For people who hate President Bush, why do you hate him? I don’t like the guy or his policies, but what causes you to hate the guy?
I don’t hate him. I do hate what he’s done to this country and its world standing.
I imagine you’ll find the bulk of liberals feel the same way. Though I’m sure it’s nice to think that the other side hates your guy.
He’s a fundamentalist homophobe who supports legislation to rewrite the document our country’s freedoms are based on so that a sizeable size of our population can be denied basic human rights.
Then there is the Iraq war where he was either duped into believing there was a reason to invade and is thus guillible or lied to the population to try to make us believe there was a reason and too many people fell for it.
I’m not sure which infuriates me more.
What Johnny Bravo said, but with a dose of disdain for his willful ignorance and black-and-white worldview.
I’ve long maintained that George W. Bush would make a great “greeter” at Wal-Mart. Why people think a folksy drawl and a smile are all that’s needed in a President is beyond me.
I hate Bush because:
–he tries to impugn the military record of someone who served but shamelessly shirked his own, lesser duty, and is happy to send other people’s sons to die.
–he wants to amend the Constitution to take away people’s rights.
–he actively seeks to undermine separation of church and state, once again showing flagrant disregard for the Constitution, yet claims to be a patriot.
–he’s the only member of his family with a Texas accent.
–people who try to go to his public appearances wearing Kerry paraphenalia or pro-choice buttons have been at best removed, at worst arrested.
–he says new-kew-ler and otherwise butchers his mother tongue on a regular basis.
–he lies, shamelessly, on a wide variety of topics, ranging from his reasons for going to war in Iraq, to his statements about Osama bin Laden, to his support for the troops, to Medicare… you get the picture.
–he uses the word “liberal” the way McCarthy used the word “communist.”
–he is clearly not very intelligent but is somehow the Commander in Chief of our country; he wears his lack of brains like a badge of pride.
–he never had to work for a damn thing his entire life, thus is spoiled rotten and cannot deal with anyone who disagrees with him or opposes him.
–his administration has systematically dismantled the EPA and many environmental and wildlife protections.
–he didn’t fire Donald Rumsfeld for Abu Ghraib.
–he made John Ashcroft Attorney General, after the man lost an election to a dead guy. The rest of his cabinet, excepting maybe Colin Powell, is similarly a bunch of arrant rogues and heartless miscreants.
I could go on, but this is a good start. This thread might wind up in the Pit real soon, I imagine.
The smirk.
All the reasons listed, and my personal one - I’m a class warrior. I think that the disparity between the classes is a greater divider among people than even race, and that it’s directly responsible for so many ills that we attempt to attribute to other things (like most ccrime). Bush represents the worst aspects of the upper class, and has aggressively moved the US toward being not just a heinously unbalanced class system, but a near Feudal caste system through his tax cuts for the rich and support of rampant corporatism.
Everything said above plus the fact that me and my entire family were put on the “cavity search” list thanks to his airline reforms because I participated in a Livejournal thing.
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denounced “nation-building”
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engaged in the largest nation-building program ever
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denounces his opponent for flip-flopping
Since I’m not a member of his protected, favorite social class (rich christians), I don’t hate him.
I fear him.
I hate everything about him basically. He wears his religion on his sleeve. If you disagree with him, you’re a traitor/non-patriotic. His stance on Swift Boat, “Oh, those guys aren’t with me.” bullshit is old. He did the same shit in the primaries against McCain.
Is 100,000 dead innocents a good enough reason?
Given the right intent and planning, I may have supported a military campaign to get rid of Saddam, but the way this one has been executed has been criminally negligent at best, and I do believe this is because the message trickling down from the top is that innocent iraqis don’t matter. Heck, they didn’t even make the least effort to track iraqi casualties. And since when is destroying the remains of a burnt out vehicle more important than not killing the 20 innocent people surrounding it?
