GU: Let's stop Bush-bashing and listen to what he has to say

[grytpype]

Wow... a must-read essay as a Brit tries to figure out why Bush has any goddamned chance whatsoever of winning a second term... read the whole thing!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1293943,00.html

Let's stop Bush-bashing and listen to what he has to say

Big government is being reinvented by the US right

...

The most obvious reason for taking Bush more seriously is a simple one: he may be president of the US for the next four years. But we also need to ask ourselves why that may happen, if it does. If it is so blindingly obvious to the rest of the world that Bush is dumb, dangerous and the rest of it, how is it that millions of intelligent and perfectly decent people in the US see it so differently? Is it simply that they don't get it? Or that they have been brainwashed? Or that they are neither intelligent nor decent after all?

These hardly stand up as satisfactory explanations. The questions, though, remain and they are desperately important. If Bush wins, maybe we need to be more attentive to the things that are different - not necessarily better or worse, just different - about America. If Bush wins, and perhaps even if he narrowly loses, we need to grasp why the centre of gravity in American political life is as far to the right as it now is. At the very least, if America is now answering to its own individual drum and not to one that we can all hear clearly, that has implications for us as well as them.

...

[MichiganVote]

1. All of these questions do not end whether Bush is elected or not

I'd rather address them with him out of office rather than in office.

[bobd]

2. This is just horrible and frightening!

It sounds as if The Guardian, at least this particular writer, is inching ever closer to giving Bush and neocons some kind of props for their successful insurgency. Nevermind that the entire conservative movment is based on greed, killing, fascism, and the utter destruction of everything upon which the US was founded. It seems as if The Guardian now views Bush's re-election (if it happens, and I'm deathly afraid that it will happen) as somehow OK simply because he won.

Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit! It's NOT OK! The conservative movement is frightening. We need to keep saying that.

Bob D.

[grytpype]

3. You have to read between the lines.

He's not genuinely admiring Bush.

[Briar]

8. Kettle has already talking himself into supporting Bliar

and John Lloyd's attack on a free press, so it's not astonishing he's finding a silver lining to Bush. Bliar's support for him will be an issue in the upcoming British election.

[CHIMO]

4. I Would Question His Numbers

"Bush has increased education spending by 75%, has presided over the biggest increase in the Medicare health programme for the elderly since its foundation, and claims to have increased spending on police, fire and ambulance services sixfold. More people now work for the US government than at any other time in history."

Is this "No Child Left Behind." Is this the money for drugs?

Where has the author dug up these numbers?

I would not dispute the rising influence of the DOJ and Homeland Security. But these do not seem to be mentioned.

[PoliticalSleaze.com]

5. What it comes down to ...

John Kerry is the lesser of two evils.

George W. Bush is the lesser of everything else.

[Skittles]

9. and please tell us what exactly makes Kerry EVIL

nt

[sadiesworld]

6. I don't buy the author's naive bewilderment...

looks more like "maybe we've judged * too harshly and need to give him a second chance". :eyes: Creep, creep, creep to the right.

(Surely the author realizes that the drug bill was a giveaway to corp. america?!)

[ixion]

7. I have spent a fair amount of time trying to understand why otherwise

decent people (many members of my family included) see things so very differently than I and many others like me. I have collegues whom I respect, and old friends alike who are Bush supporters.

Here is what I've observed...

There are people like my grandmother, who proudly claim to be 'republican' because she has bought into the branding of the GOP as the party of 'morals and family values'. Out of respect for her, I don't get into it, saying simply that neither party can claim moral highground.

Then there's people like my dad... very intelligent, well educated, well traveled and well read, and yet he watches FAUX news and defends Bush with verbatim talking points. Our political conversations never last very long, over-heating almost immediately, and we're forced to change the subject to keep things civil.

Then there's my uncle, whom I suspect is a hardcore neocon, fully initiated and lost to the dark side. I gave up on that side of the family years ago. They've been right-wing fundies as long as I can remember. :-(

These are all people whom I otherwise love as my family, but whose political viewpoints I find impossible to validate against reality, validate against the facts. All I seem to get in defense of these policies is a re-hash of talking points, with no connection to reality.

Saddam was bad + America is good = Iraq invasion was okay.

