In a speech in Cape Town, South Africa, on June 7, 1966, Robert F. Kennedy said, “There is a Chinese curse which said, “May he live in interesting times.” Like it or not, we live in interesting times…”
Come gather ‘round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
Dylan, 1963
Nineteen-Eighty-fouris a warning. A warning to the proletariat.
proletariat: The class of industrial wage earners who, possessing neither capital nor production means, must earn their living by selling their labor.
All right, I’m a bit of a lefty, so I certainly didn’t see the changeover from Democrat to Republican as positive, way back in early 2001 (right? It feels so much longer…). But even though I’m old enough to vividly remember the last two Republican presidents, it’s never been this bad, at least not in my memory/personal impression. Now, I was between 7 and 15 years old when Reagan held office, and between 15 and 19 when Bush Sr. gave it a shot, so I was most likely too young to appreciate the gravity of things for at least a large portion of those three terms.
So, I ask my (older) American friends (preferably left-leaning, but anyone can reply): how does the attrocious performance of this government rate when compared to the Bush Sr. and Reagan years? Was the Iran-Contra scandal objectively less severe than this “War on Terror”/Iraq mess? Nicaragua? The arms race with the Soviets? Reagan fucking up the first peace talks with Gorbatchev?
Or is it simply the case that people now have much easier access to more plentiful media (internet, foreign TV stations like BBC or Al Jazeera), so therefore we see an awful lot more media attention?
Boon: Now, she should be good-looking, but we’re willing to trade looks for a certain… morally casual attitude.
Reminds me of the semantic games some poor Bush supports have sunk to as of late:
Otter: Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female party guests - we did.
[winks at Dean Wormer]
Otter: But you can’t hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn’t we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn’t this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg - isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we’re not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!
[Leads the Deltas out of the hearing, all humming the Star-Spangled Banner.]
How the whole Plume affair started:
D-Day: We have an old saying in Delta House: don’t get mad, get even.
The personal charm and tact of Rumsfled on display:
Mayor Carmine De Pasto: If you mention extortion again, I’ll have your legs broken.
Iran-Contra was an end-run around Congress, Laws and (to be redundant) The Consitution. The Executive Branch can do as they please, as long as they don’t get caught. And if they get caught, Ronnie Reagan wasn’t there, Bush Sr. wasn’t in the loop and if you don’t believe it - there’s a boat to Yurp leaving soon.
Treason, murder, rape, treachery - it’s all there for Iran/Contra. President’s lying to the American Public? Yep.
Admiral Poindexter? Yes he’s real, and the bastard is still around. Shultz - he was an advisor to Shwarzenegger’s campaign. Ollie North - fargin hero on Faux News.
Casey…hrmm, I think he’s dead. In short, they all deserve a nice fiery spot in hell for selling weapons to Iran. That’s Treason.
KIRKPATRICK: If we can’t get the money for the anti-Sandinistas, then we have to make the maximum effort to find the money elsewhere.
SCHULTZ: I would like to get the money for the Contras also, but … Jim Baker said that if we go out and try to get the money from third countries, it is an impeachable offense.
CASEY: Jim Baker said that if we try to get money from third countries without notifying the oversight committees it could be a problem.
SCHULTZ: Baker’s argument is that the U.S. government may raise and spend funds only through an appropriation of the Congress.
PRESIDENT REAGAN: We must obtain the funds to help these freedom fighters.
VICE PRESIDENT BUSH: The only problem that might come up is if the United States were to promise to give these third parties something in return, so that some people could interpret this as some kind of an exchange.
McFARLANE: I certainly hope none of this discussion will be made public in any way.
PRESIDENT REAGAN: If such a story gets out, we’ll all be hanging by our thumbs in front of the White House until we find out who did it.
In Dutch terms, I’m “a bit of a leftie”. In US terms, “raging pinko Commie bastard” would probably be more applicable, especially under the current administration.
I think that Nixon’s performance was the worst. My family was living in Brussels during Watergate and my Dad worried that there would be no America to go back to, as it appeared as if the government was crumbling under Nixon’s perfidy. He felt that there had been a crushing disillusionment and betrayal of the American people’s trust in government.
