Recently, Mr. Bush has been allowed to rehabilitate his image, particularly on Reddit. My belief is that this is happening because of younger generations commenting in a contrarian way on his presidency, perhaps some of which is influenced by the absolute state of the Republican Party today.
For most of those of us who lived through his presidency, it was always clear that Bush was a religious and sexual bigot, but not a racial one.
It was always clear that the evidence for invading Iraq was scant at best. The war was protested by the biggest international collaboration of protesters ever.
Days after 9/11, there were plenty of us ACLU types decrying the USA PATRIOT Act. Many of us felt that Pelosi, Clinton, etc. had few inviolable beliefs about civil rights at that time. Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders voted against it.
Bush was the worst possible president, so I had thought.
Let’s not forget he stole an election with the help of a corrupt Republican governor and the Supreme Court, either.
That corrupt Republican Governor was W’s brother, Jeb Bush.
Katherine Harris, the Floridian secretary of state, asked the Supreme Court if Florida could stop counting votes and just say W won, because if they kept counting votes, her boss’s brother, W., might lose the election.
The supreme Court said that was fair and florida didn’t have to count the rest of the votes in Florida.
to be perfectly clear on exactly how corrupt and what absolute bullshit that election was.
corrupt… Supreme Court
Good thing we’ve reformed it since then, and didn’t appoint three of Bush’s lawyers in Bush v. Gore to it!
Oh wait.
And he was a terrible orator.
https://vreemdeopties.bandcamp.com/album/2004-bushspeak-the-curious-wit-wisdom-of-george-w-bush
There’s a fair amount of nostalgia for him simply because of the next Republican president. Trump is such a fucking train wreck he makes W look like a buffoon rather than someone with actual malicious intent. Especially for Gen Z folks I think they can’t fully remember just how awful civil liberties were eroded under him… he was an awful president, Trump is certainly worse, but he was a real piece of shit. Lastly, he did get one of the biggest approval spikes in recent history due to 9/11.
Also, this is an aside, but to the point of “the candidates are so old” - Trump is actually like a month older than W.
I mean, Bush last ran 20 years ago, so it’s not wild to feel that candidate trump is much older now than candidate bush was then, because he is.
That’s my point… if Trump stepped aside and Bush replaced him he’d be a younger candidate. It’s absolutely insane how old Trump is.
That makes way more sense- I thought you were using it in the other direction, lol
Donold Trump
”Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
—GWB
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
-GWB
Sometimes, I miss Bushisms in comparison to Trumpisms.
Two of my favorites:
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“Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across the country.”
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“They misunderestimated me.”
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Bushisms were a fun treat, whereas Trumpisms are like being force-fed licorice multiple times per hour
Now I’m wondering why J. Cole sampled this explicit quote in his song “No Role Modelz”. I get the meaning of the saying, but why sample it when it’s wrong?
People are talking about kids these days, but I’m in my early thirties, so the first president I remember was Clinton. The two republican presidents I’ve experienced were both bad, but in very different ways.
I think Bush thought he was a good person and tried to be one (that’s why he spent so much money trying to combat HIV in Africa), though he obviously did a fuckload of awful things (basically every other aspect of his presidency). I don’t think Trump cares a whit about being a good person, and I don’t think he even started to care about seeming like a good person until halfway through his presidency.
I know about the freedoms lost under W, but I didn’t really experience them, so his impact is a lot less obvious to me.
Additionally, W is so good at playing dumb, I think a lot of people ascribe the bad things to Cheney.
Pretty much this, thought Bush jr. was at best a usefull idiot riding the coat tails of a family dynasty at a time when the US needed a Roosevelt (or any calm and competent leader) the most. In my mind, Cheney will always be the one with a special parking spot in hell next to henery kissinger.
I hate to see people excusing him and blaming it all on Cheney as if he was just a buffoon caught in the flow. He knew what he was doing.
Tbf, the Bush presidency was led by his cabinet throughout the majority of his presidency. Bush spent nearly 400 days on vacation at Camp David while Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Rice, and Powell pretty much ran the show.
I don’t really think Bush is smart enough, nor motivated by evil enough to be the originator of most of the big blunders that happened during his presidency. However, he is ultimately responsible for the actions of his government, and his inaction cannot be excused.
I disagree. Yes, Cheney and Rumsfeld et al. played their part and enriched themselves by driving the country to war, but Bush was in charge and part of it all, not a puppet. He’s dumb in many senses but still evil. And Trump golfed more than Bush and I wouldn’t excuse his culpability in any of his admins actions because of that. He made those calls.
