You just can’t beat the London Review of Books. There’s nothing like it here:
In the book, as in his life, Bush the postmodernist is a simulacrum: a Connecticut blueblood who pretended to be a Texas cowboy, though he couldn’t ride a horse and lived on a ‘ranch’ with no cattle. He was, and is, happiest when surrounded by professionals in the three areas in which he was a notable failure: athletics, the military and business. He is like a sports fan who dresses up in the team jersey to watch the game. References to his ‘military service’ recur frequently throughout the book, as though it were actually more than a few months spent avoiding it. He was the only modern American president to appear in public in a military uniform – even Eisenhower never wore his while president – like a ribboned despot from a banana republic. He has said that one of his proudest moments was throwing out the ceremonial first pitch in a World Series game. The frontispiece to the book is the photo of Bush in his other proud moment, standing in the ruins of the Twin Towers with his cheerleader bullhorn, just one of the relief worker guys.
A pup in a valley of alpha males, inadequate compared to Dad, humiliated by Mother, he classically became a bully to compensate: an ass-brander, noted for what he calls verbal ‘needling’; a boss who cussed out his subordinates and invented demeaning nicknames for everyone around him; a president who taunted terrorists, most of them imaginary, and challenged them to ‘bring it on’.
The whole review is brilliant. I don’t usually like the whole “this is so post-modern thing” but it’s on the money here.
Greenhouse Guy
Wow… me likey.
spudvol
Derision Points
schrodinger's cat
I have never understood why he was so loved by the Village. Our `liberal’ MSM has never fawned over either Clinton or Obama that much.
SiubhanDuinne
Read this review early this morning, didn’t get around to sending BJ a link so I’m *very* glad someone else did! It’s a brilliant, curdling review.
Jewish Steel
Brits. First they give us the BBC and now they read this wretched book for us. They just give and give.
ETA: I still can’t believe not one commenter has plowed through this one.
John W.
Post-modernism gets a bad rap. I think Derrida is pretty brilliant, for instance, though it takes some level of commitment to get, admittedly. But the bad rap is mostly because of the crappy label obscures the greatness. Which is basically post-modern in itself.
shoutingattherain
I loathe George Bush.
I was angry every day for 8 years. I feel 15 years older.
The only thing I learned from his Presidency is that my opinion doesn’t matter. Fuck him and the imaginary horse he rode in on.
BGinCHI
Well, it’s by Eliot Weinberger, so I’d expect it to be smart. And he’s American, so there’s no reason it couldn’t appear here. Love the LRB though.
I get the Foucault comparisons, though maybe Discipline and Punish would have been a more apt work to put next to Bush’s output.
Cacti
I’ll always find Bush the elder a bit less worthy of scorn than his progeny.
At the very least, he never pretended to be something other than a member of the old yankee, blue blood, wasp ruling elite.
Tyro
I have never understood why he was so loved by the Village.
Me neither. In many ways, Bush was the exact opposite of the values many of us were taught to espouse: he was proudly unintellectual, proudly lazy, disdained education, and disdained others. He was a jock who wasn’t even good at sports.
And yet, the people lined up to support this guy who was an advocate of torture and obediently turned into unhinged haters of people like Al Gore and John Kerry on command.
I’ll never understand the love for a person as loathsome as Bush. The only explanation I can come up with is that the promise of tax cuts unleashed an almost Mammon-esque worship of money among some people, which basically unhinged them– the became blinded to everything absent their desperate worship of Mammon and the promise of more money.
beltane
I guess this means I will have to renew my subscription.
Sadly, this is the quality which made Bush so endearing to our amoral, brain-dead media. They, too, are like sports fans who dress in the team jersey to watch the game. In their case, it is always Team Republican that they are rooting for.
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
Because he was one of them. They all knew him from an early age. He helped run his father’s campaigns for president. He went to their cocktail parties.
In other words, George W Bush is one of the Right Kind of people. He belongs to their social class. Clinton and Obama, with their declasse upbringings outside of the East Coast, are decidedly of the Lower Classes and not fit to rule. George W Bush is to the manor born and deserved to have the office handed to him on a silver platter … so they did.