Liberals want to invade my privacy and increase the size of government. ( huh? :crazy: )

Bush is a man of moral integrity. ( again I say: huh? :freak: )

All that stuff about neocons is just internet conspiracy theory. (*sigh*)

We should have gone into Iraq when we were in Kuwait.

It's very difficult to debate premises such as these, because they are so ungrounded in reality, and any attempt to do so leads immediately to a heated debate about morals and values, which are entirely subjective, for the purpose of debate, at least.

I can only conclude that their bodies have all been taken over by aliens. :tinfoilhat: ;-)

[Catfight]

10. That's the best question I've read in a long time. I suspect

Americans have moved to the far right because religion is used as a crutch, as something to fill the void, they feel empty. When was it a time that people felt enlightened, full, satiated? Probably at the beginning of baby boomer's getting in start up venues and succeeding. There was the inherit reality that if you really did work hard, put the effort in and persevered, it would ultimately pay off. Now, it's all about cheating, lying, stealing and fudging the books to become profitable, and greed is taking over, there isn't enough billions to satiate the billionaire. Look at Bill Gates, he still wants to be the richest man in the world.
So Americans turn to God, this imaginary hope that someone or something will 'carry' their grief, their burdens, their sadness, their fears, their disappointments away and fill their souls with happiness. Only to find, they are still empty and they ask the same question that's been asked for centuries, "what's it all mean?" Instant gratification, instant love and instant money, so they look to Bush, or he could really be anyone at this point who 'claims' he has a heart that belongs to God, and they refuse to look into their own hearts to find the truth that scares them the most. That we all will die, and the only truth is reality, and when you have what is going on today, reality being twisted out of sorts, you have a time in the world that the universe is angry and when mother nature feels the pressure from us humans, things change. No amount of money can stop that hurricane from wiping away your life and loved ones, no amount of money can erase the scars from a bomb, no amount of money can bring back a son or daughter who died in vain. And that is MY OPINION that the fright wing beat on the collective drum, to think for oneself would mean to be responsible for ones life, happiness and sadness. We are, because we choose to be.

[bogey18]

11. Be very afraid

I have become more and more agitated as the Republican lie machine has shifted into second gear. At the end of the convention, it will be in third heading strongly toward full speed, and there is nothing we can or will do to stop it. They have created the perfect cosmology - if we protest, we are anti American. If the newspapers expose them, it is the liberal media. And if brave intelligent people stand up and call them on their bull shit, they are godless elitists.

Don't look now, but we lost this war and this election about 2 years ago. I am sorry, but the junk I am getting in my e-mail is all Kerry hating drivel, and even if we in DU know the truth about the Swift Boat veterans, their bilge is now accepted as having some kind of truth by the majority of Americans. The majority of people are not getting their insight from Jon Stewart. Karl Rove is an evil genius, and what is the matter with Kansas is the matter with all of America.

We watch the Republicans, we see the stupidity of Bush, the mendacity of Cheney, the vacuousness of Laura, the outright buffoonery of an Arnold - but the majority of Americans do not see it the way we see it. They see non threatening "normal" people who echo what they have been hearing from Fox and all of the rest of the Republican noise machine, and it is soothing to them to hear that crap repeated over and over again. We are fighting the "enemies of freedom" and "evil empires" - we are good good good, and anyone who disagrees with us is bad bad bad, and if the leaders of this country would just ban abortion and declare this a Christian nation and get rid of public displays of homosexuality, much less gay marriage, we would be all right.

I have had to give up eating with my co-workers because whenever the conversation turns to politics they say the dumbest crap - stuff that is so embarassingly wrong that to point it out is almost cruel. These are good people whose grandchildren are going to be manufacturing hamburgers and paying off trillions of dollars of rich men's debts, who have just survived the reduction of our company's national work force from 40,000 to 24,000, who have just been told that medical insurance will no longer be available as part of their retirement anymore, and yet who overwhelmingly support Bush because he is "moral and decisive". They actually say things like Kerry is a flip flopper - they haven't a clue. And I am the ONLY one who has ever actually listened to Bush give a news conference. This guy could eat a rat on prime time TV and still get elected by the time the Republicans have gotten through spitting and barbecuing Kerry.

God, I hope I am wrong, but I am in one of the swing states (Arizona) and this is what I see and hear all around me.

[Name removed]

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