Why you should despise Bush

To my considerable shock, I discovered this morning that my cleaner supports George W Bush “because he’s a nice man.” She must be one of the small minority of people in Britain who knows the results of the US mid-term elections and not be both pleased and relieved. I hardly knew where to start and I seriously momentarily thought about asking for her key and suggesting that she doesn’t come back.

My cleaner is a nice person, who I suspect is greatly influenced by a friend of hers who lives in my block. This friend is somebody who I took a visceral dislike to when I met her (she seems the living definition of smug, petty, reactionary horridness).

Some things are so obvious that it’s hard to say why you believe them. If somebody were to ask you on the spot why murder is wrong, you may stumble for a moment to collect your thoughts. Your most likely answer is “because it obviously is!” That’s much how I answered the question of why I believe Bush to be bad news.

Now that I’ve had a bit of time to think it through, I thought I’d outline my top ten reasons for why the right thing to feel about Bush is loathing. I’ve tried to restrict myself to ten. Only the first two of these came to mind quickly enough to share them with my cleaner.

1. He stole the 2000 election. His henchmen deliberately designed voting forms to cause voter confusion in Florida. His pals on the Supreme Court shamelessly abused the sacred trust given to them when they were sworn in when they stopped the proper process of enquiry to usher Bush into power. Any statistical analysis shows the result in Florida to be totally invalid.
2. Despite the above, he had the sheer gall to take the oath of office; the only promise of which is to preserve, protect and defend the constitution. This supposedly Christian man took this oath with his hand on the Bible. This means he’s either lying about his faith, totally without understanding of what the oath means or just deeply stupid. My belief is that he’s all three.
3. Despite overwhelming evidence, he refuses to even acknowledge the damage to the planet that his buddies in the oil industry are doing. This is unforgivable.
4. He has no understanding or respect for the rule of law. Guantanamo Bay is an abomination. Tony Blair has a similar disregard for law. In civilised countries, we are ruled by laws, not by the whims of the most powerful. Protracted internment without trial is indefensible in all situations. Any court would agree to imprison people who clearly represent a danger. So why is Bush so determined to keep them outside the reach of the judiciary (remembering that a bent judiciary gave him a job in the first place?) Guantanamo Bay is also a violation of the US Constitution. I refer to my earlier point about failing to even observe the constitution, let alone protect it.
5. His government frequently bullies the media to ensure that alternative arguments are not given voice. A democracy requires a free media and he knows that. The neo-conservatives in the US aren’t just hostile to the Democrats, they’re hostile to democracy.
6. He greatly exaggerates fear of terrorism to get his way on a bunch of deeply unconnected things. He never tires of making political capital out of the tragedy of 9/11. This desecrates the memory of those who died.
7. His management of the US economy shows a deep lack of concern for consequences, as long as those consequences won’t be on his watch. The US economy is in la-la land and will inevitably crash sometime soon because the deficit has spun out of control from the beginning of his administration. He inherited the US economy in excellent state and has destroyed this in rapid time. Once again, the Democrats will have to mop up the mess. Bush and his pals will manage to spin this as the Democrats’ fault.
8. He smoothed over the anger caused by stealing an election in 2000 by promising to be “a uniter”. He then went on to bang on about gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research and all sorts of other issues that have no place in US politics (if you don’t know why, read the declaration of independence and the constitution itself. You’ll find very little about morals and values and rather a lot about freedom, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”). He did this as a way to keep his pals in the home educating, frothing-at-the-mouth, howling-at-the-moon extreme Christian right happy. He has surely been the most divisive president in living history. He has divided America in a way that will take decades to repair. In 1787, the world was a much more religious place, but the authors of the constitution were wise enough to ensure that religion and politics were kept at a safe distance for the good of both. Bush doesn’t care about this, as long as it gets him votes.
9. His obfuscation over a wide range of political issues is shocking. Osama bin Laden (remember him? He’s not talked of much now as he got away) has never had anything whatever in common with Saddam Hussein. They’re both foreign and frankly darkies. That’s good enough a connection for most of America. Bush knows this and he plays on it, despite the inevitable consequences of social strife and division.
   
10. He is just plain stupid. Leaving aside his inability to string together a sentence (even when an obliging speechwriter has pre-strung and autocued it for him) he has little less than contempt for history. Gulf War (part 2) was clearly going to become Vietnam (part 2). People in the street in Manchester could have told him that. At the time, I believed that invading Iraq was unavoidable, at least after some of the grandstanding and pose striking of the equally odious Jacques Chirac. However, there was never any hint of an exit strategy. He was stupid enough to believe that “mission accomplished” was true back in May 2003. Nobody who takes such a misplaced pride in being ignorant of the lessons of history should be polishing the White House floors, let alone soiling the Oval Office with his presence.

If you’re a Republican supporter and you’re offended by any of this, go to hell. Leave a comment though, as your pathetic attempts to justify your mindlessness will give us all a laugh.

On the plus side, America has belatedly woken up to all this. This is despite the inexpressible right wing propagandist bias of the US “news” media, meaning that a decent number of Americans are defiantly able, against considerable odds, to think for themselves – eventually.

God Bless America.