Why I Think George W. Bush Is Doing a Great Job

I think of all the things I love about my species, it's that when they do perceive the error of their ways, they change.

I think of all the things I hate about my species, the tendency to mind-bomb each other with memes and catchy sayings and Pleasant Illusions (as opposed to Difficult Realities) is the worst. It's the root of the groundwork of all evil.

What's interesting is that the second is derived from the first. We try to find the truth. Not knowing better, we trust what The Other is doing:

(a) The crowd. Usually our friends, coworkers and family.
(b) The media. It's published, it must be true.
(c) The Science. Even though it explains only part of a complex situation.
(d) The Man-God. Specifically, what the crowd thinks God thinks.

In other words, most of the time our brains are filled with other people's reactions. They see something, they freak out, and they'll feel bad if we don't freak out too, so everyone freak out.

Then they make trends. "Well, we here all believe this... you aren't DIFFERENT, are you?"

It's like the first day of kindergarten all over again.

As a result, it's often hard to know what you -- the individual reading this -- think at any given time. (To complicate things, I'm also mind-bombing you, and hoping that better discrete logic and some fun with words will make you see the light I have.)

All this boils down to: most people are wrong most of the time.

This includes smug Europeans who comment on American politics without ever have been here long enough to hold a job, with a hidden agenda of "you are bigger than us, so fuck you -- no really, fuck you America, because we both need you and want to be you." This includes liberals whose undercover goal is to fragment society so their own neurosis doesn't seem so dysfunctional; if you fear you're a defective, you want more defects to hide behind. This includes people who interpret religion like morons and are hoping for The End Times so we can all die and go to that better place that suspiciously resembles a Wal-mart in the sky where we have God's card, and he's got an infinite credit limit. This also includes moderate pundits who think that picking the path between extremes of bloviation somehow makes them "realistic."

One area they're wrong is with George W. Bush. They think he's bad because of the following reasons, which I'll explain and debunk.

* The Iraq war. They just don't like war. No one does. But when you're a superpower, and someone blows up two giant buildings in your biggest city, someone has to pay. If you can't get to the exact someone, take out a possible big ally and, since your economy will collapse if you don't have an oil supply, score the oil.

* Katrina. Local authorities delayed contacting the Feds, who then summoned a large federal bureaucracy that responded slowly and ineptly, as they all do. No leader has ever been able to fix this aspect of bureaucratic government because it's inherent.

* The economy. This one was a bomb from the Clinton days. Playing fast and loose with interest rates, he encouraged wild speculation. The value of money went up. Oh goody, happy days are here again -- but every drunken spree has its comedown. Specifically, the market re-adjusting the value of the dollar from 2000 to the present.

* Paranoia. The department of Homeland Security -- monitoring emails -- TSA -- possible American troops deployed to control us -- on and on it goes, with a new Biggest Threat Evar every week. It never plays out. Why: governments always increase their power, and they actually increased it more under Clinton. You never hear about this.

So none of these things are Bush's fault, and for things we don't like, we have to look at the basic aspects of our system. An economy based on fiat capital. A government that prefers to hire minorities, women, the disabled etc. without checking to see if they're competent first. The conditions of being a superpower, which means that you have to read Machiavelli like the Bible.

Basically, we're not oppressed -- as a voting mass, WE ARE INEPT, and as a result governments just take advantage of us, because they cannot tell us the truth because they'll get voted out of office. Voters prefer Pleasant Illusions to Difficult Realities, and that's why they're slaves to other people's bad judgment.

Blaming Bush is just the latest installment in this. We're all frustrated, so let's blame whoever is convenient, because that's much easier than facing the long-term problems of our civilization. If we were truthful, we'd realize that pluralism doesn't work, and that any society without culture will be dominated by its economy, making us all whores. If we were truthful -- well, that's another essay, but let it suffice to say that very few can understand the truth much less read it.

Keep your heads in the sand. Look for easy answers. It worked for the Romans during their final days, and the Soviets, and the Aztecs. Maybe it will (snicker) work for you.

Comments

  1. I think most people blame bush because he is a retard who has mismanaged the government for the past 8 years.

    He hasn't done any real work, or tried to solve any real problems. Why exactly are you so in love with the guy?

    The subprime crisis did not happen under Clinton. It happened under Bush. The subprime crisis is what caused this mess. Clinton had nothing to do with it.

    The war in Iraq has nothing to do with Terrorism. Even if it was about oil, it was a stupid investment. The 1 trillion dollars and thousands of lives we have spent were not a good investment. The same money could have bought so much research on alternative fuels, could have built so much public transportation infrastructure, or done so much good in so many other places. Instead we blew up Iraq's infrastructure, and a lot of their population. It was not a smart move by any measure, even if the government doesn't collapse after we leave.

