yay america!!!

Eww!

This is just more proof of the Oprah-fication of America: you can do whatever destructive or unethical thing you want to do as long as it validates your feelings. Bleh.

Well, that's what it suggests. The sad reality is lots of Americans support him.

For his next trick I predict his installing B. Netanyahu as the next P.W. Botha of Palestine.

There are aspects of it that are dictator-like, but I still think that using the wishy-washy cover of "feelings" to explain your actions is pretty Oprah-like.

On at least three different occasions, Bush has “joked” about preferring a dictatorship.  He made a comment about this once as governor of Texas, on another occasion before he was crowned White House resident in January of 2001 following the stolen election, and he made a third reference to a dictatorship surrounded by members of Congress.

Here are his quoted references to a dictatorship:

1. "You don't get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier."  Describing what it's like to be governor of Texas. (Governing Magazine 7/98)

2. "I told all four that there are going to be some times where we don't agree with each other, but that's OK. If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator," Bush joked. http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0012/18/nd.01.html
(12/18/2000 CNN.com)

3. "A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it, " [Bush] said. 7/27/2001 Associated Press

To us and to many politically-astute people, a dictatorship is exactly what Bush desires and is putting into place.

Terrorism is if not an abstract concept a variable one. One man's terrorism is another man's freedom fighting, another man's cry for help. Al Qu'aidi are definitely a terrorist organisation, but afain we are not being asked to fight Al Qu'aida, we are being asked to fight anyone Darth Chimp et al. want us to.

the process by which he could even consider such comments has been going on for a while. as I have said on other threads, the framers of the American consitution were very much against the idea of any sort of figurehead in the US Gov't. The President, as head of the Executive branch, is only supposed to be responsible for excecuting the laws and legislation passed by Congress, the legislative body. The fact the Presidents run for election based on an agenda, and work to push certain legislation once they are elected, is an aberration.
Obviously, this has been going on for a long time, and has been accelerated by media coverage of elections, as well as the (natural?) desire for citizens of a country to have a "leader", so protesting the situation seems odd, but if one (re)reads the constitution and the Federalist Papers, one will see how much the American Republic has mutated, usually more to the benefit of politicians than anyone else.

Looking at the point of view of him as not-all-that-sharp businessman, he sounds more like the type of guy who is complaining he'd love to fire somebody, but oh, those HR policies! It strikes me more as the words of shlub than Sauron.

I was thinking this morning that we might all be wrong and that Bush is no front at all, actually.

So not really like a dictatorship then.

Lots of people support/supported Mugabe, Idi Amim, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, Pol pot, Marcos, Pinochet.......

yes, but they have both emerged from the winking burning one-eyed shrew of a cunt.

There's still some debate over whether he was fairly elected the first time, so I'm somewhat cynical about how fair the next election will be.

(Did we have the "Were the Nazis fascists?" discussion? Hitler was definitely a dictator, yes.)

(Bush is much closer to Pericles than Hitler)

But it raises an interesting point. If you accept that the will of the people is a good way to raise people to positions of power, what happens when the people are wrong? Because if you don't accept that the majority view should steer policy, then surely you're in fact anti-democracy?

2) Plenty of non fascist dictators, Mugabe is just a thug, no ideology beyond anti colonialism, more or less true for many african dictators. Castro, dicator but broadly socialist. Stalin yes fascist nazi dictator.

Need I go on. Dictators dictate policy with generally a rubber stamping legislature, or none at all. (Tony.....)

Also, a democracy requires a well-informed citizenry. This is not the case. At my most cynical, I tend to think that Republicans avoid financing education precisely because they depend on an ill-informed constituency to win their elections.

(in other words, i think the rhetoric thrown around to RESIST the nato intervention in former yugoslavia has inadvertently laid a lot too much of the emotional groundwork for SUPPORT for the war in iraq)

I'd agree with this.

if the republican semi-triumph is declaring the intent to establish an american empire, it is also announcing the destruction of the means to achieve it (or anyway sustain it)

i think the imperium that's actually being established is somewhat trans-national — new world order yadda yadda — which means there are surely scads of patriotic anti-ZOG rural-america militiamen who resist it in their bones....