At my inner city school the principal turned on the television in the school office to watch when Reagan was shot. The staff was almost giddy with hope that he would die. People there felt that Reagan had waged a war against the poor in America. Wasn’t he the one who claimed catsup as a vegetable so as to cut costs in providing government school lunches to economically deprived children?
One of the things that made Iran/Contra blatantly illegal is that the Poindexter and Ollie enterprise sold government property (in this case missiles, the release of which was authorized by Reagan) and effectively pocketed the money so they could privately fund the contras, since it was the will of congress to stop officially funding them.
As far as I can tell there hasn’t been anything blatantly illegal with regards to the Iraq war. Congress gave Bush the authority to do it, after all. I don’t think it’s illegal to create a false impression or to be an arrogant fuck who would sooner see people killed and lives ruined than admit they were wrong about something.
So, in terms of crumpling up the constitution and showing utter disregard for the law I’d say Iran/Contra was more severe. In terms of lethal boneheaded incompetence I’d say the current administration is ahead by a mile.
Fair enough. Having read up on the Iran-Contra scandal for a bit, I’m inclined to agree. So, Reagan et al were more evil than Bush Jr. et al. It’s also been proposed that Nixon et al were perhaps even more evil. So, for all Republican administrations since Nixon, we have the following Top Evil List:
Having been of voting age already when Nixon’s henchmen broke into the DNC office at the Watergate, I remember all four of these administrations well.
I think we’re all in agreement that Bush Sr. brings up the rear in this stellar group. He did nothing - as President, at least; as veep, he was an Iran-Contra participant - to compete with Watergate, Iran-Contra, or Iraq.
It’s a tough contest between the other three, though. What really scores points for Nixon, IMHO, is the Nixon/Kissinger policy of supporting tinpot dictators around the world, culminating with their role in the overthrow of Allende in Chile. Not that Watergate was a triviality, though: few Presidential candidates have the luxury of choosing their opponent, but Nixon managed that in 1972.
I’d score Dubya ahead of Reagan, though: even with Iran/Contra and the Reaganites’ early support for Roberto d’Aubisson in El Salvador, their lies and deceptions didn’t amount to much relative to the chaos that Iraq seems to be turning into. Lying to the U.N., Congress, and the American people in order to topple a government when you have no idea how you’re going to replace it with something better is both appallingly immoral and exceedingly stupid.
So I’d say Nixon’s the one, followed by Shrub, Reagan, and Bush Sr.
Actually, I disagree with your list, Coldie, on grounds of scope of evil intent. While Nixon was certainly Evil™, he neither sought nor effected any radical changes to the American political framework. (The importance of this cannot be overstated.) His evil manifested itself in familiar Cold War terms.
George Bush pere, while certainly no enlightened visionary in terms of domestic policy looks like a freaking international policy genius and paragon of peace compared with his son (and in truth should get fairly high marks in that arena).
I think the race is really between Reagan and Bush 43, because of the enormous (and, to anyone who’s “somewhat of a leftie” undesirable) shift away from Great Society and New Deal programs and towards a radically reduced federal government and a radically strengthened oligarchical power base.
But the methods employed by the Reagan administration, being political in nature, were far more open than those of the GW Bush adminstration. The current administration has employed some startling innovations in pursuit of their agenda, including:[ul][li]“spending down” the government: There’s a method to the madness of runaway deficits, or at least a purpose. The idea is to force future drastic reductions in social programs, not by the difficult process of achieving political change, but by the sneaky, backdoor method of literally running the federal government out of money, and thereby getting it down to a size where it can be (as the saying has it) “drowned in a bathtub”.[]the never ending war: Since 9/11, this administration has justified every single item on its agenda by invoking the “war on terrr”. This is a war they never have to end! There’s no possibility of an armistice, no chance of a victory; it’s a permament justification that just keeps working with their support base. And, closely related to the WoT:[]homeland insecurity: by invoking the fear of terrorism within the US, this administration has managed to grab more executive power than any administration has since John Adams’ Federalists got the Alien and Sedition Acts passed. If there’s anything more purely evil in an American context than passing supremely antidemocratic measures in the name of “patriotism”, I don’t know what it is.[/ul][/li]
My nominee for most evil PoTUS: George W. Bush