Remember during the 2008 election when Kathleen Parker wrote that Obama didn’t have the right “blood” to be president. That’s what she meant — he was not born of the ruling class and therefore did not deserve to be president.
DougJ
@John W.:
I like post-modernism too. I think the description gets overused in magazine articles though. But not here.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Dennis G.
This was brilliant as well:
Ronnie P
The Villagers are phonies who are attracted to other phonies.
srv
Most males who have served in the military will remark on it being a big part of their life. And Bush spent more than a few months in the military. A year in flight school and and 6 months or so qualifying for the F-102 is non-trivial.
Like all but a few fighter pilots I’ve known, he has a low interest in what happens to all the little people on the receiving end of bombs. But at one point in his life he was accomplished in something.
The Republic of Stupidity
And unlike Bush, Ike was a real general, who spent the better part of 4 decades in the military, and actually WON his war.
Isn’t there some unspoken prohibition, for lack of a better way to put it, about US presidents wearing uniforms in public?
Something about the C-in-C being a CIVILIAN and not getting those lines criss-crossed?
And also something about not dragging personal religion into the mix… like saying God told him to ‘smite Saddam’ or some such silly clap trap?
Saaaaaaaaaay… who was that other notable 20th century leader who was so notorious for wearing a uniform in public and claiming God was on his side?
***snaps fingers…***
I know… it was Ad-…………
***Mmmmmmppffff***
t jasper parnell
Wtf is a decision point?
John W.
Why the fuck is it hard to understand why a third generation politician with an MBA who never worked hard a day in his life and posed for everything was loved by the village?
If I had to pick one person to represent the id of the village, it’d be George W. Bush. Elite through and through, but with just enough trappings that he could claim otherwise.
John W.
But I should admit this is a fun thread.
russell
They thought he had a big dick.
Close.
He’s like a guy who owns the sports team, and makes the team let him pitch. Even though he sucks.
jrg
This part is interesting:
Gee, I wonder why all this shit was left out of “Decision Points”.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodinger’s cat:
I always chuckle when I think of the visceral conservative hatred for NBC, because of Keith Olberman (as of August ’08 when the howler monkeys turned and hooted at the NBC booth at a prompt from, if memory serves, Palin). Nobody hated Clinton and Gore more than Monsignor Russert, who along with Chris Matthews and Tom Brokaw did more to invent the myth of McCain than anyone, arguably including McCain. Brian Williams always seemed, and seems, to me cut from the same mold as GWB. I remember Norah O’Donnell interviewing Cindy Sheehan, and NO’D was personally offended and angry that CS would dare to criticize this “very popular president”; Bush’s approval ratings were below 50% at the time. (is O’Donnell still on TV? I hardly watch any TV news these days)
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Sounds like they have him pretty well pegged.
Bush is an absolute piece of shit as a human being. As a president, he lived up to his true nature.
If he had not been in that family and had that name and the perks and the privileges that went with it, he’d be nothing.
azlib
@The Republic of Stupidity:
That is probably the only thing they had in common and for Bush it was only one day on a carrier and I am not sure it was an official uniform in any case. I am sure the Navy had nightmares when they were told about what Bush wanted to do. Carrier landings are dangerous, even in the plane Bush flew in as a passenger. I thought it was an incredibly stupid stunt.
Nellcote
Now that’s a Shorter!
JGabriel
I like this line from Weinberger:
Much like his presidency …
.
Tecumseh
@jrg: I loved that part too because there’s all sorts of loathesome and despicable things that administration did just underneath the radar– like Monica Goodling and the Justice Department or sending only Republican flunkies over to Iraq because they passed some sort of political litmus test– that the Village never cared about or even think about but said all that you need to know about that administration. It’s like the press reported on a different Presidency than the one that actually was in power.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Cacti: Remember the last time a Republican was honest? It might have been H.W. when he called Reaganomics “voodoo” economics. Of course, that honesty was as anathema to the GOP then as it is now.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Be fair. He’d at least have made News of the Weird or Knuckleheads in the News for a lame criminal endeavor that backfired in an amusing (and possibly fatal) manner.
