Bush Derangement Syndrome.
The right-wing implies that this is some kind of illness and that people who suffer from it are just crazy. I don't think they really understand.
From the moment I first became aware of him, I decided I really, really didn't like George H.W. Bush. This was in about 1990 or so. The economy had been chugging along and I had my first job ever. Then suddenly we were going to war with Iraq.
I couldn't figure out why. There hadn't been a major military action in my life that I had been really aware of, and I found that I really didn't like the idea. We hadn't been attacked by Iraq.
Late Reagan, and Poppy Bush
About two years before I had been attending my first year of college and I was living in the dorm. I spent most of the late 1980's completely cut off from the television set. I sometimes catch glimpses of what the TV was turning into at that time and I've realized that I completely missed the abolishment of the Fairness Doctrine and the beginning of the devolvement of TV into cheap, trailer-trash entertainment. I had watched news when political opinions were presented fairly from both parties, and then there's this gap across my synapses and suddenly when I got a TV again in 1991 or so, there were people screaming at each other like silly children. I figured at the time that it had always been that way and I had just not known it, but things make more sense now.
Anyway, I remember in that first year of college (Reagan's last dumbfounded year as President), that a rumor had suddenly swirled like wildfire through the dorms that Iraq had declared war on us. I was mortified that we would all be called up in the draft (I had signed my Selective Service card over the summer).
I never did figure out what that was about, but it seemed odd that an echo of that came through about two and a half years later as Saddam invaded Kuwait. And I realized that, though I was in no danger of being "called up," I found the whole thing reprehensible anyway. Kuwait was thousands of miles away. Other countries, I was discovering, were being beat down, occupied, populations were being terrorized and denied their civil rights . . . what was so special about Kuwait? Could it have been . . . the OIL?
It was impossible to escape that conclusion. Liberals like myself were ridiculed for making it then, as now, but it's inescapably the truth. We aren't invading North Korea because there is NOTHING there for us to steal from them. I've recently read a description of war as organized theft on a massive scale, and that's about the size of it. There is really no other reason for it, anywhere in history. Hitler was a thief. Saddam was a thief. Vietnam was . . . stupid. There wasn't anything there to steal except an idea.
Political Awakening
And the more I watched GWHB on the TV the more irritating he got. I started to pay attention to what he was saying, and my former apathy to politics evaporated quickly. Especially after I listened to Dan Quayle make a jackass of himself . . . every time he opened his mouth. I was incensed. Who put this jackass in charge of anything? The guy wasn't qualified to zip up his own pants. And Bush Senior was nothing but a teleoperated robot of big corporations.
When the economy took a shit later that year I lost it. And my job.
This moron (Bush) had focused all his effort and thought on fighting a war with a country we had nothing to do with in order to make sure that oil could keep flowing, despite the fact that we badly needed a reason to get ourselves off of that oil and onto a more technologically viable alternative. The arguments against it were no more credible in 1990 than they are today. Alternative energy offers a major advantage to the United States in a global economy, and is unmistakably the way forward to the future. So why were we artificially propping up the oil-based economy?
And when I listened to him talk, he seemed completely clueless about the problems I was facing as an American. He didn't give a wet fuck about me. Dan Quayle was over in the corner babbling senselessly about "family values" and I had no interest in my government poking around my family or telling me what to value. It was a total sham and I despised both of them. Bush for his arrogance, Quayle for his total unfitness to be anywhere near a public office of any kind.
Dawning Realization
Of course, the S&L scandal was happening about the same time. I was living in Denver, and Neil Bush was floating around like a turd that desperately stank and needed to be flushed. The idea that he had basically looted my tax dollars and gotten away with not even a slap on the wrist offended me to the core of my being. I heard a comedian once talking about how he'd run into Neil in an elevator in town (whether it was true or not was immaterial) and asking him if he didn't owe him some money. I'd have grabbed him and held him upside down and shaken every dime out of him, myself.
Ejectifying Gratification
I voted for President for the first time in 1992 and I gleefully punched the button to send Bush back to whatever blueblood freezer he'd shambled out of. Not ever having had a Democrat as President, except for dim memories of Carter, I had no idea what to expect.
I could talk for awhile about the dizzying roller-coaster ride of emotion that was Clintonia, but suffice to say when 1999 rolled around I was a little disappointed. Clinton's centerism and triangulation had worn thin, and as much as I had enjoyed watching the Republican Party exhaust itself trying to eject Clinton from the public's favor, I myself was a little tired of the guy. But I was also wary of what was going to come next.
Clintonista Fatigue
In a fit of pique I voted Nader in 2000. Hold your flames back, people, because my state (no longer Colorado) went Red and I knew it was going Red by a lot more than the Nader vote. The idea was to get a party going that could effectively represent the progressive ideals I had seen betrayed time and time again by Clinton. You see why I don't really want to spend too much time on this because it's a lot of searingly bitter stuff. NAFTA. The DMCA. You know. I wanted to force Democrats to be more progressive. To compete for my vote. And frankly that's my right and it always has been.
Anyway, I watched as Bush the Lesser seemed to stumble through several layers of uncritical press coverage to the Republican nomination . . . and then things got weird. I watched as the massive criticism for being a stumbling drunk, a deserter from his Guard post, a company-wrecker, and all-around fuckoff were just basically breezed past in the press. Any illusion that the press were "biased" to liberalism went out the window. I couldn't believe that people didn't see it. Or how fake his Texas accent was. Or what a goddamn shit-for-brains Bush was.
And I said as we went down the stretch how I thought a Bush presidency would be a disaster. How someone whose sole business experience aside from running a baseball team was bankrupting a company was not really fit to run an economy.
