Back from the EU -- been reading the 500 or so posts of the Bushbashers/Bushhaters -- nothing much has changed -- ========= >>>>No, I did not read the book, but what words more perfectly describe George Bush making one of the oddest speeches ever made at the UN? There he was--with his designer suit, costly watch, and constantly-manicured haircut--stone-faced and unrepentant for the violent destruction he caused, for his obvious lying, and for his rage against the thoughtful objections of others. Actually, unrepentant seems an inadequate description, unaware or uninterested being closer to the mark.
The matter and manner of Bush's speaking are always an ordeal for thinking people. He seems convinced that every audience deserves the same approach given the pathologically credulous at a revival tent meeting.
But he outdid himself this time. His description of anti-social behavior on a global scale('terrorism' is anti-social behavior?) as support for the world community must have provided a sophisticated audience interesting dinner topics. One can imagine the bons mots around the subject of the world's most incorrigible, obvious liar claiming he defends UN credibility. As with Dostoevsky's Father Karamazov, it was as though all his recent vicious and disturbing behavior had simply never happened.<<<< ========== if only the old EU states had not sent us their unwashed failures over the past 100 years, the elites now occupying their high posts in the media and universities could run this country for the rest of us, instead of allowing us stupid people to vote -- Nov 2004 looking better every passing day =========== the bushhaters spokes person??? =========== http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=gfI%2FvvY5VZirXupcsQoN5m%3D%3D
I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it. I think his policies rank him among the worst presidents in U.S. history. And, while I'm tempted to leave it at that, the truth is that I hate him for less substantive reasons, too. I hate the inequitable way he has come to his economic and political achievements and his utter lack of humility (disguised behind transparently false modesty) at having done so. His favorite answer to the question of nepotism--"I inherited half my father's friends and all his enemies"--conveys the laughable implication that his birth bestowed more disadvantage than advantage. He reminds me of a certain type I knew in high school--the kid who was given a fancy sports car for his sixteenth birthday and believed that he had somehow earned it. I hate the way he walks--shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from his sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo. I hate the way he talks--blustery self-assurance masked by a pseudo-populist twang. I even hate the things that everybody seems to like about him. I hate his lame nickname-bestowing-- a way to establish one's social superiority beneath a veneer of chumminess (does anybody give their boss a nickname without his consent?). And, while most people who meet Bush claim to like him, I suspect that, if I got to know him personally, I would hate him even more. .......... While liberals have pretty much quit questioning Bush's competence, conservatives have given free rein to their most sycophantic impulses. Some of this is Bush's own doing--most notably, his staged aircraft-carrier landing, a naked attempt to transfer the public's admiration for the military onto himself (a man, it must be noted, who took a coveted slot in the National Guard during Vietnam and who then apparently declined to show up for a year of duty). Bush's supporters have spawned an entire industry of hagiographic kitsch. You can buy a twelve-inch doll of Bush clad in his "Mission Accomplished" flight suit or, if you have a couple thousand dollars to spend, a bronze bust depicting a steely-eyed "Commander-in-Chief" Bush. National Review is enticing its readers to fork over $24.95 for a book-length collection of Bush's post-September 11, 2001, speeches--any and all of which could be downloaded from the White House website for free. The collection recasts Bush as Winston Churchill, with even his most mundane pronouncements ("Excerpted Remarks by the President from Speech at the Lighting of the National Christmas Tree," "Excerpted Remarks by the President from Speech to the Missouri Farmers Association") deemed worthy of cherishing in bound form. Meanwhile, the recent Showtime pseudo-documentary "DC 9/11" renders the president as a Clint Eastwood figure, lording over a cringing Dick Cheney and barking out such implausible lines as "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come on over and get me. I'll be here!"
Certainly Clinton had his defenders and admirers, but no similar cult of personality. Liberal Hollywood fantasies--"The West Wing," The American President--all depict imaginary presidents who pointedly lack Clinton's personal flaws or penchant for compromise. The political point was more to highlight Clinton's deficiencies than to defend them.
The persistence of an absurdly heroic view of Bush is what makes his dullness so maddening. To be a liberal today is to feel as though you've been transported into some alternative universe in which a transparently mediocre man is revered as a moral and strategic giant. You ask yourself why Bush is considered a great, or even a likeable, man. You wonder what it is you have been missing. Being a liberal, you probably subject yourself to frequent periods of self-doubt. But then you conclude that you're actually not missing anything at all. You decide Bush is a dullard lacking any moral constraints in his pursuit of partisan gain, loyal to no principle save the comfort of the very rich, unburdened by any thoughtful consideration of the national interest, and a man who, on those occasions when he actually does make a correct decision, does so almost by accident.
There. That feels better. =============== how sweet it is -- hap
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