General Stuck
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
I saw an interview where mama Bush claimed it was true, the fetus in a jar story, but it was the maid that showed junior. How would a small child internalize such a thing, seeing his sibling half formed and pickled in a jar? Maybe we found out the hard way.
jrg
@Tecumseh: Yep. And all that despicable crap goes right down the memory hole.
I simply cannot believe there have not been investigations. There is absolutely no disincentive to prevent this from happening again.
agrippa
That is a good review.
I have viewed GWB as a ‘wannabe’. He has spent, in my view, most of his life as a ‘wannabe’ ; never quite measuring up. And, he became president by virtue of his pedigree and – quite different from the other son of a president who became president – devoid.
Simply, devoid.
The review describes that individual very well.
General Stuck
@jrg:
Aside from the obvious stuff like torture, I followed Byron Dorgan and his minority committee in the senate doing some fascinating hearings on the epic scale of lower level criminality, if you want to call it that, throughout the federal government. Of course, that committee had no teeth nor subpoena power, but it still was jaw dropping the utter contempt of law and regulation. Probably the worst was the Corp of Engineers doing no bid contracts for Iraq and the military in general. They just threw away the rule book, and literally would take requests for these contracts straight from the Vice Presidents Office, like ordering pizza.
Don’t know if there are investigations going on into this, and we won’t know, ever, unless there are indictments. I think it was kind of the Bushies plan to seemingly break every law possible to were there were so many cases, to the point it was news that stood out when a law was followed, or a reg.
Brachiator
In many ways, America has always been an anti-intellectual nation, and Bush is the avatar of the seemingly Ordinary Guy who rose to the top.
America either invented or perfected the use of the term “egghead,” which Nixon used to devastating effect to denigrate Adlai Stevenson. Americans tend to associate intellectualism with elitism, effete snobbery, and worst of all, pretentiousness, unless it is also yoked to the pratical, i.e., earning a shit load of money. Then, all is forgiven.
We may grudgingly acknowledge an intellectual, but most tv shows and movies sing the praises of guys who are proud to be stupid. And they always get the girl.
Dubya was one of the elites, but unlike his brother Jeb (or his mother), who often seem to be able to barely tolerate lesser folk, his cheerful mediocrity made him look like a man of the people. And his love for the baby Jesus sealed the deal with the Republican base.
Silver
@agrippa:
That jar got the brains in the family…
hitchhiker
Michael Moore has the right idea ~~ take it off the politics shelf and put it into the crime section where it belongs.
W lost the election early in November, 2000. He was inaugurated anyway in January 2001. 8 weeks later my husband broke his neck, and then in August W made a little speech from his “ranch” about how he was going to respect the people who thought it was better to throw embryos into medical incinerators than allow neurobiologists to understand how nerve cells are built during the first weeks post conception.
The press was thrilled with how deftly he’d managed to make it seem like he cared while actually slamming the doors to a thousand labs all at once.
Thanks, W.
That speech happened to land on our 14th wedding anniversary, which we spent worrying that the excessive heat would cause my husband to go into dysreflexia — people with spinal cord injuries can’t sweat, did you know that?
Me neither. But I’m pretty sure W had air conditioning at the “ranch” that August day, so it was all the same to him.
Loathe him? Oh, yes.
Great book review, thanks.
Anne Laurie
@Cacti: __
You must not remember Poppy’s “I drive a pickup, I love to eat pork rinds” shenanigans during his first New Hampshire primary. (Some political commentors thought this is where Scott Brown got the idea.) Bush only gave up pretending to be a simple, honest son of the soil after he got caught marveling at a checkout scanner on-camera.
Also, Poppy raised — or failed to raise — Dubya. Never mind abandoning the dumb little runt to be Bar’s martini-fueled fetus-in-a-jar “substitute husband”, or deciding that preserving his impression of WASP family honor was more important than getting outside assistance for a kid who was demonstrably incapable of meeting normal academic standards. If Bush One hadn’t spent 40 years enabling Bush Two to fail upwards, the world in general and America in particular would be a much happier place today.
slag
These sentences go nicely together. We appear to be a nation largely composed of wannabes. And Bush…Bush was our wannabe king.
slag
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
I believe the term you’re searching for is “meritocracy”.
