"Bush is an idiot": C/D

But the fact is that stupid actions can have beneficial results, and there's a well-known syndrome whereby vile reactionary presidents took the world towards peace (Nixon in China, Reagan in Reykjavik with Gorbachev...) whereas liberals (JFK, Cuba) take us to the brink of nuclear war.

I personally welcome Bush's stewardship because I want to see a more pluralistic world with a genuine spectrum of views expressed in public, and that means US legitimacy as a world authority must be whittled away. Who better than Bush (with his fuck-you attitude to international institutions, his implication in business sleaze, and his obvious wish to use the US military to scorch the earth in oil-rich countries and let American companies to move in with pipelines and puppet politicians) to do that job?

(By the way, doesn't anybody else think it's sort of telling that even the Republicans don't seem to value Bush very highly? On the 9/11 anniversary Cheney was doing his usual high security thing of being smuggled from one secret location to another. Bush meanwhile was high profile in New York, where terrorist attacks were keenly awaited.)

I've never called him 'problematic' either. That's like saying Bristol Rovers probably won't win the Premiership this year.

I think that he may represent some kind of new American fascism (a noun I don't toss about lightly, as the ILX archive would demonstrate).

The questions are: how bad can things get? and: is there any hope?

There is hope. Sadly, it's Al Gore.

is there any hope for what? the reason you think he'll be re-elected is "things like that usually happen over there" => i think there are any number of things going on, in the global economy, in class relations in the US, and in the US relatinship to the world at large, which cd throw a wrench in among even his ordinary campaigning plans, let alone the extreme ones you seem to be suggesting are on the move

Whatever you call that, I think things are very bad. I have not had this sense of a world in crisis for a very long time. And I don't share your optimism about where it's going.

"Square Dance"

[Intro:]
People!! It feels so good to be back.
Ladies and gentleman, introducing the new and improved you know who

[Verse 1:]
Never been the type to bend or budge
The wrong button to push,
No friend of Bush
I'm the centerpiece, your the Maltese.
I am a pittbull off his leash,
All this peace talk can cease.
All these people I had to leave in limbo,
I'm back now,
I've come to release this info
I'll be brief and let me just keep shit simple.
Can-a-bitch don't want no beef with Slim?
Noooo!
Not even on my radar,
So won't you please jump off my dick
Lay off and stay off,
And follow me as I put these crayons to chaos from seance to seance,
Aw-a-aw-ch-a-aw

[Chorus X2:]
Y'all C'mon now,
Let's all get on down,
Let's do-si-do now,
We gon' have a good ol' time.
Don't be scared, cus there ain't nuttin' to worry 'bout,
Let your hair down,
And square dance with me!

[Verse 2:]
Let your hair down to the track,
Yeah kick on back.
Boo!
The boogies monster of rap,
Yeah the man's back
With a plan to ambush this Bush administration,
Mush the Senate's face in and push this generation,
Of kids to stand and fight for the right to say something you might not like,
This white hot light,
That i'm under,
No wonder,
I look so sunburnt,
Oh no,
I won't leave no stone unturned,
Oh no i won't leave,
Wont go nowhere,
Do-si-do,
Oh, yo, ho, hello there
Oh yeah don't think I won't go there,
Go to the Beirut and do a show there
Yah you laugh till your muthafuckin' ass gets drafted,
While you're at band camp thinkin' the crap can't happen,
Till you fuck around,
Get an anthrax napkin,
Inside a package wrapped in saran Wrap wrapping,
Open the plastic and then you stand back gasping,
Fuckin' assassins hijackin' Amtracks crashin,
All this terror America demands action,
Next thing you know you've got Uncle Sam's ass askin'
To join the army or what you'll do for there Navy.
You just a baby,
Gettin' recruited at eighteen,
You're on a plane now,
Eatin their food and their baked beans.
I'm 28 ,
They gon take you 'fore they take me
Crazy insane or insane crazy?
When i say Hussien you say Shady,
My views aint changed still Inhumane,
Wait,
Arraigned two days late,
The date's today,
Hang me!