12 Ft. Lizards to thread!

Republicans tend to avoid financing public education because:

1) Post-Reagan distrust of "Big Gov" and thus the (often well thought out) assertion that public education does not make adequate use of the resources given it.

2) PE's secularism.

3) A belief in the right of individuals to choose their own associations, including educational associations (private schools, charter schools), and the right of those who are successful to use their resources in the best way they see fit. This last part based on the not-entirely-unreasonable assumption that if you are successful, you must know what you're doing and will continue to be successful.

About the education issue -- strikes me as something part of a larger issue (public vs. home schooling, who determines agendas, etc.), like ch just said. I'm leery of this cause/effect as something planned for political goals, unless you're saying that the Republicans started this back in the 1950s to ensure that all the current electorate would be in their pocket. ;-)

I am definitely tempted to say that bush is something new and evil, on best evidence at present I'm going to say christian (pur. prod.) fundamentalist.

i was just thinking that one could easily blame the democrats for making the public education system all about emotions, self-esteem, pop-sych. blah, just to prepare the us for bill clinton. ;-)

I don't think this is true at all, but have no sources to back me up.

just becuase the constitution was written by a bunch of christians deosn't mean that what they wrote is automatically invalid.
but you are right that all religions are not accepted. especially if religious practice compels the practicioners to break other laws of the US.
i guess I am talking about what america is supposed to be ideally, not how it actually exists now.

It's probably important to view things within the context they were framed, especially since 200+ years later we can look at the exact same words they wrote and draw very different conclusions from what their intentions were (for example, the slavery issue isn't addressed at all in the Constitution or Bill of Rights, largely because the slaves weren't considered men, and that isn't even including the gender issue).

cd - you are right, and I apologize for the blunder.

it's hard work keeping you ignorant plebs up to date.

Sam: I think the bulk of the left's resentment over this administration stems from the fact that it doesn't represent a majority view, or even a plurality of votes; (a) Gore won the popular vote etc, as everyone's always reminding, and leaving aside the count issue we got Bush because (b) we don't live in a proper "democracy" like the one you describe, but rather a republic with a sort of wonky representative democracy etc.

If Bush reflects popular sentiments now it's largely through the historical accident of a massive terrorist attack that would have rallied a similar level of support around whatever Gore had to say. I don't mean to slight the possibility that there are people who honestly admire and approve of his policies on this front, but the percentage of them who would not approve of whatever actions Gore took in his place has got to be rather small.

In fact, if not for the attack and the public's solemn desire to rally around someone for protection, the Bush administration would surely look a debacle: the economy falters and people aren't impressed by his response; corporate scandals erupt into the news and people are not just unimpressed by his response but strongly associate him with that sort of behavior; he collects a high-profile cabinet whom even the average person seems slightly offput by.

Again, I don't want to slight the fact that he seems to be handling the terrorism front in exactly the unthinking barrel-through fashion that most people probably want him to, and I don't want to slight the fact that this issue may be of such importance to them that it trumps all his other policies. But I think certain sorts of support along these lines are being read as support for completely unrelated doctrines and policies that no majority or plurality of voters have ever provided a clear mandate for.

I actually doubt this very much. My thought would be that the Republicans in Congress and beyond would have leapt on Gore saying, "This is the result of nearly ten years of Democratic foreign policy idiocy!" or something like that, and used it as a stick to beat Gore with constantly. Part of me almost thinks that things would have turned out far worse because of how the GOP could play up patriotism and a bloody flag to their ends in both these midterm elections and beyond, and heaven knows what type of candidate would be offered up for the presidency in 2004. However, there's no way of knowing exactly what would have happened, to be sure.

Since everyone here seems to agree that dictators are very very bad, and since presumably everyone here would agree that Saddam Hussein is a dictator, does it not that follow that deposing Saddam Hussein is a good thing to do?

Wha-Huh? I mean, I'm hardly a fan of Bush's policies, and I feel very uncomfortable having him as president... but calling him a christian fundamentalist makes no sense to me. Explain. Actually, never mind.. this kinda detracts from the original subject heading which was:

Bush said he was "optimistic" that the United States would get broad support on the resolution, adding that he would not be dissuaded by hostile international opinion from taking action against Saddam. "I don't spend a lot of time taking polls around the world to tell me what I think is the right way to act," he said. "I just got to know how I feel."

