Reply #16: Hatin' Bush Since Before His Selection [View All]

[Plaid Adder]

Here's an old chestnut from the early days of my loathing of Bush, when he was still a candidate and it was OK to say he was a moron:

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What you are about to read is what rhetoricians call an ad hominem argument. As anyone will tell you, ad hominem arguments are logically flawed and should not be considered convincing. When you sit down to write a persuasive argument, please remember never to resort to any of the scurrilous, cheap, and logically bankrupt tactics I am about to employ. Thank you.

I HATE GEORGE W! I HATE HIM I HATE HIM I HATE HIM! OH GOD DO I HATE HIM!!

Sorry. I've been avoiding writing the Dubya critique for a number of reasons. One, Dubya critiques himself every time he opens his mouth or performs an action. Two, there is no honor in going after an opponent who clearly has no means of defending himself. Three, I can't talk about Dubya for very long without going

I HATE HIM! I HATE HATE HATE HATE HIM! IT'S UNBELIEVABLE HOW MUCH I JUST HATE THE SOUND OF THE BASTARD'S VOICE! AND THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN LISTENING TO HIM IS LOOKING AT HIM!

And that's really not what you'd call productive or rational debate. And yet, I cannot get away from the fact that Dubya makes my skin crawl and my blood pressure rise, even over and above my normal response to any Republican. So here I sit, trying to answer the question, "What makes me hate George W. so much more than I ever hated Reagan or Bush Sr.?"

I was discussing this with some friends of mine and one of them suggested that Dubya may evoke a special kind of hatred in educators. In her words, "He's just got that look on his face that says, 'I didn't do the reading, but I bet I can make her think I did.'" I think this is an excellent point of entry from which to being to explore my deep-seated personal antipathy toward him. Because it's true: he reminds me of every student I ever had who didn't do the reading, showed up to class hungover or not at all, got a D, and then bitched about it.

In fact, I think that's the answer. Like that archetypal D student, who often is admitted only because his father is contributing toward the construction of the new biology building, Dubya did not get to where he is on his own merits; if he were not the son of George Herbert Walker Bush, he would be a struggling aluminum siding salesman somewhere near Amarillo. And yet, like that D student, Dubya refuses to see the gap between his abilities and his success as the result of privilege, assuming instead that he is entitled to money and power through some divine right of succession. And, like those D students, Dubya staunchly decries affirmative action, despite the fact that he has been benefiting from the "Good Old Boy" version of it all his life.

From that sense of entitlement grows the massive irresponsibility that one finds so infuriating about the archetypal D student. We've all seen it: the student who has been blowing off work all semester and comes to you the week before the final trying to convince you not to flunk him; the student who, when you explain to him that you have found the website from which he plagiarized his entire term paper, reacts with outrage and injury rather than remorse. The idea that one's grade for the course is intimately linked to the amount of effort one puts into it, and that one's decision to fail to show up, fail to hand in written work, or steal one's work wholesale from another source might have consequences, often appears to be completely foreign and baffling to these students, who apparently are unused to being held accountable for their own actions. All of Dubya's responses to virtually any question about his present or past behavior betray the same unfamiliarity with the concept of personal responsibility. Which is ironic, given the stress the Republican party has traditionally placed on personal responsibility as applied to the poor, racial minorities, unwed mothers, and the like.

This is just one of many reasons that the fact that Dubya has made education the centerpiece of his platform is the most grotesque and cruel irony of a campaign that is itself a bitter cosmic joke. Dubya is, in fact, a walking demonstration of the impotence of education in the face of privilege. Having had the best education that money could buy or influence secure, Dubya has emerged from Yale unable to complete a sentence without embarrassing himself, paining his listeners and butchering the English language. When not performing like a trained seal under controlled conditions, as he was during the Republican Convention, Dubya is an unmitigated disaster. Witness his response to the charge of subliminal advertising in his anti-Gore ads, in which one is hard put to determine which is more depressing: his knee-jerk refusal to accept responsibility, his peevish and whining tone, or his inability to pronounce the word "subliminal."

What has allowed Dubya to emerge from the Ivy League with his ignorance and idiocy intact? My guess is laziness. Why should he bother learning stuff when he can coast through life in his daddy's wake? Which makes the idea that Dubya will be bringing "character" back to the White House the second most grotesque irony of his campaign. I think that it is true that we can trust Dubya to refrain from screwing his interns in the Oval Office. But that does not mean that Dubya has "character." In fact, from what I can see, Dubya has less "character" than just about anyone else in politics. To wit:


He has never had to work a day in his life, and doesn't have plans to start.

His only response, when challenged or questioned, tends to be a petulant whine which translates roughly as, "Mom! Make Cindy stop picking on me!"

His platform changes from minute to minute, since the only real plank in it is "I want to be President cause it's my turn."

Not only does Dubya not know who the prime minister of Canada is, he doesn't see why he should have to. After all, nobody told him it was going to be on the test.

Even his father realizes he can't be trusted with the job, which is why he assigned Dick Cheney the job of babysitting him.

In short, Dubya is a spoiled brat. And because he is a spoiled brat, we cannot expect good government from him. The brat disregards all other considerations in order to serve his own selfish needs. The brat cannot be appealed to in the name of decency, honor, compassion, or even pragmatism. The brat will only do what the brat wants to do; and what the brat usually wants to do is enjoy himself at the expense of those over whom he has power. The brat, in other words, is closely related to the asshole, which as you will remember is the root of all political and social evil.

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All still true,

The Plaid Adder