Seriously, out of all the wingnut criticism of Obama, I find the “empty suit” characterization to be the most hilariously bizarre. They really do, on a fundamental level, think the black guy with the funny name has it easy in this country. Sometimes I catch myself asking just how one gets from my reality to theirs. And is there an expressway I can take?
Brachiator
@DougJ
By the way, the cited review is damned good stuff. I wondered whether there were any worthwhile reviews of Bush’s memoir. This has got to be one of the best.
Have people seen the video clip of the Facebook King, Zuckerberg, speaking with Dubya?
BobS
That’s a great review of a book I’ll never waste my time reading.
Of course, there’s not a lot (bully, pretend cowboy, phony ‘man of the people’, etc.) in the excerpt above that most of us here had too much trouble figuring out within five minutes of seeing or hearing Bush for the first time (with the notable exception of Mr. Cole).
Whenever I heard someone mutter the phrase about Bush being a guy to have a beer with, my first thought was breaking a longneck on his forehead.
jaleh
George Packer’s review of Bush’s book is also a great read:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/11/29/101129crbo_books_packer
Here is a sample:
“Every memoir is a tissue of omission and evasion; memoirs by public figures are especially unreliable. What’s remarkable about “Decision Points” is how frequently and casually it leaves out facts, large and small, whose absence draws more attention than their inclusion would have.”
frosty
@shoutingattherain:
More to the point: Fuck him and the horse he didn’t know how to ride in on.
Mike in NC
When Dubya dies — and the sooner the better — I hope they dress his corpse up in the “Mission Accomplished” flight suit and put it on display in the Smithsonian as a reminder of how far we’ve declined as a society.
Morbo
Brutal, brutal and awesome.
tomvox1
I think it is much more basic than the reasons given here about same caste, intellectuals admiring anti-intellectualism, etc.
It is because the Media Elites (like most of us) shit their pants when 9/11 happened. They thought it was this generation’s Pearl Harbor and they craved a strong leader in a time of war, a fucking Daddy to make everything OK again. A lot of us did. But then the Villagers in DC tried to make themselves and us believe that W. was the reincarnation of FDR or Ike or Churchill or all of them rolled into one despite all evidence to the contrary because he mouthed some jingoistic cowboy bullshit into a bullhorn at Ground Zero. After all, if we’re suddenly at war via sneak attack, can it possibly be that the USA has the exact worst guy possible at the helm at that time? No it cannot be! Not in this great God-blessed country of ours.
So they enabled the Iraq invasion out of “patriotic” duty and it took Katrina until the MSM dared let slip what a lot of us had already figured out by then: that a woefully inept dolt had somehow won the presidency and been captain of the ship during the greatest crisis of the past 40 years. We had always been lucky for the most part before in our history–Lincoln, FDR, JFK. No one in the Village was comfortable admitting that our luck had run out when the Supremes installed Bush instead of “Earth Tones” Gore. Not to mention pausing to consider how much better off we would have been in the aftermath of 9/11 if that had not happened. I’m sure virtually no one in the Village would cop to that now…
Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them…George W. Bush had the illusion of greatness created for him by a media culture scared shitless by 19 zealots with box cutters who delivered the greatest shock to the American sense of preeminence since the Iranian hostage crisis. They craved a man on a white horse and so they invented one and tried to sell it to the rest of us. It is a testament to just how incompetent W. was that he somehow lost most of those willing hagiographers.
Arclite
Wow. That review was devastating. Why can’t we have something that honest in the USA? Oh, yeah, b/c all of our media outlets are owned by corporations that serve their own self-interest by being deferential to power. English media, on the other hand, is completely free to be critical of the USA. Except those owned by Rupert.
Francis
Let’s not make matters any more complex than they need to be. Villagers are, by and large, wealthy and white. No wonder they associate with Republicans.
