Letters to the Editor
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Tresyk
One last thing: as any first-year English student knows, Aristotle defines a tragic hero as a great man undermined by hubris. On that ground alone, I can see no basis for the title of your book applying to the pathetically unprepared, intellectually lazy jerk who thought stealing the White House meant an 8-year vacation clearing brush on his dude ranch. If that makes me the equivalent of Bush himself, I plead guilty as charged.
The phrase "Tragic Legacy" contains an adjective and a noun. "Tragic" is an adjective modifying "legacy", not George Bush.
And you overlooked this clear fact while issuing your sermon as the spokesperson for what "any first-year English student knows."
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Why Should We Spend Time Analyzing GWB?
. I don't give a damn how Bush thinks. I don't give a damn about his belief system. All I care about is reality. Living with eyes and ears is reality. Breathing is reality. When I look around at the community in which I live - when I hear the people in that community - when I see the things that are happening in that community - when I look at places when I travel - when I speak to people that live in those places - when I listen to those people - when I turn on my television, my radio, my computer and I watch and listen, what I see and what I hear lets me know that my community, other communities, my state, other states, my country, other countries, are suffering as a result of the decisions made by George W. Bush. This country was a much better country before Bush came to power. And if someone wants to argue that point with me, let them. What I know is what I know. It's called reality. Those that cannot face reality will continue to live in their parallel universe of non-reality. In the meantime, those of us who live with the reality of the mess that Bush has made must be motivated to do something. Maybe it's too late, but one can only hope it isn't. Attempting to analyze Bush only drains us of the precious time and energy we need to use for a change. Don't waste any of it.
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Chocco
Attempting to analyze Bush only drains us of the precious time and energy we need to use for a change. Don't waste any of it.
Perhaps figuring out what happened over the last six years and why is one way to cause a change in what we do in the fugure.
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In some ways, we're ALL missing the point.
What we're discussing is simply the failure to see ones owns actions through the lens of another person's eyes. Someone upthread asserted that GWB is simple incapable of feeling empathy. I beleive that and I beleive it explains a lot. (It's not an accident that Dean's book is titled "Conservatives Without Conscience")
Add the grandiosity implicit in the "Clash of Civilations" and you've got a pretty solod story-line.
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Ironically Enough,
I passed on Chomsky, knowing that others would pounce, and Glenn would clarify.
"Ironically" why? Because normally, that would be my thing, don'tcha know. And here I had a clear shot, getting the second comment up on this thread.
Irony's doing pretty well, considering that it died on 9/11.
Just one more irony, I suppose.
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Motives aplenty in this administration
I've always felt that the actors in this administration are animated by a constellation of motives that work in synergy, each motive inspiring a corresponding narrative for the susceptible gulls of the electorate.
We have the True Believers, the Autocrats, the Crony Capitalists and the Unrepentent Pragmatists.
Bush, for instance, is a True Believer but he also exhibits elements of the Autocrat and the Crony Capitalist.
Cheney and Rove are, above all else, Unrepentent Pragmatists in the service of Autocracy. They will seize any narrative that enables them to continue to accrue power and justify their rapaciousness.
To me, this is the only explanation for what we've been seeing. Cheney, Rove and their ilk know that we're headed for disaster on multiple fronts: in Iraq, in Iran, with our erstwhile allies in Europe, with our unsupportable debt to China and others, on fossil fuel dependence and the global climate crisis. They know they're destroying the power, prestige and ideals of this country.
They just don't care. It's not important to them because people like Cheney and Rove are, ironically, the ultimate Darwinians. They believe that they'll survive the coming chaos. They believe that their money, their influence, their ruthlessness and their inherent superiority will guarantee that, come what may, they and theirs will emerge from the bunkers triumphant.
So they will gin up wars and spread chaos to ensure access to oil or, failing that, ensure nobody else can get at it. They will promote policies that destroy the prosperity of the middle class because their own welfare is paramount. They will endorse every backward, cockamamie superstition of their slavering base because they know that the resulting destruction of rights will never affect them. Their women will easily travel abroad for abortions. They will easily afford trips to overseas clinics for stem-cell treatments and the finest medical care. No matter how expensive the basic necessities of life become, they'll be able to afford it all and keep it behind walls in their gated communities.
Bush can and has been manipulated by his own predisposition toward a Manichean worldview. But I don't believe the powers behind the throne think in those terms. They're all about efficacy and advantage, such that there is a real banality to this Administration's evil.
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I love self-illustrating posts
America's most ruthless enemies are countling on the Greenwald's of the world to help them destroy America from within.
Epic battle of good vs evil indeed!
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Well....
That brought 'em out of the woodwork, dinnit? Worth the price of admission it was, too. Too bad I'm gonna be out Democratting today, and will have to catch up later.
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I'm going to challenge you on this one
I haven't read the book yet, but if past history of your writing is any guide then I would expect that you would stick to your thesis and not wander off. And that is, stay with to the evidence and the logical conclusions and leave aside whatever unknowable and purely speculative such as what Bush "truly believes."
It is hard to believe we can write so many words over such a simple idea, isn't it?
Anyway, whether or not it is germane to your book, I would contest that it is not impossible to know what someone -- particularly someone so visible as Bush -- really believes. I used to believe otherwise, until way back when (2001?) I read Mark Crispin Miller's "Bush Dyslexicon." In that very early work Professor Miller points out that Bush is actually quite an eloquent speaker -- if the topic is something that matters to him such as the death penalty or the need for corporate self-regulation. As soon as he is required to speak on anything he really doesn't give a damn about -- such as education, domestic policy or the environment you get these outrageous verbal gaffes that for the most part the press smooths over for him.
Whatever else he is the man is no actor and armed with only this simplest technique of psychological observation you can see the core of him. I don't think anyone here cares what I think about Bush but I assert that it IS possible to know what is going on in his mind based on objective evidence.