He wasn’t as flagrantly bad as Trump, but let’s not completely rehabilitate George W. Bush into a nice old man who likes to paint and can’t handle his raincoat, okay?
-signed, someone over thirty
dubya looks cutesy-pie now, but plz know he was the trump prequel, an utter buffoon and public embarrassment who lost the popular vote and stoked the ugliest brand of patriotism to bring us to a war with no purpose but personal and crony profit. he was a trump test run and worked magnificently
plz also know he is test running how we are expected to treat trump in retirement, as a delightful buffoon who wasn’t responsible
he is absolutely a buffoon
but he also created a war of no purpose (thus opening the way for future presidents to declare war personally, needing no congressional approval or oversight)
make fun of him because he is evil and deserves mockery, not because he’s just an adorbs old man who seems cutely befuddled
And don’t forget how he let a shit ton of Black people die or lose everything when Hurricane Katrina happened
That global gag rule that Trump just signed in? Yeah, W reinstated it after Clinton scrapped it, and killed thousands of women worldwide because of ir.
Tried to pass a constitutional amendment to “protect marriage” from same sex couples.
I was a senior in college for the 2000 election clusterfuck. That was a corrupt election. Everybody knew it. It was the first time I saw and heard suspicion that our democracy was inevitably failing.
W treated 9/11 as an opportunity to continue his daddy’s failed project of gaining a foothold in the middle east for the purpose of controlling oil exports. Note that after 9/11 the US went to war in Afghanistan, yes, and went after the Taliban, but W’s legacy was the war in IRAQ and the absolute catastrophe that created afterSaddam Hussein was killed (cue: power vacuum because the cowboy – though an evil shit cowboy – had left town. In roll more radical groups). Ppl older than 30 might remember the theatrics of the UNSC presentation in 2003 where Colin Powell held up a little clear vial of OMG WHITE POWDER as evidence that Iraq had enormous stockpiles of WMDs (that bullshit was fake, and Powell later regretted that he made the case to the UNSC that turned out to be wrong about WMDs in Iraq. Powell insisted that the whole cabinet had no idea they were so gravely mistaken over the presence of WMDs. Riiiiiight.)
Also W’s legacy: the Patriot Act, passed a month or so after 9/11. It legalized gross violations of citizens’ privacy and included shit like allowing the FBI free rein to search phone and electronic and financial records, and allows federal agents to search and seize if they had any suspicion of terroristic activities or connections to such. It also allowed for the indefinite detention of any non-citizen suspected of terrorism or anyone who seemed like they might commit terrorism IN THE FUTURE. We are going to see this again. I repeat: WE ARE GOING TO SEE THIS AGAIN. Suspension of basic civil liberties has already happened in the US and for good reasons, the Trump admin will say. There’s precedent now for that shit.
Also W’s legacy: instantiating and legalizing systematic TORTURE as a practice in interrogating prisoners. Think “alt-right” is an evil euphemism for Nazis? My generation actually got used to the term created by the GWB admin – “enhanced interrogation techniques” – to the point that honestly? It was easy to pretend it just. Wasn’t. Fucking. Happening. And it wasn’t – not on US soil. Because the W admin also decided to torture detainees at black sites overseas in countries where torture was legal (black sites that Trump has already moved to reopen). Detainees were – and will continue to be – beaten, starved, waterboarded, subjected to electric shock, sexually assaulted, et al. W backed away from treaties with the Hague international criminal court that could have tried these fucks for war crimes. OH AND DON’Tforget that time that W signed off on an act that allowed the US to INVADE THE GODDAMN HAGUE if ANY American citizens ended up there on trial for said crimes. He made us non-accountable for war crimes. I repeat: he made us non-accountable for war crimes.
The team of W, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and Rice? Evil. Mother. Fuckers.
Also never forget that time that a massive hurricane rolled in from the Gulf of Mexico and wrecked New Orleans and surrounding areas to the point that ppl were huddled on the roofs of their houses while actual bodies floated by in the Katrina floodwater. FEMA wasted a fuck ton of time and money and oversaw the essential displacement of a massive number of poor black residents of New Orleans who never recovered.
Hurricane Katrina wrecked thousands of lives on August 29, 2005. What was W doing that day? EATING BIRTHDAY CAKE WITH JOHN “I LOOK LIKE A GOOD REPUB NOW COMPARED TO ALL THESE NAZIS” MCCAIN. The photo was on the WH web page and other photos were time-stamped to show that these assholes were laughing and making silly faces over birthday cake AFTER they were already briefed on the Katrina devastation.
There would be no Donald Trump if there hadn’t been a W. W was not a dumbass, he was not a goofy, befuddled bumbler. He was smart in that pedestrian kind of way where he knew exactly when and how to play dumb, to roll out that Texas accent and plaster that revolting “I feel the pain and fear all of you are feeling, I’m sad too” wrinkle-browed look on his face. Most people fell for it. I know there were times – especially in my early 20s – that I did. He manipulated people into fear and complacency by faking empathy and humility and meanwhile developing and signing off on some really truly evil legislation.
The almost manic euphoria that swept so much of the US when Obama was elected? Part of it was relief: W, the monster of the west, was gone and we knew he wasn’t going to replaced by another version of himself in McCain.
Call me melodramatic if you want but honestly NONE of the terrifying stuff that’s happening right now could ever have happened were it not for the path cut (slashed, burned, bulldozed) by George W. Bush.
Stop romanticizing this fuckhead!!!!
Also it bothers me when people want to blame Cheney for everything, like W was just a puppet with no clue what was happening who just wanted to play golf.
He was COMPLICIT, he KNEW, it was his JOB to know, he is CULPABLE for everything. No free passes, he was president, it’s all his responsibility.
Ding ding ding. don’t do this to trump either, in the far future, if we’re still alive.
Published
just moving along like everyone else 