Matt Taibbi - Revenge of the Simple: How George W. Bush Gave Rise to Trump

[Miles Archer]

Revenge of the Simple: How George W. Bush Gave Rise to Trump

Bush was just an appetizer — Trump would be the main course

By Matt Taibbi March 1, 2016



http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/revenge-of-the-simple-how-george-w-bush-gave-rise-to-trump-20160301

To hear GOP insiders tell it, Doomsday is here. If Donald Trump scores huge on tonight and seizes control of the nomination in the Super Tuesday primaries, it will mark the beginning of the end of the Republican Party, and perhaps the presidency.

But Trump isn't the beginning of the end. George W. Bush was. The amazing anti-miracle of the Bush presidency is what makes today's nightmare possible.

People forget what an extraordinary thing it was that Bush was president. Dubya wasn't merely ignorant when compared with other politicians or other famous people. No, he would have stood out as dumb in just about any setting.

If you could somehow run simulations where Bush was repeatedly shipwrecked on a desert island with 20 other adults chosen at random, he would be the last person listened to by the group every single time. He knew absolutely nothing about anything. He wouldn't have been able to make fire, find water, build shelter or raise morale. It would have taken him days to get over the shock of no room service.

[Wilms]

1. Dimson II?

[bemildred]

2. Oh my.

"The hero in American culture, meanwhile, was always a moron with a big gun who learned everything he needed to know from cowboy movies. The climax of pretty much every action movie from the mid-eighties on involved shotgunning the smarty-pants villain in the face before he could finish some fruity speech about whatever."

[BeyondGeography]

3. Nobody will make you simultaneously laugh and cringe more than Taibbi

[nichomachus]

4. I see Trump as Reagan 2.0

Their ideas are the same. They promise the same "Make the country great again" nonsense.

Both racist, homophobic, misogynists. Both pretending to be Christian.

Two differences -- Reagan posed as the kindly grandfather, and Trump as the gross, loudmouth uncle. People like gross and loudmouth these days -- after right-wing media have raised that to an art form. It wouldn't have flown in 1980.

The second -- and most important -- is what Taibbi says about Bush and Trump. Both were morons, but Reagan was the establishment's moron and Trump is his own moron. That's why the establishment is freaking out.

[phantom power]

5. "Bush was their moron, while Trump is his own moron"