My dude, I was 7 when he was elected, I had no concept of party politics and couldent even participate for 2 more cycles. I now know the damage he caused, but at the time it was “ha, funny texas man dodged shoes”. I now know why the shoes were thrown, so unless you have time machine noone has any means of changing that.
You’re cool, man. I’m just saying we shouldn’t give him a pass.
Trump is dealing with absolutely crippling levels of narcissism and perception distortion. He literally cannot understand when he encounters evidence that not everyone loves him or that he has done something wrong. When he screams, “fake news,” it’s as much a psychological defense mechanism and an attempt to lie to himself as it is an attempt to lie to us.
For the sake of my sanity, I just assume everything on Reddit is astroturfed.
I’m just saying there are a lot fewer Last Jedi apologists in the Star Wars community in Lemmy, but that might be because Lemmy selects for the most opinionated nerds.
That helps? Sounds almost worse than if there was no astroturfing
Bush’s 2000 campaign is largely responsible for mobilizing the evangelical Christian voting block in the US. So in no small way, we have him to thank for the rise of Christian nationalism that we’ve seen over the past 20 years.
I won’t judge him as a person, but there’s no rehabilitation possible for his presidency.
He also actively rejected reality in his Presidency, making a direct line ( with a Sharpie, no doubt) to today’s “alternative facts”. He wasn’t the first politician to lie, of course, nor to make people believe the lies. But his administration was totally open about what they were doing, and how it’s all OK.
There’s a famous article Ron Suskind wrote for the NYT Magazine 20 years ago, summarized here. The key bit is this quote from an anonymous Bush WH official widely rumored to be Karl Rove:
The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ […] ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’.
The full piece is here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html
And is worth a read if you have NYT access and have forgotten (or are too young to remember) what the GWB Presidency was like. The article spends even more time discussing the faith-based certainty Bush used to construct his new realities. We all know Trump has no faith in anything but himself, but you can see Trump using the same tools to bring the same voting base along with him.
Let’s not forget Reagan. GOP has been racing to the bottom for decades and they’re getting close now
GWB is getting a boost from Liz Cheney and the other never-Trumpers because people buy into “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” mentality literally. They’re allies against a common foe, but they’re still vile, and the person who can remind us of that is Tim Walz
Walz took students to a campaign rally for then-President George W. Bush and watched as they were questioned by security because one had a John Kerry sticker on their wallet. After that, Walz volunteered for Kerry, retired from the National Guard after 24 years when Bush launched his illegal war, and beat the GOP incumbent for his seat. This one story told me everything I needed to know about Walz’s political origin and path, and reminds me that GWB deserves no fond nostalgia.
To reiterate the obvious “bush lied, people died”
Recently, Mr. Bush has been allowed to rehabilitate his image, particularly on Reddit.
Same shit happened to Bill Gates. Older people like me remember him for the absolute shithead he was in the 80s and 90s. His “open letter to hobbyists” rant was a sign of things to come.
That’s what these assholes do, they spend all their younger years fucking people over, then wait a generation or two, and then do some “philanthropy” to clean themselves up before they die. It’s gonna happen to Bezos and Musk too I bet.
Thanks for the good read.
Didn’t the war in Iraq have overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress? Bush was guilty of acting on bad intelligence, but the country as a whole was guilty of succumbing to bloodlust and misdirected vengeance. The Patriot act also had strong bipartisan support. Gay marriage was so unpopular at the time that even Obama had to feign opposition to it when he first ran in 2008. Bush was a bad president IMO, but it’s hard not to be a little sympathetic when you consider the context of these decisions. The one good thing I’ll say about Bush is that he never seemed self-serving, so for that reason alone I don’t doubt his sincerity over the regret he seems to show for some of these things.
Bush and his admin lied to the American people. We were misled into supporting his war, our grief was taken advantage of.
That’s true, but you could still tell it was bullshit if you were paying attention.
Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan!
So let’s invade Iraq!
wat. (<-- my reaction at the time, let alone in hindsight)
Many of us did. But it was an unprecedented time for America, we were vulnerable and manipulable as a populace.
If you weren’t there, it’s hard to describe how Americans were after 9/11. It broke people. We got a lesson in vulnerability and humility that most Americans learned nothing from, instead sinking deeper into paranoia, rage, greater entitlement, and vengeance.
When everything has turned to shit, people yearn for the days when it was just crap.
