George W Bush paved the way for Trump - to rehabilitate him is appalling

[dajoki]

George W Bush paved the way for Trump – to rehabilitate him is appalling
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/06/george-w-bush-paved-the-way-for-trump-to-rehabilitate-him-is-appalling?

snip//

On Saturday, Bush put out a video calling for compassion and national unity during the coronavirus crisis. In it, he declared: “We are not partisan combatants; we are human beings.” This is a lovely message; really, it is. It is just a shame he wasn’t so invested in our shared humanity when he used the fabricated threat of weapons of mass destruction to bomb Iraq into oblivion. It is a pity he didn’t think about “how small our differences are” when he fought LGBTQ+ rights. It is unfortunate he wasn’t so concerned about compassion during his botched and heartless response to Hurricane Katrina.

If there were an Oscar for best use of cinematography to whitewash a bloody legacy, then Dubya has certainly earned it. His three-minute message – which was part of The Call to Unite, a project featuring videos from celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Julia Roberts – has been viewed more than 6m times and generated widespread praise. With Trump in office, suddenly Bush doesn’t seem so bad to many observers. At least Bush could reach across the political aisle now and again. “Bush handled post-Katrina by asking his father and Bill Clinton to help,” tweeted Maggie Haberman, the New York Times’ White House correspondent. “The current president has been uninterested in asking his predecessors to get involved as the country deals with Covid.”

We don’t have to do this. We don’t have to normalise Bush or rewrite his record just because Trump is unleashing his own campaign of shock and awfulness. We don’t have to minimise the enormous damage Bush did just because he didn’t tweet misspelled abuse at his political enemies. We don’t have to do any of this – but a lot of Americans seem desperately to want to. This is partly because the US has a deep-seated reverence for its heads of state, as illustrated by the fact they retain the honorific of president after they have left office. Perhaps because Britain is a monarchy with a longer history than the US, we don’t see our head of government as a national mother or father figure in quite the same way.

However, the bigger motivation behind the apparent desire to rehabilitate Bush is probably a desperation among liberals to see Trump as an anomaly who doesn’t reflect the “real” US. But Trump is not an aberration. He didn’t emerge from a vacuum. The lies, jingoism and anti-intellectualism of the Bush era helped pave the way for him – and the steady rehabilitation of Bush is paving the way for Trump to evade accountability in the future.

snip//

[Aristus]

1. I agree.

All this media-fellatio of George W. Bush, who poisoned the political waters of the United States so badly, people could propose Donald Trump as a candidate for the Presidency without being dragged away to a nuthouse and being heavily-medicated for the rest of their lives.

[greenman3610]

2. we can thank the Michael Moores of the world for George Bush

[HarlanPepper]

3. Moore is a real POS

Not to excuse SFB Dubya but there’s Lots of blood on his hands from 2000.

[Blue_true]

12. Yes, you hit on one of the real culprits, without the efforts of

Sarandon, Moore, Nader and others, there most likely would have never been a President George W Bush.

Although Bush and his hench-people played with the fire of rightwing religious extremism, they never counted on an experienced conman like Trump taking that thunder from them and turning it into a lightning bolt against them. Jeb Bush catered totally to religious zealots with the Terri Schiavo case and other policy issues, they abandoned him like a reeking pair of dirty drawers when Trump came a-calling with his racist dogwhistles.

Bushco created a Frankenstein, Trump took that monster and turned it against them. Now people like the Lincoln Project republicans want to have us help them get rid of Trump, and we will gladly do that, but the party they so maliciously built over the last 50 years no longer is theirs, and I argue that it will never again be theirs -there is a conman or conwoman watching how white evangelicals have sold out for Trump, and they see the mistakes Trump is making that they will try not to make. The Lincoln Project republican conservatives have been shoved aside, one other thing that they must do beside go after Trump is reflect deeply on how their own actions ultimately led to him (I honestly have not seen that self reflection evident in any recovered republican, even David Frum, whom I view as the most sincere and regretful among them).

[dajoki]

20. I can't forget and won't forgive...

those never-trumpers. I will accept their help in removing this orange shit-stain but they made this mess and we must make sure that once its gone it never returns.

[DavidDvorkin]

4. We've seen Reagan and Goldwater rehabilitated

So we shouldn't be surprised.

[dajoki]

9. Goldwater and Buckley...

so called "intellectual conservatives" both pos. I blame them for the modern repub party, it started with them and here we are now.

[DavidDvorkin]

10. Yes.

[bullwinkle428]

5. Did anyone else listen to that piece on NPR on Saturday morning? I was

absolutely nauseated. Just screaming at the radio like Sam Kinison!

"Was he sold a bill of goods by the CIA? (re: Iraq invasion)" ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME????

[musette_sf]

6. K&R

[crickets]

7. Truth. K&R

[niyad]

8. KNR for truth.

[Greybnk48]

11. I agree. I will never forgive them for that whole, coarse, crass, murderous,

era, nor the theft of Al Gore's presidency in 2000. All of our soldiers dead because of what? Nothing. Trashing war heroes like Max Cleland and John Kerry for that nitwit. The whole era of Fox News. ugh.

[Yavin4]

13. George W Bush is the Theon Greyjoy of this story.

Or at least he's trying to be.

[pnwmom]

14. I blame Jill Stein more than George Bush. Bush didn't draw votes of progressives

away from Hillary.

[Kaleva]

17. Liberals/progressives who stayed home or voted 3rd party in 2016 did more to pave the way for Trump

[JHB]

18. I blame "Reasonable Republicans" more than Stein...

...because anybody who voted for Stein never even pretended to be "reasonable".

Yet the "reasonable Republicans" eagerly swallowed all the crapola about Hillary, wouldn't budge from it even when their party chose Trump, and decided they could cop out and not vote for that woman by voting for Johnson.

Three times as many people did this as those who poutily went Stein, and that bunch was proud about their unreasonableness.

In terms of sheer numbers of people who were blinded by having their heads up their asses but shouldn't have been, there's no contest.

Which shouldn't be taken as any sort of leniency toward Stein nor the Green Goobers.

[JHB]

15. Stop me if you've heard this one...

A guy swaggers into office on a thin electoral win/popular loss and treats it as if he had an overwhelming mandate to push extremely partisan policies.

A guy and his team who came in with unbridled contempt for their predecessor, thought they new everything, were warned about specific threats, derisively ignored those warnings, cut resources and personnel to those areas, and then got caught flatfooted by the very thing they were warned about.

A guy who normalizes things we used to prosecute as war crimes.

A guy who, after his lies have become obviously, undeniably exposed as untrue, simply engages in Soviet-grade erasure & rewrites of history.

And whose party occasionally burps some objection, but in the end, obediently falls into line. Always. Nobody ever balks and breaks. At least, not while they're in office and actually capable of doing something concrete (and after that, what does it really matter?).

[Kaleva]

16. Compared to Trump, most everyone looks good.

[Hortensis]

19. Absolutely agree Bush paved the way by authoritarian

smashing of laws and power grabs all through his presidency. The progression of Republican lawlessness is no accident either, though a far smoother and more competent villain than Trump was intended.