I dislike/fear Cheney and Rumsfeld far more than Bush. I don’t hate Bush, but do feel that he is an incredibly lazy man who would rather manage his baseball team than be President. His laziness allows him to be easily led by Cheney and the others so he doesn’t have to do much work.
I also don’t think he’s a total dimwit either. He acts stupid because people like his “guy next door” demeanor and he panders to the people who want a President that’s like them.
I strongly dislike who and what he represents but my feelings about the man come originally from his comments in an interview ( I think it was with Tucker Carlson ). This woman was on death row in Tejas and was appealing to Bush as governor for mercy. Did he do the Christian thing? No, he mocked her cries for help and let her fry. That’s why I feel the way I do about Bush. But “hate” isn’t exactly accurate. I hold him in contempt. As a person, that is. As a politician I’m with Lightnin’. I fear him. Small people can do terrible things if put in big offices.
I hate him because his personal beliefs are more important than the beliefs of the rest of the country.
I hate him because he calls justices “activists.”
I hate him because he doesn’t like people questioning him, interrupting him, disagreeing with him, or not believing him.
I hate him because he brings God into the national debate.
I hate him because he’s in the pocket of big industry.
I hate him because people who don’t know any better are stubbornly clinging to him.
I hate him because he has divided this country.
I don’t hate him as a person. I think he’s a good person, for the most part, although incredibly ill-suited to be president. I hate the actions and policies of his administration, for which I hold him to be responsible.
For me, the two big ones are:
- Trashing the United States’ international image:
The U.S. has spent decades building up strong alliances with other nations, which Bush was willing to casually discard like a petulant child, not because of any major dispute, but because they asked for evidence to back up his justifications for war. The U.S. under his watch went from unparalleled world standing and post-9/11 support, to being nearly universally reviled by the citizens of other nations. I work with foreign nationals from many other countries, and the story is almost always the same – people at home who used to admire and respect the U.S. are starting to intensely dislike and fear it. If the citizens of our allies feel this way, I can only imagine how much more support terrorists are getting from people who otherwise wouldn’t have been passionate enough to get involved.
I love to travel, and now I feel that Bush has painted a bullseye on my forehead. I have family in New York, and now I feel that there are a hundred times as many people willing to try to repeat attacks like 9/11.
- The War in Iraq:
Invading another nation on a trumped-up pretense sets a horrible, horrible precedent. When that war kills 100,000 people, you now have millions of people who will grow up hating and fearing the U.S. That war has killed 1000 of our kids and maimed many thousands. It has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars we can’t afford. There is a very good chance the country will be left worse than before we invaded, both in terms of stability and quality of life for its citizens and in terms of the threat to the U.S. Saddam was a horrible dictator, but what does it say about us if we replace him with something worse? Or kill a hundred times as many people as he would have in the next decade?
The worst part of all is that Bush doesn’t seem to care. It’s far more important to spin things so they’re not his fault than to actually solve problems. He values consistency over correctness. He’s ignorant and stubborn and dangerous.
I’m also pissed about his blatant favoritism of the super-rich, his attacks on civil liberties, his co-opting of 9/11 to advance his political agenda, his anti-science policies and his dismantling of environmental protections, but those are the big two.
Man, I hope Kerry wins on Tuesday…
Do you have a link to that?
Thanks.
Oh, I hate him because he’s the only guy in his family with that accent.
Massive Bush Bashing?
Moving this from IMHO to The BBQ Pit.
Regarding the hating the man versus hating his policies question, think of it like this. Suppose you have a job where your boss blame all of his own mistakes on his subordinates, lies to you about what pay and benefits you’re going to get, and spends all his effort trying to make himself look good rather than trying to run his division effectively. You might say that you hate this boss, but what you really hate is the fact that he’s in power over you.
It’s like that with Bush. Maybe if he had a job flipping burgers he would be a great guy. The problem is that despite being the President he lies nonstop about anything and everything, refuses to take responsibility for his mistakes (or even admit that he has ever made a mistake), and holds his own re-election as the highest priority, above even keeping the country safe.