[Chorus X2:]

[Verse 3:]
Nothin' moves me more than a groove the soothes me,
Nothin'soothes me more than a groove
that boosts me,
Nothin' boosts me more,
Or suits me beautifully,
There's nothin' you can do to me,
Stab me,
Shoot me,
Psychotic,
Hypnotic, product I got the antibiotic.
Ain't nobody hotter and so on and yada yada
God i talk alot of hem-de-lay-la-la-la,
oochie walla um da dah da dah da but you gotta gotta,
Keep movin',
There's more music to make,
Keep makin' new shit,
Produce hits to break
the monotony,
What's gotten into me?
Drug's, rock and Hennessey,
Thug like I'm 'Pac on my enemies,
On your knees,
Got you under seige,
Somebody you would give a lung to be
hun-ga-ry,
Like a fuckin' younger me,
Fuck the fee,
I can get you jumped for free,
Yah buddy,
Laugh it's funny,
I have the money to have you killed by somebody who has nothing,
I'm past bluffing,
Pass the K-Y,
Let's get ready for some intense,
serious ass fucking!

[Chorus X2]

[Outro:]
Dr. Dre., wants to square with me,
Nasty Nas, wants to square dance with me,
X to the Z, wants to square dance with me,
Busta Rhymes, wants to square dance with me,
Cana-bitch won't square dance with me,
Fan-a-bitch, won't square dance with me,
Canada-bis, don't want no parts of me,
Dirty Dozen wants to square dance with you-----YEE-HAW!!!

Would it be more accurate to call Bush a inarticulate, obnoxious, irresponsible, meanspirited, small-minded zealot?

"Problematic" is far too vague.

Texans are not Southern according to some Southerners. Besides Bush is not even a real Texan, but a Yankee blueblood with an affected drawl. I doubt if he has a true accent as such, with his speech more dictated by this pseudo-apraxia of his.

The only way that Bush's presidency could do any good is that if there's a kneejerk reaction to the complacency that allowed him to seize office in the first place, disallowing a repeat of such a travesty for a few decades at least. It's not much of a hope.

I dunno about that -- I actually have a very quixotic hope, perhaps, but it is there.

I don't like the delight he took in stealing the election. I utterly despise his attitude to irreligious people, as am atheist and resent this man saying that makes me un-American (not according to the Constitution, it doesn't). I don't like his attitude to intellectuals/academics etc - it's a divide-and-rule tactic that gets dumb 'middle Americans' on side. I don't like his off-the-shelf MBA. I don't like his squinty little chimp eyes. I don't like the idea that if I or anyone else actually contradicted him in public, he'd make life difficult. I don't like his oil war. I don't like him going all frosty to the Germans, who had a point in their criticisms. I don't like his while privileged frat-boy schtick.

But I don't think he's an idiot - that's what he thinks the rest of us are.

BTW that Gore speech was not 'irrelevant', no matter how much he'd like it to be.

Shrubya, on the other hand, may or may not be dumb -- but one thing is for sure, he is ignorant. And, as Frank Zappa once said, "stupidity has a certain charm -- ignorance does not." Further, Shrubya's handlers and flunkies -- namely, Karl Rove -- have a certain malevolent, Machiavellian intelligence. Though we'll see just how much of a "genius" this lot is this November. That is, if the Democrats take both houses of the Congress, they'll be Wily Coyote sorts of "geniuses." Just like Newt Gingrich, and look at how he ended up (which means we should take heart -- these assholes will get theirs).

i'm VERY wary of bush's homespunsugar folkiness - the foreign policy document that came out last week was written in language that, bush said, 'the boys from lubbock' could understand. (never mind that this 'simple' language allows for more shaded interpretations, since it usually deals in platitudes and empty rhetoric.) this constant drive for frontier-style authenticity by both him and his brother is, i think, driven by elitism of the worst kind -- 'real americans,' the red-blooded, drawling, can't understand lots of syllables types, can be easily led as long as you play their game.

(not to mention that the back-slapping, glad-handing way that he got to where he is -- and the way that other members of his family are totally willing to break the rules they campaign for so vociferiously (exhibit a: the 911 tape from the other patients at noelle bush's rehab clinic) -- is absolutely repugnant and totally antithetical to any ideals that the so-oft-invoked 'american people' might hold, since most of them don't have the silver spoons in their mouths from the day they pop out of their mothers.)

