new old more book profile blog rings host

prev some things I hate about George W. Bush next
2001-07-03 | 11:33 a.m.

Duff sent me to a page at the Gallup poll site where they have people's verbatim responses to questions about why they like or dislike President Bush. Reading them has been a real eye-opener. Apparently, people like Bush because they like him. It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But why do I dislike Bush? Let me count the ways. Though I can't recite politics chapter and verse like some people I know, I can still tell you how I feel.

I think he's an idiot. I don't hate all idiots, of course; that wouldn't be fair. But the ones who are elected to high office, yes. Definitely. I think that a president ought to have reasonably good powers of analysis and comprehension, so as to think clearly in a crisis, to speak persuasively, and to generally understand what the heck is going on at any given moment.

I think Bush would hate me. I'm sure he hates the idea of me. A girl from the working class who went to college, despite her poor grades and profligate ways, by "Special Action"---a class-based variant of Affirmative Action dispensed out of the same office---that was available at Berkeley back in the day. Nepotism doesn't bother Bush in the slightest, but to see a person without connections triumph on the strength of a bureaucrat's hunch---that is anathema to Republicans, despite all their crowing about worthiness. The Ivy Leagues are crawling with legacy enrollments: people who got in, like W., because their parents are alums who donate to the school. My father didn't go to college to pave my legacy. My father didn't even go to high school, but he could put together a sentence better than George W. Bush with his Yale education.

What else. It's easy to hate George W. Bush because he's not an environmentalist, but even more than that, I hate him because he doesn't seem to grasp the goals of environmentalism. Call me an optimist, but I don't believe that saving the planet ought to be a partisan issue. I do take the long view, which is that the planet will continue to exist after we do, unless somebody like George W. Bush really screws up big time. But I don't see why we have to make our own lives and the lives of future generations miserable by creating environmental crises and disasters with bad decisions today.

Conservatives don't seem to care that there are lots of serious environmental problems around the world that should be worked on. If it's not in their face, if it's not quite literally peeling the skin off their face and leaving a big gaping hole where their nose used to be, they don't buy it. To them, it's all a liberal ruse. Does George W. Bush even understand that the water that falls out of the clouds is the same water we've been polluting on the ground? That we have a finite amount of water, so it's not a good idea for us to contaminate large amounts of it for hundreds of millions of years? He probably thinks that by the time the water shortage really gets bad, he will be out of office and he will have a well on his property. Does he understand that the Oglala water table is almost depleted? No, he doesn't care. If you told him that, he'd think his money would save him from the same fate as the rest of us. Maybe he thinks he could just move to Minnesota and live on snowmelt. I don't know what he thinks. I suppose he thinks that it's important merely to amass enough money to take care of himself and leave some to his daughters, and that everyone else ought to follow suit. That's his idea of a legacy.

I believe that if slavery were still legal in this country, George W. Bush would have slaves. And make no apologies for it. He would remind us that Thomas Jefferson had slaves and expect us to be reverent. Even if he didn't have slaves, he would uphold the rights of slaveholders to have slaves under the law. Regardless of how many Republicans insist that he is a moral man, he is no moral compass. He is a snake in the grass. He is a frat boy who wants more than anything else to please his fellow frat boys.

I don't think I would make a good president. I know I wouldn't make the best decisions, because I have a soft heart. But the system has to change to allow good people to get in there. Because of the way the parties have manipulated things, you cannot vote for the people who should by rights get elected. My friend told me that surveys indicate that Republicans respected Bradley and Democrats respected McCain---even enough to vote for them. But do we ever get that chance? NO. No, no, a thousand times no. Because the primary system was changed--RIGGED--after Jimmy Carter surprised the pollcats by winning.

I also hate Bush because he is a corporate boy toy.

I hate Bush because he strikes me as incapable of sincerity, yet people who like him say all these grand things about his sincerity, and it absolutely baffles me. It is like the Emperor's new clothes. But after reading the comments at the Gallup poll site, I have a new understanding of the people who like Bush and how their minds work.

Which is to say, they don't work.

Okay, enough Bush for today. I can always come back to the subject again another time.

prev archive next
0 comments

if you're not reading mawm you're not reading me
random