Gabriel, could you quote the source you got this from? Or did you write this yourself? If so, where do you here the quotes from?

Considering the Bush admin's propensity for lying outright about many aspects of their policies, not to mention dressing the legislation they pass up with neat acronyms and plaitude-filled names, I don't think it's that far-off to think that the idea of keeping the populace in as dark of an environment as possible is seen as an 'added bonus' to the tenets of GOP philosophy that you so nicely outlined upthread.

(I'm not even going to get into the flyers that were left around black neighborhoods of Baltimore earlier this week, reminding people to vote on "November 6" -- you know, Wednesday -- and to pay off all their back rent and parking fines before they went to the polls.)

WTF? That sounds absolutely hideous, Maura. That makes me nauseous. But, uh, are you saying this was the work of legit GOP politicians in Maryland? If so, that's a bold statement.

Then there are those of us who think that if Bush hadn't gotten elected, the attack may not have actually happened, because the rest of the world wouldn't have been quite so worried. (nb. I'm not necessarily saying that's how I feel, but sometimes I wonder.)

I did not say that it was the work of GOP officeholders. But it has been reported that the likelihood that members of that party were behind the flyer distribution is high.

All weird stories/connections between Bush, Bin Laden, CIA, etc. aside, this attack has been planned for several years. Clinton wasn't exactly treated any less evil by the Islamic fundamentalists in question. Now, whether the decision to actually execute the attack based on who became president in 2000, we'll never know -- but to pretend that Bush is the sole reason we all got into this mess a little naive.

oh and a thousand points of light to you all ;-)

No doubt, that's an awful fucking flyer, and still makes me want to wretch. But I noticed this little addendum to the article you linked....

[Update, Nov. 5: In National Review Online, Joel Mowbray makes the case that the flyers were a Democratic plant meant to inflame African-Americans against the GOP. Thus enraged, they would then descend in droves on Baltimore's polling places. The trouble with this theory, apart from its violation of the principle of Occam's Razor, is that the Democratic plotter would have to be clever enough to concoct this devious flyer, yet stupid enough to think that word of the GOP's treachery could be disseminated fast enough to affect turnout. To be successful, a con like this would have needed to be carried out weeks before Election Day in order to make sure that the maximum number of people heard about the counterfeit dirty trick.]

My own personal take is this was done by an racist idiot that probably didn't have any legit political affiliation... whether it was an unironic Republican racist, or an ironic Democratic racist, seems equally likely.

We'll probably never know who really did this, but whoever did should be either slid across a conveyer belt of thumbtacks, given a bath in a gallon of monkey snot, or be chained to a TV set and be forced to watch 15 episodes of "Scarecrow and Mrs. King".

Hey, how about a commie pinko Canadian cartoon here? What fun!
http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_09.19.02/news/photos/weltschmerz.jpg

To us and to many politically-astute people, a dictatorship is exactly what Bush desires and is putting into place.

was pasted from the Cafe Progressive website, and was not my phrase.

Unrelated point: it strikes me that the reactions to 'Midterm' have mirrored (ie reversed) the reactions to 9/11 on this board. There was much criticism of those who, right after 9/11, sought to 'explain' what had happened rather than utter screams of outrage and make pledges of allegiance. Now, the 9/11 'explainers' (who were, in the 'either with us or against us' atmosphere of the time, portrayed as 'apologists' for Bin Laden) are mad at the 'explainers' of the right's triumph at Midterm, seeing them as apologists for Bush.

Of course, in both cases what people are really saying is 'Of course there is a rationale for this catastrophe, but now is not the time I want to hear it.'

(still, "genetically astute politicians" wz kinda funny eh?)

(no?)

Wether or not he himself is a fundamentalist nut is open to question but but he is definitely more that way inclined than any other leader I can think of. (Tony's more of an Evangelical Anglican/possible secret catholic)

It won't be so bad if I get buried with a toasting fork and a packet of crumpets.