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  2. Anonymous11:17 AM

    Dude, I have no idea what you've been smoking, but you really, really need to stop.

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  3. Anonymous11:22 AM

    jared m johnson summed it up.

    his comment was actually worth the read, unlike your article.

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  4. Jared - you're a moron if you think clinton had nothing to do with the subprime lending crisis. Clinton helped open the flood gates of junk loans to junk people, and then left with a budget surplus proclaiming his years as President were the best we'd ever had. His loose loan policies and encouraging the Fed to feed fiat money into a banking system that needed to then lend out that fake money to increasingly bad credit risks is what caused this mess, and it started in 93 under Clinton.

    You prove the author's point by saying, "why are you so in love with the guy?", when all he's doing is looking at the issue objectively and trying to prove a point. You proved it for him; good work.

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  5. Anonymous12:50 PM

    What you forget is that you have to look at this issue from a historical point of view; to 76% of the people in America, and most people across the world, George Bush is the worst president in history. You can try to reason your way out of it, but for a guy who who has a minimal grasp on the English language, I think it's a fair shake. You can even look into his own life history and see that if it wasn't for his father he would be face down in a toilet at some southern Texas strip joint. You don't have to listen to other people's ideas, but when you have the type of argument you have, my advice is to start.

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  6. Anonymous1:52 PM

    I agree with you on your points of groupthink but your 21 lines of why Bush isn't responsible for those messes are something I cannot agree with.

    Iraq: This place had nothing to do with 9/11 and didn't have any of the weapons the administration said they had. When all of this became glaringly obvious it suddenly turned into a humanitarian mission to rid the world of an evil dictator. Unfortunately for us, all those civilians we killed in the bombings are going to hate us for the rest of our lives and some will probably try to kill us. Good thinking. I think you're spot-on with the oil assessment but still, payback is a bitch.

    Katrina: this is the greatest failure of a federal agency I have ever had the great misfortune of witnessing. The feds knew days beforehand that the greatest shitstorm to hit the gulf coast in decades was about to smash N.O. and they did nothing. Why? Because we had a Horse Show organizer running FEMA, appointed by W. The result? Thousands of people died. Good thinking.

    The Economy: we've been monetizing the debt over the past few decades and now the market forces are too strong to push back with more valueless currency. It's time we paid the piper. You can blame every president since Kennedy for that one.

    Paranoia: there's a lot to be afraid of. All of our life savings are evaporating before our eyes due to the greed of a privileged few, we have experienced the greatest erosion of civil liberties in the past seven years that this country has ever seen, and now we've got two presidential candidates that are swearing allegiance to Israel and are doing everything they can to stir things up with Iran. Don't believe me about the civil liberties? Take a look at the washington post article about what happened in Maryland.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/07/AR2008100703245.html

    If that doesn't scare you I submit that you don't deserve to be a citizen of this great country.

    Like I said, I agree with your assessment of our collective, willful ignorance but please don't excuse Bush for the wrongs he has done this country. You don't need to...he's just going to pardon himself :)

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  7. Anonymous4:00 PM

    I have several issues here...

    First of all, I find the original post problematic; not only the rant-like quality of how the author relates his or her point-of-view, but the attempt at creating a 'subversive' message directed at-what appears to be-mainstream/liberal commentators who 'mind-bomb' each other...

    Except that it isn’t subversive, nor is it original thought. It seems merely a half-hearted regurgitation of excuses for or in defense of a lame duck president. However, reading it, I wasn't even offended by the idiotic excuses put forth, rather that this someone, who is clearly not particularly bright, has misunderstood, and therefore misrepresented the idea of 'the other.'

    Forgive me for my rant... but… the ‘Other' is NOT something people trust. Rather, a person's definition of the 'Other' is part of what defines or even constitutes the self, and other phenomena and cultural units. The concept has been used to understand the processes by which societies and groups exclude 'Others' who they want to subordinate or who do not fit into their society.

    The concept of the ‘Other' is something that we do not understand, and therefore distrust, fear, judge and/or exclude.

    The author effectively disproved any merit he or she may have projected to possess in the fifth sentence. There was no real point in moving past that point... If you are going to going to insist on verbal diarrhea, make sure the basis of your argument isn't fundamentally faulty.


    Oh. And Fj?
    You've REALLY demonstrated your value in this society... 'junk loans to junk people'?!?!?

    If only expressing my disgust for you - through a blog - could convey how little you are worth in this society.

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  8. Anonymous5:39 AM

    i love you man :)

    ReplyDelete

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