What a great read. The only question: Why on earth did it take this long?
For 10 minutes, the talk show host grilled his guests about whether “George Bush’s mental weakness is damaging America’s credibility at home and abroad.” For 10 minutes, the caption across the bottom of the television screen read, “IS BUSH AN ‘IDIOT’?”
But the host was no liberal media elitist. It was Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman turned MSNBC political pundit. And his answer to the captioned question was hardly “no.” While other presidents have been called stupid, Scarborough said: “I think George Bush is in a league by himself. I don’t think he has the intellectual depth as these other people.”
You have to read this mind-blowing article. America’s smartest conservatives are saying they’ve had enough of man-boy Bush. Only the shills at Fox News and the Weekly Standard are keeping their deck chairs on the Titanic. We all have to face it: our president is a miserable failure in every conceivable way, and anyone who wants to defend him does so at their own peril. Ater six painfully frustrating years of raising our voices in protest, the message has finally sunk in. Once the realization is made, there is simply no going back: We elected a moron to be the king of the world, and now each of us has to pay the price, from higher prices at the gas pump to the shame of having to confess you are an American when overseas to seeing our dreams of a great America crack and crumble. Bush is a tragedy and we have to live with him until January 2009. All we can do is work hard at planning for something better, hoping against hope that after he leaves there remains enough of the stuff that made America great to rebuild and recover.
Congratulations, America. You had a choice, and you chose fear over intellect, bravado over critical thinking, and hollow slogans over cautious planning. The result: more terror, more fear, more very rich and very poor people and the deepest social divide in our nation’s history. Once, not so very long ago, we were loved and envied. Now we are universally despised and ridiculed. Let’s all hope that the lessons of this article mark a turning point, at which true believers drop their blinders and confront the ugly reality, painful though it may be. This is all part of the great catharsis America must undergo to void the toxins of the Bush Nightmare from its system. It’ll have to be a colon cleansing on an unprecedented scale, but it has to be done. Kudos to the conservatives like Will and Buckley and Scarborough who had the courage to defy the omerta of the inner sanctum. The fact that they and so many others have all done this tells us something is very rotten in Denmark and America has had enough. Enough.
The election is only 80 days away. Barring a miracle (and Karl Rove is great at producing miracles), it should mark the end of the Bush free for all and a return to more reasonable times, when a president had to back up what he said with facts, and when the checks and balances that made America great could do their work as envisaged by the Founding Fathers, separating America’s rulers from royalty and demanding their full accountability. It looks like we are heading there now, finally, but the worst mistake would be to get cavalier and consider it a done deal. One thing the Bushies do not do is go gentle into that good night. The good fight is now raging, and we can’t let our eye drift from the end goal for even an instant. This is the home stretch, and Americans with short memories need to be reminded of George’s shortcomings and foibles and fuck-ups again and again, at the highest decibel levels. I’m going to do my part, as I hope each of you will as well. Silence equals death. Complacency equals more of the same. No more. Never again.
1
By blogenfreude
Well I didn’t vote for him, and since New York doesn’t use Diebold machines, I can be sure I didn’t vote for him.
August 20, 2006 @ 9:37 am | Comment
2
By Johnny K
I didn’t vote for him either time (I confess would have voted for him in 2000 but I wasn’t old enough to vote).
As someone who follows the conservative sphere and even is part of it on many an occasion, I can say the reasoning was “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
We (thinking conservative types) knew that Bush was not an intellectual–that was fine by us, because intellectuals are so often astoundingly wrong. It’s too bad academics don’t suffer from shoddy work the way private sector people working under market forces do. But I digress…
Unfortunately he turned out to be beyond (or rather below) mere anti-intellectualism…were it not for 9/11 his betrayal of contemporary conservative principles would have resulted in a major challenger of some sort at the RNC convention, and just as such a challenger bode ill for Ford and Carter, it would have been a sign of Bush’s inevitable defeat.