For Smirk Boy, it would be either "Who cares what you think?" or "Now, watch this drive."

Who says us Yanks are incapable of irony?

anyway he has capable ppl too. so i think the question of whether he is dumb or not is irrelevant.

''i think there are any number of things going on, in the global economy, in class relations in the US, and in the US relatinship to the world at large, which cd throw a wrench in among even his ordinary campaigning plans, let alone the extreme ones you seem to be suggesting are on the move''

well that's with any US president at any time. but for now, if Iraq doesn't get messy and the economy hangs on then there's a good chance that he will be there for a second term.

Then there are the lower federal court appointments, but that's another long (and frightful) story -- and Shrubya's been working overtime to stack those courts with Scalia-clones and assorted right-wing judicial riff-raff.

EITHER these are different, difficult, worrying, crisis-ridden times
OR the usual rules apply hence his future is assured

you can't argue that bush is about to shut down democracy based on the premise that democracy already got shut down long ago so who's to stop him

*if* the war is to be a distraction from conditions at home, then it has to be swift and deliver something concrete: a vague and open-ended campaign against each and every culture which dissents from the US view, as such dissent arises, *plus* a policing mission in territories where there's oil is exactly NOT going to be swift, and will require manpower and resources. So would policing dissent at home. The idea that the US is somehow a less divided, more intrinsically somnolent nation than it was in the 60s is just daft. "If the economy hangs on": yes exactly. How many more Enrons is one too many, Julio?

pinefox is OTM abt what venga? His argument is just vague handwaving defeatist gloom, with a dab of meaningless scaremongering (ie i said "what d'you mean by fascist" and he couldn't answer). If you think Bush has discovered the secret formula for the erasure of politics everywhere, then you have to say how.

I just want to say, regarding the original question, that my opinion is dud. If liberalism wants to sruvive, it has to avoid ad hominem attacks and make plausible cases defending policies that are oppsed to Bush, et al. I think that saying he is dumb is an easy way of dismissing the reality that Bush IS in office and he DOES have the power to really mess things up. This is my perspective being on a very vapidly liberal college campus, so I am not accusing anyone here in this thread of making empty remarks.

If you want to see the face of American fascism, look to Attorney General John Ashcroft. Or either Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell. Jesus wears jackboots.

Besides, it is really "mud-slinging" and "ad hominems" if what is being said against these assholes is the truth?

No, he didn't. See Gore v. Bush. Or e-mail Alan Dershowitz and any Constitutional Law professor you like re this.

All the hidden votes in Florida couldn't have won the state for Gore.

Maybe if those "hidden votes" had been counted, instead of having Scalia et. al. stop the count dead in its tracks, then you'd have a point.

Still, a little smash-mouth politics from liberals and the left would be nice. And sorely needed.

Actually, I think the momentum that I kept citing in these discussions is already fading fast - the gung-ho righteous feeling has been hit by Iraq saying "those things you want - okay, we agree". Even if it's just stalling, the spirit for attacking is damaged, the anti-war people are strengthened, the adrenalin fades. Without this horrible feelgood factor, the cracks look a hell of a lot more fatal.

No, he didn't. See Gore v. Bush. Or e-mail Alan Dershowitz and any Constitutional Law professor you like re this.

All the hidden votes in Florida couldn't have won the state for Gore.

Maybe if those "hidden votes" had been counted, instead of having Scalia et. al. stop the count dead in its tracks, then you'd have a point.

-------

Tad, with all due respect, I've just reread Gore v. Bush and understand 7 justices + Rehnquist to say that Florida was unable to formulate guidelines for a manual recount that satisfied the Equal Protection Clause by the December 12 deadline set forth by the statute (3 U.S.C. sec. 5).

Unfortunately, the supreme law of the land is made by those guys and not Dershowitz or other con law profs, so I'd have to agree with bnw here.