Democrats by contrast are so boring and earnest. They care (or purport to) about the poor, the immigrants, racial minorities, salary disparities between men and women, health care, etc. How yucky.
I’ll bet Cokie Roberts votes Dem. Her family would disown her if she didn’t. But listening to her mellifluous tone on NPR, I’m struck by how comfortable she is when talking about all the problems the Dems have in achieving their legislative goals. To her, like most of the Villagers, it’s all just a game.
Mnemosyne
@tomvox1:
Except that they were doing all of this excuse-making and covering of Bush’s tracks before 9/11. The attack may have turned the volume up to 11, but during the 2000 election it was the Village that was selling the notion that it would be chaos — chaos! — to actually follow the procedure in the Constitution for exactly the situation that Bush and Gore found themselves in so the SC had to step in and “fix” it lest the Constitution actually be followed.
They were carrying Bush’s water long before 9/11. I think it was 9/11 that gave them an inkling that maybe that had been a bad idea, so they had to double down rather than admit the mistake that was in front of their faces.
PeakVT
That snippet is just full of win.
Dr. Psycho
@Tecumseh: “It’s like the press reported on a different Presidency than the one that actually was in power.”
To be fair, when have they not? When has the press (or even historians decades later) ever presented a substantial, nuanced image of any prominent figure, as opposed to an Official Portrait or a political-cartoon caricature?
Amir_Khalid
@t jasper parnell: Technically, it means the points one considers in making a particular decision, but the phrase is really just meaningless Pointy-Haired Boss talk.
Joe Shabadoo
I think the reviewer has to know that DP is used on the internet to talk about a certain sexual activity.
The Grand Panjandrum
In Texas, as in other parts of the country, a ranch with no cattle is called a FARM.
master c
Cacti-
he did and does pretend to be a Texan…..how come no one else in his family has that accent? Jeb etc?
SFAW
What I don’t understand is why everyone keeps referring to him and his ilk as “elite”. Elitist, maybe (and undeservedly so). But the true elite actually have accomplished something or risen to the top of their field(s) through something other than their Poppy or his friends making sure they don’t fail.
(Unless you’re a blackity-black Mooslim born in Kenya, of course.)
Of course, this also dovetails nicely with the standard Rethug/conservative hatred for the elite.
What’s funny (in a sick way) is that the Rethugs, by thinking that they’re better than the “elites” (because the Rethugs are “real people” and the elites aren’t), turn themselves into elitists. Talk about lack of self-awareness.
One other thought: George W. Bush is perhaps our best example that Darwin was wrong: if there actually were “survival of the fittest”, W would have flunked a long time ago. (Yes, I know I’m taking liberties with Darwin – just work with me, OK?)
Svensker
@slag:
My wingnut brother just told me that O has the mental faculties of a paper plate. WTF? I can see not liking O and/or his policies. But believing Obama is stupid? I just can’t grapple with that one.
Svensker
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Don’t you have to grow something — besides brush — to call it a farm?
Ash Can
@Svensker: Arguing with people like that is a fool’s errand. You ask them for examples supporting their wild-ass assertions, and they cite things that never happened. You try to explain that their examples are fiction, and they don’t believe you. It’s maddening to see people utterly resistant to reality.
SFAW
I think there was at least one face-plant (I believe the Latin name was Mountainbikeius falloffitus) on his farm.
SFAW
And yet, here we are with an incoming Rethug majority in the House. So that’s, what, 50 million resistant to reality? (Actually, it’s probably a lot more than that, unfortunately.)
ChrisS
@t jasper parnell:
“Wtf is a decision point? ”
Well, like most of the Bush’s GOP, they like to take whatever is popular at the moment and co-opt it for their own agenda.
Malcom Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” was a popular NY Times book. But they couldn’t call Bush’s book “The Tipping Point,” ‘… even though it would have been bitching title for my book, eh? Would have been great. What about “The Decision Point?” Still too close? “Decision Points?” Yeah, I like that. Call it that. Now watch this drive!’
