh spent virtually his entire program today bloviating the point that the MSM and lefties were just pouring on the praise for Bush in an effort to throw shade on Trump, and he kept asking, over and over during his three-hour show today, how would they have behaved differently had GHWB died three weeks before the midterms instead of three weeks after.

Here he is, last night on Fox.

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I disagree that shouting what you believe is the truth is at all times civil. If every presidential speech devolved into them getting shouted down by hecklers, our democracy would suffer. Protocol is one of the things that grease the political system (and most social systems) and keeps it from becoming chaos like the legendary caning on the floor of the Senate. You say what you want, but civilly, in the time and place appropriate.

It amazes me how people want what they want, but can’t see that they don’t want to be on the other end of that stick when their turn comes. This is playing out right now in Wisconsin. Does the GOP really want scorched earth legislation to be the norm every time power changes hands?

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Why isn’t he dead of a heart attack instead of Pete Shelley?

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Dude died at the ripe old age of ninety-something. By any current standard there’s very little worth mourning to begin with. What? Was he expected to live forever?

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Another log on the hagiography pile. An anthem to celebrate the death of this genteel, sock-loving war criminal. Scream your anger! https://soundcloud.com/biff-thuringer/to-america

Also, don’t say Voldemort’s name?

Seriously, instead of arguing that we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead (on day X of their Evita-esque mourning period) you instead refute Cory’s points? Is what he said false? If not, then stating those fact should be OK whether the man is still in office, retired, ill, recently deceased, or long dead.

Likewise, it will be fair to say the following the day that Trump dies: "We’ve heard a lot about how he actually felt real human feelings when his daughter forced him to look at images of dead Syrian kids, but let’s not forget that he incited racial hatred and violence for political gain, violated the emolument’s clause of the Constitution for personal gain, had the most corrupt administration in U.S. history, and was so famously misogynistic that the said he could sexually assault women by “grabbing them by the pussy…they just let you do it " because he was rich and powerful.”

The day that Billy Graham died, I danced a little and stated that he was a disgusting pig and the universe was better off without him.

Truth is truth. Only displaying the nice side of an issue for some emotional reason is not only counter-productive, it is harmful. It shouldn’t take 20 years for people to feel comfortable accurately describing Bush’s presidency. It allows a generation of voters to grow up thinking that Bush was OK so the GOP of that time was OK.

Worst case example: Why are we just now able to talk about how awful Christopher Columbus was?

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No, he like the rest of us use our Presidents for such work.

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Okay. My grandfather also spent his retirement working with inmates. How about that?

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After John Meachum’s repeated hagiographic remembrances of HW, they finally had a responsible historian on NPR this morning who noted that Bush got voted out of office by the largest margins since Hoover (you know, the Hoovervilles dude!). They also had a former ambassador to Iraq on, who talked about the different views of HW from Kurdistan and the Arab population - the Kurds loved him for the no fly zones, the Arabs hated him because of letting Hussein get away with air bombing civilians after the uprising against him during the first Gulf War.

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