Politics.comforum

solikat Member Since: Jan 26th, 2009 - Debate started 11 months ago

• Visit my Profile

I went to see the movie “Frost/Nixon” tonight. It was about an interview in which President Nixon admitted, in surprisingly forthright terms, that he had “let down” the American public during his administration. I gather from the commentary throughout the film that this interview was viewed by the American public as the confession that would never come in an actual trial. Though Nixon is certainly portrayed in the context of the story as the antagonist, he is at least allowed the dignity of being seen as a human being. He appears as a human with many flaws; a lonely, broken and defeated human, but human nonetheless.

It got me wondering how President Bush (George W.) will come to be viewed a few decades down the line. On the day of President Obama’s inauguration, I was shocked and dismayed by what I heard from the crowd as Pres. Bush’s helicopter carried him away. I caught at least a dozen voices singing “Kiss Him Goodbye” as a final celebratory taunt and jab. I’m sure that those who participated in this childish display must have thought they were expressing the emotional state of the entire country. In fact, as I read the various comments on message boards across the net, the consensus seems to be that Pres. Bush was incompetent as a leader and criminal in his uses of the office.

Funny, I can’t find a single coherent thought in the bunch. Nobody can pinpoint for me the precise actions on the President’s part that led them to turn on him. Did he kick a puppy to death on television? Or maybe he was caught embezzling tax dollars? Whatever it was, it must have been horrendous to warrant such violent emotion, but nobody can recall for me exactly what he did to draw such hatred down on his head. It is true, in my observation, that certain civil liberties have been degraded as a result of the Patriot Act. The emergency powers granted to our government in the wake of 9/11 are deplorable and will most certainly come back to haunt us in the hands of future administrations. However, I can see where President Bush might have seen the need for such an extreme move. After the towers went down, the American public was calling for blood (don’t deny it, I heard you screaming for justice and renewed safety right along with the rest of us). Misguided as it might be, I am convinced that Pres. Bush had nothing but the best interests of the American people in mind when he went to bat with that particular piece of legislation. Moreover, I rarely see anyone mentioning this particular action as a reason for hating President Bush. The biggest reasons I hear are that he was unable to deliver a decent speech to save his life (true) and that he committed war-crimes in the middle-east. (Apparently there is no need to pinpoint exactly which of his actions were criminal.)

As far as I can tell, the American people’s hatred of President Bush is a result of mass-hypnosis. At some point during the Bush administration a negative visceral reaction to the man grew in the public gut, and that snowballed into outright animosity. No actual reasons to dislike the man or to feel victimized by his actions was necessary; the public was content to allow this vague emotional response to spiral out of control without any need for debate or logic. Brains were turned off and the volume on the mouths of the disenfranchised was turned up. If there hadn’t been secret service crawling all over the grounds and a need to present the expected level of decorum, I believe Pres. Bush would have been in serious danger of getting himself lynched as the finale to Pres. Obama’s inauguration.

The hellish part is, I think I may actually be able to pinpoint the moment that the mob was first incited to vomit at the sound of his name, the sight of his face. I believe it all started with a movie; a pseudo-documentary piece of propaganda called “Fahrenheit 911”. (Dave Kopel has put together a coherent and thoughtful response to the inaccuracies, distortions of truth, and outright lies contained in this film. I recommend this work to anyone who is interested in going over it all point-by-point.) The film is frankly a genius piece of work. At no point does Moore actually come out and accuse the president of any heinous or dishonest act. Instead he uses careful editing techniques and smarmy emotional voice-over to gently imply the most horrendous betrayals on the president’s part. One comes away from this movie with the vague impression that President Bush rigged the 2004 election, that he cheated his way to the top in order to gain power and wealth, even that he arranged the 9/11 attacks on the world trade center just so he would have an excuse to start a war in the middle-east (presumably for the sake of gaining control over desert oil reserves for his own profit). Essentially, the film convicts Pres. Bush of being monstrous and evil without even accusing him of anything specific, let alone does it have the courage to arrest him, charge him, and put him on trial.

I call the film genius because I recall that its release was at around the same time as the seed of disgust with President Bush was planted in the public subconscious. I doubt that anyone will come forward and admit that this movie was the reason for his hatred of the Bush administration. After all, who wants to confess that his political position is based on the manipulation of a propaganda film? In fact, most Bush-haters are probably completely unaware that this movie is the source of their dislike. The seed itself was only planted directly in a few extremists. From there, it had to spread like a virus. This was a simple matter of converting a few noisy celebrities. The American public likes to listen to celebrities and it likes the easy way out. It’s easy enough to make broad sweeping statements about “war crimes” and “lies”. There is no need to research the facts and to form a coherent opinion based on truth and rational thought. After all, it’s common knowledge that Bush was a bad president, was the worst president ever. Why should we go through the hassle of using logic and reason to prove this if everyone already feels it to be true?

Bravo, America! We allowed a single angry film-maker and a subsequent mass-hypnosis to brainwash us into turning our president into a national scapegoat. Isn’t it wonderful that we can wash ourselves clean of sin simply by ejecting him from the White House? Now that he’s gone, surely everything will be fixed over-night! Now we can eliminate hunger, poverty, corruption and war!

I hope to be proven wrong. I hope that this post will be met with a cascade of legitimate, well-constructed arguments – a collection of rational and logical reasons to dislike the Bush administration – a total lack of inane comments and emotional outbursts. However history decides to view President Bush, I hope that view is constructed from thought and fact and not from the vague emotions clouding the minds of our television-educated civilization.

Tell me, please, that a novelty piece of propaganda didn’t unjustly turn George W. Bush into the most despised President since Nixon!

P.S. I admit that I haven’t exactly gone out and done extensive research on the Bush administration’s actions myself, but then again I’m not making any claims about President Bush’s moral standing or ability to lead our country. It may well be that “Dubya” deserves to be as despised as he is. All I’m saying is that I’d like to see the animosity come from somewhere rational if it has to come from anywhere at all. Otherwise, where can this country hope to end up but swamped and destroyed by an angry ignorant mob?

• Reply