SFAW
Actually, Junior was thinking about calling it “The Tippling Point”, but then the game would have been up.
mzrad
Incidentally, whenever someone tries to link the current president to the previous one, they should remember that Bush consistently supported the following policies (which are conveniently missing from Bush’s new autobiography):
Seriously, how could Obama be worse than Bush? Forest for the trees, people.
Daniel
What was the story behind this?
Jason
…ending, of course, with the current president. The changes to the DSM seem more and more like a canny, preemptive defense against thoughtcrime impeachment.
I think the article really critiques, as others up the thread have mentioned, the strange and fail-y reception of postmodern thought here in the States. Domestic academics and theorists promised a potent political force that was immediately neutered by a preoccupation with practical application, and we ended up with 8 years of George Bush. So now we’re governed by a public discourse that says we’re the real rascests, and suggests that they’re the “real” postmodernists. Thank you for assigning McHale with “White Noise” but I think College Republicans got it more right-er with the affirmative action bake sales.
harokin
Just perfect.
Did Kerry or Edwards ever make any of these points in 2004? I know they went after the “bring it on” thing but they didn’t tie it to Bush’s issues, the way Palin went cutthroat for “community organizer.” Do Democrats (other than Grayson and Frank) just shy away from that kind of personal attack? Does that quality make voters respect them more or regard them as wimps?
SFAW
If only Barbara Billingsley were here to translate #67 …
Sasha
@Jewish Steel:
And Monty Python as well as some of the best villains in cinema.
Gotta love the Brits.
Frank
Do any of you suppose that Bush (or Cheney, Rush, Sister Sarah, et al) ever wake up in the wee hours with a dreadful awareness of their own shortcomings, a keen sense of their nasty, mean, bullying behavior? Those dark, frightening moments (that usually go away in the light of day) when one’s wretchedness is layed bare? I know a lot of people will swiftly suggest that such people are never introspective enough to examine their own deeds, but I do wonder sometimes….
Sasha
@slag:
Especially when, in the same breath, he’s spoken as a ruthless would-be dictator whose machinations are just about to bear fruit unless something is done RIGHT NOW.
They really can’t cut the dude any slack or credit. The question is: Why not?
Sasha
@BobS:
I always laughed at that since, as an alcoholic, Bush would not be allowed to have a beer at all.
Sasha
@tomvox1:
In no small part, this. After heaping praise on someone who you hoped would rise to the challenge but instead lowers the bar, it’s hard to then backtrack and admit “He was a fool; we were wrong.”
Sasha
@master c:
Yep. Both he and Jeb are carpetbaggers. Funny that.
SFAW
No.
SATSQ.
I sometimes call it a “Col. Nicholson” moment, and I believe that were any of them to have such a moment, they would commit seppuku out of shame. (Of course, there would be a rather large supply of persons wanting to be the kaishaku.) But I think the chance of such an epiphany from any of them is on a par with the probability of the Mets winning the 2010 World Series.
Sasha
@Svensker:
IMHO, a lot of winger complaints are displacement: Things they really thought about Bush and the GOP, but couldn’t say or credit due to loyalty, they now attribute to Obama and the Dems in order to finally express their feelings.
The stupider your brother says Obama is, the more he really felt that way about Bush.
Sasha
@Frank:
If Bush is (as I suspect) a dry drunk, then no. That’s pretty much the definition of a dry drunk.
SFAW
Not sure if I’m reading you correctly, but you seem to be saying he wasn’t/isn’t actively drinking. You sure about that?
And since we’re sorta on the subject of his “clean livin’ ” – can you enlighten me as to what religion he subscribes? I mean, he was real big on tellin’ people about his personal relationship w/ Jeebus, but his actual religion? Not so much.
(And, no, I don’t really care if he is/was Catholic, Prot, Wiccan. Jew, Mooslim, or anything else – it’s just that for someone who talked about it so much, he actually said very little.)
Sasha
@SFAW:
He is a bonafide alchoholic who quit drinking on his 40th birthday. However, he never did AA or the like and remains IMHO a dry drunk.
He is a United Methodist but, again IMHO, seems to have much more in common with fundamentalist evangelical Baptists.