But, 9/11 did happen, and the DNC picked the worst possible candidate–John Kerry, probably the only one who would have lost to W. At that point, it wasn’t a question on whether there would be a war on terror or not. Kerry would have continued it in some matter because he simply wouldn’t have had any other choice. The problem stemmed from his being so squishy. While W has ‘flip-flopped’ just as much, he was much better at projecting an image of resolve (unfortunately the outward appearances of resolve and blind ignorance turned out to be indistinguishable)
I’m sure you disagree with that of course but if you were wondering what was going through our minds, that was it.
—
On a side note, I’m in Tokyo and it is so immeasurably more enjoyable than any part of China that I am kicking myself for having picked Chinese as my target language instead….
August 20, 2006 @ 10:12 am | Comment
3
By Ivan
There is absolutely nothing “conservative” about Bush or about most Americans who call themselves “conservatives” in these times.
For a good discussion about how the meaning of “conservative” has been hijacked by vulgar blowhards who are not conservative at all, go to the latest issue of a (in Johnny K’s phrase) “THINKING conservative’s” magazine, “The American Conservative”, at:
http://www.amconmag.com
August 20, 2006 @ 10:28 am | Comment
4
By Keir
Didn’t think the article was particularly ‘mind-blowing’. Some guy I never heard of had a show that questioned Bush’s mental state which was promising but nothing really was made of it here. The White House was unhappy with George Will which wasn’t the first time. The rest simply stated many are disillusioned which again wasn’t earthshattering.
August 20, 2006 @ 4:12 pm | Comment
5
By richard
Keir, if you were familiar with The Scarborough Report, it would have blown your mind.
August 20, 2006 @ 5:32 pm | Comment
6
By michael
Is this any surprise? Hasnt George W always just been a front for the likes of Cheney? Now he is a liability they want to change the shop window dummy.
August 20, 2006 @ 6:02 pm | Comment
7
By Ahmet
I didn’t vote for him either time. Yet, there are plenty of Americans who are as ignorant and as stupid as Bush. He is their guy. With a combination of superstitious beliefs (otherwise known as religion) and xenophobia, a significant number of Americans are well represented by this incompetent “anti-intellectual.” What the opposition needs to do is to find somebody with the charisma and political savvy of Clinton and unselfish honesty of Carter. Who is that person? Hard to say.
Americans always fear the unknown. They don’t speak another language. Most don’t ever travel out of the country, let alone their state. They are steeped in beliefs that were out date in the 18th century, let along in the 21st. Bush is the perfect representative of the intellectual underclass of America characterized by NASCAR, WWF and the like. There is nothing inherently wrong with being a NASCAR or WWF fan, but to believe it to be a “slice of life” is delusional. In the same way that religion tries to superimpose “canned” or “static” solutions to the dynamic world.
August 20, 2006 @ 8:07 pm | Comment
8
By Shanghai Slim
Man, Ahmet, you are on a commenting roll!
Sometimes I feel that Americans deserve each and every painful minute of W’s presidency — after all, he didn’t get into office by accident (okay, however he got there, very large numbers of voters supported him two times).
The only thing that tempers these feelings is the knowledge of the terrible price the rest of the world pays for the disasterous irresponsibility of so many American voters.
August 20, 2006 @ 10:21 pm | Comment
9
By dangfingers
“America’s smartest conservatives are saying they’ve had enough of man-boy Bush.”
Yeah real smart – they’ve figured this out about 4 years late, in my humble opinion.
How many more clues could they have needed…?
It’s a sad day in the world when the smartest of the smart realize something is going wrong just in time for the next round of voting. Politics, that’s all this is about and they would rode the wave if he could stay on longer. They aren’t smart, they are deceivingly simple. End of that story.
August 20, 2006 @ 10:30 pm | Comment
10
By davesgonechina
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. – HL Mencken
August 20, 2006 @ 11:31 pm | Comment
11
By richard
My favorite HL Mencken, and quite relevant to this thread, is this one, about what it takes to run for president:
“all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre–the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
Is that guy prescient or what??
