I've figured out the hostility to the President, and its not "Obama Derangement Syndrome"...

[Bradical79]

133. Honestly, I come across more hostile on here than I am

in real life. On here I get very hostile and angry at some of the astoundingly stupid arguments his most loyal supporters will make rather than address any issue honestly. It's just a constant stream of lies, misdirection, and character assassination from a probably small group of loyalists that makes my blood boil. I try to address things cooly and rationally, but sometimes my anger at such blatant dishonesty does get the better of me. And I can think of a couple times where I've been more harsh with someone than they probably deserved where they were clearly simply so frightened of the worst case scenario (complete Republican takeover), or reacting to some nice personal emotional experience with the man that they weren't really making much of a real rational argument in the first place.

Though some things are certainly disappointing about President Obama (and even make me legitimately angry), I had no illusions of him being a tough progressive that would push us hard in a non-authoritarian leftist direction. Everything I read about him prior painted him as a pragmatic moderate which means some bad compromises when you have an increasingly radicalized right wing.

As for Bush projection, I think that's somewhat valid, though it's more like hindsight being 20/20. And I want to be clear that it's not just a George Bush problem, but rather experiencing Bush's presidency opened some eyes to things that have been occurring since Reagan and before. While the scale of blatant corruption and incompetence with Bush was exceptional, the acts themselves were not.