SFAW
Sasha –
You sure he wasn’t active since age 40? I’m not, and frankly him saying he quit is not, shall we say, conclusive proof.
United Methodist? Didn’t seem to attend too many of their services since 2000. Or do they just not have churches in DC nor Crawford? (As I said before, I’m only attempting to make the point because he was such a holy roller while in office.)
Tax Analyst
That’s the best and most on point book review I’ve read in many, many years. Maybe the best one I’ve ever read.
Sasha
@SFAW:
It’s pretty much established that Bush stopped drinking around age 40, according to various biographers. However, I do not believe he ever became truly sober (thus, my comment that he remains a dry drunk).
Indeed. Like I said, he seems to identify much more closely to fundamentalist Christianity than his stated church of choice.
SFAW
Sasha –
Yes, I know what the biographers have said, and so forth and so on. I’m just not sure it’s not the prettied-up version. An active alcoholic as Preznit would not be something the populace would cotton to.
It boils down to: I don’t believe a word W says, at least when it comes to substantive matters.
In any event, you and I are more-or-less on the same page.
Sasha
@SFAW:
I’m inclined to believe it as that’s one juicey tidbit that I don’t think would have not been found out.
And I argue we did have an active alcoholic President — it’s just that he didn’t drink.
Anne Laurie
@Frank: __
I believe they wake up in the wee hours with an overwhelming fear that they have been (are to be) stripped of their power and autonomy and reduced to bare wretchedness. Which they promptly blame on librul lamestream those-people incubi, so they rise up further inflamed with righteous outrage and go forth to punish everyone that they dream has tried to hurt them. Primitive tribalists burning their less fortunate neighbors as witches whose “evil eye” makes women abort and cattle wither understand the psychology of the American Spite Warriors better than the entire collected staff of Politico, NYT, the Kaplan Daily, and the staff of the Maclean-Belmont behavioral disorders clinic.
Anne Laurie
@Sasha: __
It’s going to be very instructive when we eventually find out what Bush’s medical advisors were prescribing, though. Which, yes, will happen — probably much sooner than the Bush clan assumes. FDR’s people couldn’t successfully destroy all his medical records, and that was pre-internet.
Bubblegum Tate
@Sasha:
It’s not even that sophisticated. It’s just, “I disagree with him, therefore he is stupid.”
numbskull
@hitchhiker: I’m so very sorry to hear of this, yet another reason to absolutely loathe GWB.
Sadly, the lack of support for research continues with the recent loss of the omnibus bill. I don’t think a lot of people understand how bad it was to not get that passed and signed.
SFAW
I think you and I ascribe different meanings to the word “active”.
And, yes, I know that being an alcoholic is more-or-less forever, whether you drink or not.
But, by all means, please feel free to tell me yet again that you consider Bush to be a dry drunk, usw.
numbskull
@Daniel: His 3-man plane went down. He made it out, the two others didn’t.
Some think he panicked over what was essentially a known problem with the Avenger bomber that other pilots had dealt with without loss of craft or life:
http://www.rense.com/general47/hero.htm
Sasha
@SFAW:
Ah. Didn’t originally quite gell “active” from your post (implying he still drinks booze).
I assume you know what I mean when I refer to him specifically as a “dry drunk”.
SFAW
I do.
As I said earlier, I think we’re more-or-less in agreement, except re: the possibility he is/was drinking since he turned 40.
Frankly, if the press weren’t so in love with the guy, speculating (in the 2001-2008 period) “early and often” as to whether he was drinking would have been more of a problem for him than birtherism has been for the Kenyan-in-Chief. And, of course, it would have been irresponsible NOT to speculate.
Sasha
@SFAW:
Of course. :)
Frank
@Anne Laurie #86 — I suspect you’re correct. Fear of losing one’s privileged position (or a plot of tillable soil, I suppose) causes some to lash out in anger, name-calling, etc. “Those horrible other people want what we have; they’re causing all the problems!” Sometimes those dangers others are Latino or Black or Catholic or gay or fill-in-the-blank. Hate seems to be a bottomless resource in today’s culture.
Biff Longbotham
@BobS:
I second that emotion!