Why America is like GWB. (long)

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

The thought recently occurred to me that perhaps America truly deserves to have GWB as president because in many ways, he truly represents the country.

I am not of course, speaking of the half (or more) of the country that voted against him, and is opposed to his presidency, or the fact that the world does not deserve this presidency. I'm simply referring to the fact that in some way it may be fitting, if not fair to the rest of us, for America to have a president that reflects its current state.

To me, GWB is a guy who possibly had significant potential in life. I mean simple, biological potential in terms of intelligence and health. I view him as probably of average intelligence, somewhere between slightly below to slightly above average. It's impossible to truly know now because so much myth and propaganda has been layered onto him.

The trouble is, he was born into a prosperous and connected family whose main ethic is the wielding and cultivation of wealth and influence rather than truly making your own way in life and your own mark. In terms of his personal qualities, he obviously lacked any drive to reach out and achieve anything beyond what his family and money would attain for him. And he has been elevated to his office entirely through connections and wealth and through no accomplishment of his own. His "accomplishments" both in the private sector and since entering public life, have been negative ones, failures.

America as a country is very much like GWB. Americans in 2004 are extremely prosperous relative to most of the rest of the world, but have that prosperity through no accomplishment of their own for the most part, but have inherited the prosperity from the events and accomplishments of the past, mostly the last century.

In the current Republican dominated political environment, there is no leadership driving Americans to excel, just be fat and happy and rest on your laurels and your tax cuts and on your (dwindling) sack of gold. Just like the shrub family ethos apparently does not encourage scholastic or moral excellence beyond cashing in on your connections and inherited wealth and compounding that into even more wealth and influence, without any accompanying accomplishment.

Americans have enormous potential, like I am presuming GWB had. We are a reasonably well educated population with great financial capital and natural resources enough to accomplish almost anything. But there is currently no leadership to inspire Americans to accomplish anything except to enjoy material possessions and to feel superior to others if you happen to have been born here, and attend a Christian church.

That's not leadership.

Huge countries like China and India, with over a billion people, despite being predominantly poor, have whole populations the size of the U.S. contained within them that are well educated and extremely motivated. It is a mistake to dream that without proper leadership in this country that it might not be surpassed within a generation or two by such countries.

[JaneEyrez]

1. Thank you for this thoughtful analysis.

I have also felt that a lot of America deserves Bush. Unfortunately, the rest of us DO NOT... as you said, including the rest of the world.

But even amongst those who support him, many still do not deserve him, because their support is based on misinformation and lies. If they could understand what he's doing to the country they love, they would be aghast, just as we are, and so ashamed.

I really believe that the supporters who support him for the real agenda that he pursues is a relatively tiny group;, but unfortunately they have a lot of power and money and control, especially over the media, and so the common man in America continues to be mislead.

It's terribly sad. I would look away and ignore it all, but so many people are dying and being destroyed for the horrible goals of this administration. Some may feel that they deserve it, but they don't. Nobody does.

[Lexingtonian]

2. that's the nice way of posing the argument

I think I posted something along these lines some time ago. In the negative, i.e. how Dubya's pathologies and deficiencies resemble those of the half of American society he represents.

You'd have an easier time understanding Dubya if you lived in Ottawa/Toronto or some other more recent Anglo-majority British colony. He's an extremely typical scion of the colonialistic plutocrat/faux aristocratic class. Exploiter and manipulator, etc. Except that he's more psychiatrically deficient, but he fits the particular American situation better for it because the U.S. population has a higher proportion of religion-based mentally aberrant people.

It's actually kind of fun extrapolating backwards from Republican/conservative leader mental aberrations to their voters.
Nixon- stroke personality (angry/paranoid-obsessive, inconsistent)
Ford - vaguely alcoholic, in a good way (depressive)
Reagan - Alzheimer's onset (amnesiac, placid)
Bush Sr.- alcoholic, midling (depressive/angry-violent; Babs is a nasty alcoholic)
Dole - mild stroke personality (obloquy-prone old man, inconsistent)
McCain - stroke personality (angry/paranoid-obsessive, inconsistent)
Dubya - temporal lobe epileptic (amnesiac, various 'religious' delusions, faux grandeur)

They represent a portion of society that is running out of raison d'etre and is starting to die. But it could be a while yet.

[pen dragon]

3. America is

a gigantic luxury passenger liner of old, full of wealthy partiers, who elected Bush as their captain, and are too wrapped up in themselves to care about the giant field of icebergs he's steering them through in the dark. While the poor locked away in steerage are frozen in a state of terror watching each berg scrape past their port holes at high speed.

Dubya (at the wheel): Woo hoo! Hey slim, Gimme that blindfold. It'll make me even confidenter! I'M THE KINGA THE WORLD!

[PROGRESSIVE1]

4. True