Even less than John Edward, Biggest Douche in the Universe?
Gawdamighty, man. You really don’t get what this “being human” stuff is, do you?
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I agree with (the page 1 version of) Bricker. No way in hell that Bush is even in the top 50 of the Worst People in the World.
I specify “the page 1 version” because, frankly, this whole fucking debate is tired and pointless, and I can’t be asked to wade through two more pages of this retarded, masturbatory bullshit.
I don’t think Bush is The Worst Person in the World, but surely someone responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths trumps people who’ve just killed one person, no matter how horrific their one kill is.
The Trail of Tears I will give you, but no single President is responsible for slavery.
Iraq was completely unnecessary; it is arguable whether the Civil War could have been prevented at all (though Buchanan did jack shit about regional tensions at the time), and whether that would have actually improved anything.
Gawdamighty, man. You really don’t get what the definition of “flippant” is, do you?
If I could try, albeit with small hopes of anybody listening to reason, I would like to point out a forgotten fact. In his last trip to view the war zone in Iraq, GWB paid a personal visit to a mother of three who was widowed when her husband, a taxi driver, was mistakingly shot down at a check point. After offering his condolences to her husband, Bush sodomized her kittens.
Actually, you’re the one being disingenous. The President, any President, cannot enact any laws whatsoever. He is not a dictator, nor a monarch. So why did it become law? So what if Bush pushed for it. Congress makes the laws here. Are Nancy, Harry, Hillary, Johnny, and Joey spineless jellyfish, then?
:dubious:
Are you…quite serious?
That’s not what I was addressing. I was addressing Dmark’s claim that “history will record the Bush Administration as the all-time low point in American history.” Not that Bush is the worst president (an idea that I might be convinced of given sufficient argument), but that this administration is the low point in American history, lower than other such low points as I mentioned.
Similarly, I don’t think that the putative inevitability of the Civil War makes it any less of a low point in our nation’s history.
Thanks, Monkey with a Gun, for loaning ElvisLives your flippometer.
Daniel
Sadly, the answer to that question appears to be, “Yes.”
This is like trying to pick the best guitar player in the world. So many, so many subtle differences and so many perfecting their craft even now.
Not at all. They know what they want.
As for Worst Person in the World, whoever is most responsible for the current state of the NBA. So David Stern, I guess.
I’ve got to agree with Frank here and say yes. The Democrats are near-irrelevant, due to their unwillingness to stand up to Bush.
No, because he’s not. At least not yet. If he doesn’t do something about the border problem before he leaves office, then I’ll reconsider.
The situation in Iraq kind of trumps whatever border issues you have don’t you think?
Well, maybe not, but this entire subject is one that people aren’t going to agree on. Personally I don’t think Bush is the worst person in the world, but I don’t think much of him as a human being anyway. He may or may not be worst president ever, it depends on too many factors. But again, personally I think he is.
Having your name come up as a runner up in a “worst person in the world” contest isn’t going to help anyone think kindly of you I’d think, whether or not if you’re the worst.
An invitation to think?!
Great Scott! It might just work.
I never said he was unique, and I guess it depends on what you mean by “vanishingly rare”. I would say Hitler is indisuptably in the top 50 or so of most evil known historical figures. He’s also particularly evil given the time and place in which he lived. It’s a bit unfair to compare his actions and body counts vs, say, Genghis Khan. I think this also gives him an edge on Stalin and Mao, both of whom (and I can’t claim this is a very deep or meaningful claim here) lived in places that were a lot more likely to end up dominated by tyrants.
To go back to Bush, I’ve been thinking about it a bit, and I think there are three things that need to come together to result in a historical Bad Person:
(1) Clearly bad/evil traits, such as sadism, ability-to-dehumanize, lack of empathy, dishonesty, cruelty, etc
(2) Traits which are not in and of themselves bad/evil, but which exacerbate the situation, such as desire for power, stubbornness, excessive personal loyalty, charisma, “wileyness” etc
(3) The particulars of the time and place in which the person lives, the country and family they are born into, etc.
Your Hitlers and Stalins have lots of things from all three categories combining together. Bush seems to me to be mostly (2) and (3), with only smatterings of (1). If Bush had been born into a different family, but ended up with the same personality and ethical code, he might have ended up as an extremely earnest but slightly crooked used car salesman, or something… but not one out of whose back yard you would later be digging up bodies. Hitler, not so much.
To put it a different way, if Bush were walking down the beach, found a bottle, rubbed a lamp, and out popped a genie, and the genie said “thank you for freeing me… if you would like I will arrange for Hillary and Barack to be found dead with evidence of their satano-sexual ritual murder-suicide, thus destroying the democratic party for decades to come”, I don’t necessarily think he’d go along with it. Hitler certainly would. In fact, he arranged stuff like that all the time.
One final difference… if everything Bush ever did worked out exactly the way he wanted it to work, Afghanistan and Iraq would right now be fairly-free and prosperous democratic societies with rights for women and massive oil deals with American companies, and the rest of the middle east would be envious of their prosperous peacefullness, and Bush would go down as a great president. If everything Hitler ever did worked out exactly the way he wanted it to work, he would be dictator of a racially pure Reich that would last a thousand years, and there would be no Jews, Gypsies, disabled people, gay people, slavs, etc. Now, granted, Bush’s plan never came anywhere near as close to coming to pass as Hitler’s did, but I don’t think his intentions were, in and of themselves, monstrous.
And what if they are? That’s still not as bad/responsible as Bush.
If you have a grudge against your neighbor Bob, and you trump up some planted evidence that Bob is a puppy-raper, and you run around town square showing your “photos” of raped puppies and telling everyone how terrible Bob is, and there’s a strong mood in your town of fear-of-puppy-raping due to recent events, so the townspeople get swept up into a fury because of your incitement and, by overwhelming public support, give you and your posse permission to go kill Bob, and you do, are you (who in cold blood planned the entire thing) and the townspeople (who were swept up in hysteria and part of a mob and shown plausible (but fake) evidence) equally responsible for what happened?
What trumped up, planted, and/or fake evidence did Bush use in support of the Patriot Act?
W has already made it clear enough where he stands on the “border problem”: If something threatens to reduce the business interests’ supply of cheap immigrant labor, it ain’t gonna happen on his watch.
A fair question, and I may have overstated my case. In part, I was responding to similar claims made about people like Hillary concerning the war, ie “why do you blame Bush for the war? Hillary voted for it too…”.
However, I believe my basic point is still valid. The person who agitates for something is more responsible for it than the person who goes along with that agitation.