Unlike R. Reagan (John Wayne-ish '40s movie hero), George Bush Sr. (intense former CIA director) or Bill Clinton (Elvis-like larger-than-life vulgar/acceptable irreducible presence in American life), George Jr. presents himself as a suburban dad type: just a good guy who does his job and doesn't cause trouble. (There's also a bit of suburban sleaze in him, the too-nice-to-be-sincere quality of the salesman, but not TOO much.) So it's very easy to catch yourself feeling sorry for him, because almost all his critics take this sneering, uppity tone: he's from Texas, he's a spoiled rich coke-snorter, he's never done a lick of work in his life, he never reads books, and he talks funny! All this may be true, but constantly reiterating it turns it into a kind of mantra, phony self-assurance: "At least I'm smarter than that guy."

Is Bush really as stupid as he looks? Maybe, but it's irrelevant, because what you see is what you get. None of us will ever meet him (probably), and so we go by the distorted media-picture we get, created both by Bush's speechwriters and CNN/Fox/MSNBC and further filtered through everyone we know who insists "Bush is an idiot" and thus reduces him to a guy you don't have to take seriously. Because "Bush is an idiot" translates easily into "Bush is not a serious person," it's one step from there to "Politics is not serious." And once you've accepted that, "I don't have to care" follows very quickly.

Bush detractors seem to oscillate between two completely opposite poles: the idealistic attitude that says things would be better if Gore were president, and the pessimistic one that says presidents never do anything and besides nothing matters because the world's going to be uninhabitable in 20 years anyway. The first may be accurate or foolish; the second may be realistic or simply nihilistic, but you can't believe in BOTH of them. If you do, your politics are as confused as Bush's syntax.

but the near-incontrovertible truth of the statement itself aside, i think its pervasiveness also highlights (in a way that 'the boys from lubbock' can understand) the degree to which the american presidency is seen as a praetorian guard.

in other words, here's this guy who isn't too bright, ostensibly leading the free world. nobody can really believe this, so maybe that's a positive effect (classic). but dud in terms of actually informed debate as to 'his' policies, i guess, sure.

Felicity- It's true that Judicial Review is an important tool for the Supreme Court to uphold the Constitution, however there have been cases (such as the Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson and including Bush v.Gore) have revealed the short-sightedness of the Supreme Court.

Talk about a joke that tells itself...

Talk about a joke that tells itself...

I know that the Justrice Department's investigation is a farce but fact that the Justice Department can't ignore these allegations shows that there's a strong the possibility of civil rights violations.

Mark S is giving a masterclass in impolite and abrasive polemic these days, and not just against me. Perhaps he is trying to show the US left how to argue. But I am slightly reminded of Chris Evans in his later days at R1.

Polyanna vision of US / world future in which bad guys lose and everything's tremendously exciting: great, if it happens, which I don't think it will.

Tad: OTM: I agree with almost everything he's said.

thats what i wanted to see rather than a knock on other ppl arg (there might be signs the economy will go bad, but it has gone well for so long really that I still expect it to go wrong but as i said on the will bush be re-elected thread I do expect him to go if there is a deep recession).

I do hope he isn't re-elected BTW.

but what pinefox calls the "sense of a world in crisis" is, among other things, the growth of deep and widespread unease (across the board) with the post cold war settlement: hey, it *doesn't* stabilise itself after all, as expected/hoped, it requires constant intervention

the right as a whole is no more coherent than the left as a whole (or the centre as a hole haha) on how such intervention shd be organised => the alliance of constuencies that elected bush is crackling with internal conflicts on exactly these topics

Tom's point that it required a third-party candidate to destabilise the ordinary Bush-Clinton face-off is well-taken, and it helped that he was Mr Bizarro. The LA Riots were key also: America face to face with its own despair.

it's true that i tend to see stasis as latent crisis rather than vice versa: i also prefer to work out what's actually going on, rather than project my worst fear onto a situation and respond to emergent signs of that => genuine fascism in power in the US would be pluperfectly horrible; big business, military-industrial proliferation and rightwing populism are constant features on the landscape, and not at all specific to the present conditions

(heh, why am *i* the one who gets called pollyanna when julio is the one who sees the economy in such rosy terms?)