August 20, 2006 @ 11:42 pm | Comment
12
By Jackie
GWB is worse than an idiot. He’s uninformed, inarticulate, and doesn’t give a RATS ASS! He admits he doesn’t read. His approach to world affairs is like a doctor who gives a patient cough syrup for a cough, but isn’t concerned enough to order an x-ray and doesn’t find out the patient has TB. He has an MBA; no background in law. He tramples the constitution because he doesn’t know it, doesn’t care to know it, and is willing to go along with whatever he’s told by his loyal group who have no incentive to be impartial or honest. Those who WERE found themselves out of a job. Truman was a HS grad, but he knew what he didn’t know and surounded himself with people who knew their jobs, not just those who were friends from way back. The most powerful nation on earth (for the time being anyway) NEEDS a leader who is intellegent enough to understand the WHY behind the thinking of other nations and their leaders, and articulate enough to explain our governments position on world affairs not only to the rest of the world but to the American people. “If Syria would just tell Hezbollah to stop this shit problem solved” Since that’s not likely to happen, what’s our plan? Some knowledge of the history of the region might give some insight but he can’t be bothered. I just hope the world can hold itself together till we can get rid of him.
August 21, 2006 @ 1:51 am | Comment
13
By richard
Well, we put him there. So Mencken was absolutely right, a total moron is running the world. I, too, worry if we’ll come out of this alive. There seems to be no end to the misery he can inflict.
August 21, 2006 @ 2:21 am | Comment
14
By OtherLisa
Hey, who’s this “we”, Richard? 🙂
Seems to me that you and I have loudly dissented since 1999.
Ah, would that we could secede and let “Jesusland” go its own way…
Oh, speaking of NASCAR, I half-heard a commercial for some California NASCAR event, and they were advertising the refreshments, which included fine wine!
I don’t think I’m making this up.
August 21, 2006 @ 10:38 am | Comment
15
By helpsfo
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again…
When Americans vote for a president, they choose the guy they’d like to have over for a dinner party, not the guy who’s most qualified to run the country.
Can you imagine listening to Kerry go on and on for 3 hours at your dining room table? Or, would you rather listen to W talk about the s**t he pulled at Yale?
August 21, 2006 @ 2:15 pm | Comment
16
By OtherLisa
I guess this is the part where I remind everyone that Gore won the popular vote and that Kerry received the second largest number of votes cast for a Presidential candidate (I won’t even get into the election irregularities).
So, yeah, lots of people voted for the guy they wanted to have dinner with (something I never got, actually, because Dubya has always given me the screaming creeps). But lots of people voted for the policy wonk and the Boston Brahmin too.
August 21, 2006 @ 3:21 pm | Comment
17
By Jackie
Believe it or not, I’d rathe listen to Kerry! At least an intelligent conversation would be possible. Having GWB talk about the shit he pulled at Yale would be like having diner with Bluto, John Belushi’s character in “Animal House” I’d half expect him to belch out loud or light a fart!
August 22, 2006 @ 11:23 pm | Comment
18
By OtherLisa
Oh, speaking of farts…
Yeah. I’m shocked too. But here ya go…
From SALON’S “War Room”:
Restoring honor and dignity to the White House
Passing along the word from a “top insider,” U.S. News and World Report says that the president of the United States “can’t get enough of fart jokes.” “He’s also known to cut a few for laughs,” the magazine says, “especially when greeting new young aides.”
Link here.
August 23, 2006 @ 12:01 am | Comment
19
By richard
I saw that earlier today, Lisa, and I was so not surprised.
August 23, 2006 @ 12:55 am | Comment
20
By OtherLisa
I meant, shocked, as in, “I’m shocked – SHOCKED – to learn that there’s gambling going on.”
August 23, 2006 @ 1:01 am | Comment
21
By Ivan
I’d love to see a guy with a real sense of humour in the White House, but the last one we ever really had was Lincoln. Although Truman had a few good “in-your-face” moments of truth.
August 23, 2006 @ 2:32 pm | Comment
22
By Jackie
OH MY GOD! I thought I was joking! Didn’t Barbara Bush teach him ANYTHING!
August 23, 2006 @ 3:26 pm | Comment
23
By OtherLisa
Yeah, Bush has sort of destroyed satire.
Countdown did a segment tonight where they had photos of Bush with a commentator determining what sort of “poot” they illustrated. Then said commentator explained that Bush is obsessed by this topic because he has his head up his ass.
The mills of karma grind slow but exceedingly fine…
August 24, 2006 @ 1:01 am | Comment