Gapemouthed Astonishment
And then he won the election. I really didn't care much at the time. I figured I had survived Reagan and Bush II was just a dumber Reagan. I'd forgotten, you see, how much I hated Bush Senior. I wanted liberals to represent liberals in government, and I felt maybe it was good to spend a cycle in the wilderness and force them to remember to stand up for their core constituency. Really if you people listen to the ebb and flow of anger on this site you can tap into why people voted Nader in 2000. I felt very much the same way back then. It's like Bob Shrum is consulting for every one of our Democratic congresspeople.
The first nine months of Bush the Lesser drifted by aimlessly. Nobody took the Cartoon President seriously. The election had been a stupid joke and with his entire legitimacy in doubt he had no mandate. The last thing I remember, he was slashing federal funding for stem cell research, after thinkin' real hard 'bout it. I hated him for being such a stupid jerk, but I figured the country would . . . WHOA! Look at those towers going down!
Smackheaded Seriosity
At first I was dumbfounded as anyone. It seemed like Bush had a chance to be serious about something for a change. But my honeymoon with Serious Bush lasted less than a month. I started getting a little queasy when I remember us bombing Afghanistan and killing the ten-year-old son of the Taliban cleric . . . I can't even remember the guy's name now. But I had a five-year-old son at the time. The idea that someone close to his age could pay a price for being the son of the wrong guy put me seriously off.
Then Bush the Lesser became Bush the Liar. And he started telling just stupid shit about Iraq. I didn't ever believe it, but around the office people took him seriously. I remember being shown a computer drawing of a mobile weapons lab . . . not a photo, but a drawing done by our own people of a lab that might exist. I remember seeing a headline, I think on Plastic, asking "Now they're just going to make shit up??? It seemed incredible.
Stormtroopering Fascista
Then people started saying that not agreeing with Bush or the War was treason. And finally the vein in my forehead popped and splattered blood all over the front windshield of my car when I was driving down the expressway and a gigantic billboard had been erected with His Stupid Moon Face on it commanding me to Support President Bush and the Troops. I absolutely lost it.
The forcefulness of the propaganda was so arrogant and so thoroughly at cross-purposes with everything I had ever believed as an American that I literally saw spots as I growled FUCK YOU in response. I remember glancing over to the car beside me, and the driver had seen my outraged denial and was a bit shocked by it. I was beside myself that the cheap-ass publicity whores of Bush's propaganda team had so shamelessly linked Bush, his fucking fake war, and the troops all together, and to top it all of shoved the American flag into it -- a symbol that does not belong to any President or political party.
Since then I have been unable to tolerate the sound of Bush's voice. I literally give him about a syllable on the radio before I switch it off. I've almost jerked the knob right out of the console doing so. The only time I have been able to listen to him was under great duress during the 2004 campaign debate with Kerry -- I think it was the second one, where Bush made an incredible fool of himself with his aimless, clueless answers on every topic. And one other time -- about two weeks ago when he threw his infantile shit-fit over the Democrats blocking his agenda. I was able to listen to that one for quite some time. I think I watched it on video once and heard it again on NPR. Both times I seriously enjoyed hearing and seeing how the jackassed smirk had been slapped off of his arrogant face.
Whinerous Seniorosity
Then the other day Bush Senior got into another blubbery crying fit about the legacy of his son and how MEAN people were being. I saw a couple of blurbs about it and it just got me feeling very mean indeed. Bush Senior was a mediocre failure as a President, a loser in every way imaginable. His cluelessness, lack of leadership, inability to stick to any platform, and his arrogance the night before the 1992 election in predicting that the pollsters would be out of work the night before told me he was severely unfit to be anywhere near public office. He'd only gotten in on the coattails of Reagan, and that only because of pure dumb stupid luck. But even reading about Bush Senior talking about how unfair people were being to his son got me foot-stampingly angry. Who the FUCK is he to complain? He's got money and power and influence and he thinks he's entitled to just have his jerkoff spawn occupy the highest office in the land with no criticism whatsoever? If Bush Lesser was even halfway competent he'd still be subject to criticism. But he's the WORST. PRESIDENT. EVER. Bar none. Hands down.
And this is what I have to say to Poppy and Barbara Bush:
George W. Bush is your everlasting skidmark on the underwear of history. If you don't like hearing criticism about his unearned post as President, go fucking cry into a bag of money you borrowed from my unborn grandkids, you self-centered blueblooded aristocratic ass-cracks. And then fuck yourselves off home.
Spiritualis Exhaustivity
There are 15 more months of this stupid-faced jackoff strutting around our nation's House, acting like he's got any business being there, and every morning I wake up with a little drag in my step when I remember that he's there, and every night I go to bed and think grim thoughts of our nation's future. Memo to conservatives who utterly don't get it: yes, I really hate Bush. I hate him in my very marrow. If you had a single intelligent or credible thought about the future of our nation you would too. This is not partisanship. I am not rooting for my "team." It is not tribalism any other ism or other ad hominem reason I have for not liking the man.
The simple and utterly inescapable fact of my Bush Hate is: he is ruining our country. Our future. Our lives. Our chances. He has never displayed a single trait of leadership, public service, or statesmanship in his entire term. He is singularly unqualified and undeserving of his office, on so many levels I can't repeat them all.
Stupidous Dumkopffisnous
Above all he is a stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid man who has been catapulted into power by privilege, and allowed to remain because of apathy and complacency, and condoned by the incompetence and corruption of our media, and unchecked in his destruction by the corruption and appeasement and accommodation of the party that is supposed to oppose him. Every day he's there I have felt helpless and that things are out of control and that no one really cares or has thought through the consequences. And every grim or unpleasant consequence I have imagined as a result of his being there has come to pass so far and I have never been so sorry to be so right about something.
But in the final analysis, Jesus Everloving Christ on a Popsicle Stick, I fucking hate George Bush.