Right, my response was meant to be a little tongue-in-cheek. You know me–I’m firmly in the Bush-was-at-least-as-bad-as-Trump camp. I 100% predict that we’ll see paeans to good-old Donald’s wacky doings in a few years, and the misery of the Trump years will disappear down the memory hole faster than… well… the misery of the Bush years did.
Ouch, my bad.
There was some Bush/Hitler language flying around in the early 2000s and the post 9/11 stuff (Patriot Act, torture, etc.) was really alarming. The Iraq War was disastrous but I also put that more in the box of ‘terrible policy’ than the box of ‘undermining the U.S. system from within.’
I never felt at the time that the American republic itself was in immediate existential danger. I feel that now every day. But my feelings are just my feelings, and anyway I’m a lot older now than then.
But, for example, just straight up refusing to concede an election he clearly lost, and then using brazen lies to goad a crowd into storming the Capitol while the vote is being certified, are not things I think W. Bush would have done.
On the other hand, the Brooks Brothers riot was an attempt to stop valid ballots from being legally recounted in Florida, in order to preserve Bush’s apparent victory, and it was led and carried out by Bush campaign and Republican Party operatives. It’s the prototype for what happened on January 6.
I didn’t either but the key word is immediate. The Patriot Act and the creation of Homeland Security sent shivers down my spine and I was deeply concerned as to where we were headed.
I guess I would just say that the increase in brazenness between then and now is not trivial. Trying to fudge your way around a system and just being openly-contemptuous of it - they are both ill-intentioned, but one seems considerably closer to the precipice than the other.
Well, remember, in the long term, we’re all dead!
Sure. They’re both bad people acting in a bad coalition, and one of them is worse, and that person’s coalition is worse.
This is pretty much my position. I felt the danger we feel today was coming, but I was hoping to be wrong- I wasn’t wrong, and Bush was a link in the chain- though I don’t think he wanted to end up here. That’s the difference.
Trump didn’t care if we ended up fascist- I don’t think Bush was ok with America going fascist.
hey did u guys know that nixon signed the epa into law
I agree with this.
Bush was okay with damaging our civil liberties, which is damning enough, but really most politicians are fine with it. It’s not like a lot of his post 9/11 stuff wasn’t heavily supported by nearly everyone at the end of the day.
I know you are joking, but the whitewashing of Nixon makes my eye twitch.
“Did you guys know Hitler signed the Nature Protection Law?”
I think it’s brought up less as an indication that Nixon was a swell guy, than as an example of how Republicans used to be more moderate at least in certain respects - of course he had to work with a Democratic Congress; I don’t know if they could have mustered a veto-proof majority for the EPA. (The EPA factoid also helps to highlight the utter absurdity of keeping Earth habitable having somehow become a partisan issue.)
Of course that is a partisan issue without the proper context.
Whether the Earth is habitable in my billionaire lifetime is the proper question.
Imagine. A time when wanting clean air and drinking water wasn’t a partisan political issue!
If the Cuyahoga River Fire happened today, Republicans would openly cheer it.
They’d lament, on television, that every river wasn’t flammable.
If your rivers aren’t flammable, it means you aren’t drilling enough oil and mining enough beautiful clean coal.
Plus having flaming rivers actually saves energy! You don’t have to turn your lights on at night.
Cleveland is never going to live this down.