I do not know exactly what Bush and his people would stoop to in order to keep in power. As self-righteous and unconcerned with constitutional procedure as they are, anything is in bounds. They remember Nixon, and they will not allow another Watergate. However, i'll go along with Mark S in that they are idealogues, not pragmatists, and may forget what they are actually capable of in their zealotry, overreaching their grasp.

>>> "i also prefer to work out what's actually going on"

- to which only response is

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA what's **happenin'** people?!!!???? use your HEAD to learn the KNOWLEDGE about the way things are going down! *work* it **out** - what is going ON in this crazy world in which we're living in TODAY!??

And Ned, of course Mondale won Minnesota, mighty purveyor of Democrat VPs to the nation. Minnesotans hold their GOP events in a telephone booth in the shadow of the IDS tower, much the same arrangement Scotland has with its Tories.

and is it near n. airport?

Part of the airport is named after Hubert Humphrey. Says a lot about Minnesota that it's known for coming second in any sports championship its teams ever play in and there's a Veep factory out there on the prairie somewhere.

It's more like "OK, I THINK i have an idea what the country thinks of Bush and his chances of reelection.. uh, wait, maybe I don't. AW FUCK. I'll just prepare a noose on Election day just in case the fucker wins."

-- the pinefox (pinefo...), September 24th, 2002.

The fact that he's destroying the world and is a smug wanker: Dud.

http://www.4bitterguys.com/phpBB2/meddle.jpg

http://www.4bitterguys.com/adam/meddle.jpg

On the other hand, second-term presidents always get more shit -- from the media, the general public, etc. -- than in their first term. Consider LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton... So I think that the one thing to look forward to is a much more aggressive playing field. Not that that's much consolation.

Bush: That’s more like it. Excellent question, Ms. Kentwell! Why, I can’t tell you how nice it is to initiate a dialogue with an intellect of the same caliber as my own. Conversing with those who, like me, ‘live the life of the mind,’ is always cause for ebullience.

But enough shilly-shally. Let me address your query directly.
I must confess that, until recently, I was vexed by this very point; namely, does Saddam have, in his possession, weapons of mass destruction? As our treatment of North Korea illustrates, the United States’ policy towards a rogue nation is contingent upon the answer to this most vital of questions.
But in the last few weeks, I have come to realize my folly in analyzing the issue of WMD-ownership in strict accordance with Newtonian-physics. Once I jettisoned my preconceived notions of reality, the matter became–

Marlin: I’m sorry, did you say ‘Newtonian physics?’

Bush: Precisely. If you view Iraq in a classical Newtonian framework, then you must concede that they either do or do not have weapons of mass destruction. It is this narrow mindset that causes such confusion in the uninformed. But, over President’s Day weekend at Camp David, I delved into the collected writings of Erwin Schrödinger, and now have no recourse but to conclude that Saddam both has and does not have weapons of mass destruction.

Weinberg: How’s that again?

Bush: Hah hah! Yes, I’ll freely admit that the concept is a bit difficult to grasp, unless you’re something of a physics hobbyist, as I have become since the operation. But if you examine the facts on a subatomic level, the proposition that Iraq both has and does not have these weapons is really inescapable. Here, allow me to give you an overview of quantum mechanics in general, and the principles of Schrödinger’s hypothesis in specific…
[The presentation that follows is largely incomprehensible.]

Bush: And so as you can see, until such time that the inner workings of Iraq are observed by the outside world, its WMD program exists in both a state of being and of not being – or, to put it simply, in a state of ‘superposition.’

James Groff, LA Observer: But why don’t you want to allow inspections to continue?

Bush: Here we come to the very crux of the matter. As I have just elucidated, so long as Iraq is kept in this state of superposition it only half-has weapons of mass destruction. But the mere act of observing Iraq may force it to enter one state or the other; analogous, in the demonstration I just gave, to the opening of the box and immediately rendering the cat either dead or alive. By continuing inspections, we run the risk of giving Iraq the WMDs it so desperately wants. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather deal with a Saddam that only half-has WMDs rather than a Saddam who, you know, like totally has them.

(from themorningnews.com)

And invokes dictionary definition in support of her claim!