This picture of GWB with his dog painting. Do you think he was maneuvered by villains his entire life, and now that heās all used up, theyāve finally left him alone?
It just seems odd that he stays away from the lecture circuit. When is the last time a former US president did that? When have you seen Bush on Sunday Morning TV promoting the Republican agenda? When do you think is the last time he spoke with Dick Cheney or Karl Rove? They still live and breath venomous back room politics every day, while their former bossā¦paints dogs?
I think he realized it was time to call it a day. Iām hoping in time he can find some cause to get behind, like education in africa, or champeoning the space program, or a free internet or something. However i think the whole afganistan/iraq/9 11 thing just drained the man.
I feel had 9-11 not happened he wouldnāt have been a bad president, just a mediocre one. He did seem genuine about his non-war related stuff like aid in africa and the whole constellation program for nasa.
Honestly, it really boils down to because heās black, but people donāt want to admit that, because ātheyāre not racist, Iām not in the KKK, so Iām not racistā¦ā Itās about whose an american and who isnāt, and historically, black Americans are not Americans.
When people talk about racism, it really isnāt something thatās just active racists, I hate any non-white typesā¦ itās people who buy into the notion of whiteness and what that means, and that includes thinking that black people are somehow different. Thatās turned into them getting an unfair advantage because of their color. They make the cultural argument - someone made it to me today about Native Americans, and sheās someone who is into NA history and doesnāt hate Native Americans, but just thinks that their ācultureā is somehow defective in a way that is not connected to the workings of white supremacy and how it works in insidious ways that we donāt really see on the surface.
it doesnāt help that heās a democrat and is seen as being very lefists, although he clearly isnāt in any coherent way.
So, thatās itā¦ I think it really does come down to race, but people donāt want to admit it. Maybe they donāt even realize it themselves, but itās almost kneejerk. Racism isnāt confined to rednecks and idiots. There are lots of smart people who have racists beliefs, even if they donāt think they are. as long as we think itās just confined to some backwoods people in the south, weāll never fix the problems associated with structural racism.
If my relatives on my dads side of the family had to tell the deep down truth yeah that would be it. Happily not all of them have gone to drinking the tea party kool aid, but yeah after about 16 or so I didnāt care that much for the family reunions.
A native account of the history - from How to be a Liberal in Lower Alabama:
"ā¦After Alabama supported John F. Kennedy for president in 1960, the first election I remember as a child, I watched as my stateās majority, mostly white, shifted rightward in the aftermath of the civil rights ā60s ā on through the Reagan ā80s, the Christian right ā90s and the Tea Party ā00s. Blue Dog Democrats, conservatives who provided a bridge to the right, largely disappeared, and Republican moderates became an endangered species. As an old lion of the local G.O.P. establishment confided to me at a holiday party: āIf Trump or Cruz gets the nomination, you might find me in Hillaryās camp. ā¦ā
[READ MORE] (Opinion | How to Be Liberal in Lower Alabama - The New York Times)
(And in Robert Caroās, Master of the Senate, thereās a thorough account of how southern democrats reacted to the prospect of stronger civil rights legislation in the late 60s, partly by starting to vote GOP.)
And on the topic of why so irrational, Paul Krugman reviews the persistent lapses of Reagan era (Coolidge?) orthodoxies observed by economists and policymakers:
āā¦Yet none of the dire predicted consequences of these [Obama administration] policies have materialized. ā¦ the conservative economic orthodoxy dominating the Republican Party is very, very wrong. ā¦ After all, America achieved rapid, indeed unprecedented, income growth in the 1950s and 1960s, despite top tax rates beyond the wildest dreams of modern progressives. For that matter, there are countries like Denmark that combine high taxes and generous social programs with very good employment performance. ā¦ā
After the nearly-universally-loathed GWB left office, Obama spoke a lot about how he wanted to āheal the divideā, āreach across the aisleā and āget things done togetherā, which is inspiring.
The GOP responded by publicly declaring that their Congressional policy for the rest of his presidency would be to say no to absolutely everything he requested, no matter what ā a threat they have followed through with very directly. The result has been the worst partisan politics Iāve ever seen, and itās pushed the right-wing to its extreme.
I once heard an interesting comment about the Obama-hate: when he rose to prominence, the GOP dug through his background, looking for anything to hang him with. The worst they could find? Well, he used to smoke pot in college, and the former pastor at his former church once said some stuff that sounded kinda racist when taken out of context. So with nothing real to go on, they proceeded to make crazy shit up, and a lot of folks bought it. Thatās kind of been their game plan ever since.
Your point stands, but I can remember āIām Mad Too, Eddie!ā bumper stickers from around that time. (I was 9 years old and had no idea what they were about, then.)
Rush Limbaugh really peaked just after Clinton into office. Were his numbers ever the same afterward? Seems to me that Rush owed everything to the Clintons.
This is usually met with āwhat, Iām not allowed to criticize the President because heās black?ā
I think part of this is that the growth of Facebook coincided with the Obama Presidency, and we began hearing this sort of stuff from distant relatives ā before then, maybe we rarely heard from them at all, because we only encountered them at weddings or funerals. (I know FB precedes Obama, but I for one wasnāt on there until late 2008, and I didnāt think it really took off while GWB was in office. The question, then, is whether GWB would have suffered the same verbal abuse. Certainly not about his birth certificate. In my email circles, I saw plenty of scorn for GWB, but based on politics, and rarely because his dogs were Scotties.)
Iād also point to when the GOP took over Congress in the 1994 elections. My recollection is that Ralph Reed et al were at the peak of their powers. I remember bumper stickers at the time, along the lines of āI donāt like the Presidentā¦ or her husband.ā I was in Austin at the time, a liberal outlier compared to much of Texas, but adjoining it to the north is Williamson County.
November 9, 2015 (go to 39:00).
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