I have been lurking on your fine message board for a while now, and thought I would announce my presence with a Bush-bashing post. IMO, there hasn’t been nearly enough Bush bashing since 9/11. It seems as if everyone is afraid of being seen as unpatriotic if they criticize Bush. It is a shame, though, because it is un-American to refrain from criticizing a public official who is doing a bad job. But it seems that this very stressful time has people drawing up the bridges, so to speak.
This is really in response to a statement made by Scylla in the Hillary thread, in which s/he said, “Probably for the same reason that Bush inspires such unreasoning hate in some other people.” The implication of this statement is that hating Bush is irrational. Well, it isn’t really an implication, so much as a direct statement. OK.
There are many good reasons to hate Bush. I shall enumerate the main reasons why I personally hate him.
The main reason I hate him is that he has had every advantage in life, and instead of using them, and growing from them, he has wasted them, and chosen instead to take the easiest possible road through life. He brags about being an average student. Now, being an average student is not immoral, but the way Bush does it is. It is as if he is saying, “see, I don’t have to work hard, because everything will be handed to me on a platter. Only the little people have to struggle and work for what they get.” While most people would love to have the educational opportunities Bush had, he got his education because of his name and his family’s money, and spent his time partying.
Of course, there are many worthless people like Bush who float through life on the name of their family. But, Bush seems to feel that he deserves all of the breaks he has received. His type of arrogance can only be seen in the super-privileged. It is the arrogance that is bred from the idea that he deserves the best not because of anything he has accomplished, but rather because of birthright. Every now and then, you will see this arrogance break through his thin veneer of humility, as when he uses a TV crew member’s skirt to clean his glasses as she isn’t looking.
Bush’s ignorant arrogance causes him to pursue policies without thinking deeply about them. He has accepted a pre-formed set of opinions which have been handed down to him by his handlers and those who paid to put him in office. Being intellectually undeveloped, he is very prone to being manipulated by those he surrounds himself by, and since he has never developed the ability to think critically, he is unable to weed out the bad ideas. Thus, he has become a mere puppet for the extreme Right wing agenda.
Red flags should have gone up around the country when Bush dismissed the Kyoto protocol as “fatally flawed” while Gerhard Schroeder was on an airplane heading to the US to speak with him about the matter. Bush killed the treaty before he had appointed a science advisor, and it is clear that he never read the treaty, and that he did not understand the science behind global warming and why it is a serious issue. He even made explicit that he cared more about the economy than the environment when he stated that he opposed the treaty because it would hurt the environment.
The contradictions inherent in this kind of stance remain out of Bush’s grasp. He is either unable to understand, or unwilling to confront, the fact that harming the environment will have worse effects on the economy, in the long run, than will saving it. And, being strongly motivated to please his major contributors, he is not likely to re-examine these beliefs.
His position on the environment shows a repeating pattern. He makes decisions based on what will please his contributors, and uses slick-sounding, but superficial arguments to bolster these positions. At no time does he engage deeply in any issue, and instead hovers at the periphery, being led by his handlers, and his pre-concieved notions.
Bush is a functional illiterate. He is able to read and write, but he is unable to glean from written words anything more deep than the most mechanistic and obvious of ideas. A man whose favorite political philosopher is “Christ” betrays that he has no ideas on political philosophy, and that he instead relies on his emotional reactions conditioned by his religious upbringing to make desisions.
Bush is the quintessential puppet, unable and unwilling to think for himself, and anxious to serve his masters, without whom he has no political future.
It is difficult for me to imagine a worse president than W.
