Why Bush is SO hated by the left (explained)!

Because those who appease the bully hate those who judge and confront the bully - "that's it!"

- Dennis Prager, June 30, 3004.

(Which is why I have so long annoyed those leftists on the board unwilling to judge the evils staring them in the face!

--Orson)

 

Or perhaps it is because the administration, like you and Prager, sees the world in such incredibly simplistic terms. This is not grade school, and your grade school analogies are ridiculous.

 

Yeah, really. Total nonsense. It's like an earlier thread where the poster likened the US to the rich, smart, powerful kid who can beat the crap out of everyone. Everyone hates us because they're jealous of us, or so the reasoning went.

It's interesting (and sad) that the right seems to see things so simplistically, and that somehow they feel we are all lifted up by war. The solution, by God, is to just kill everyone that stands in our way.

Our God is the better one, right? Bush, and Reagan before him, implied that they had (have) some special pipeline to God - that somehow he is handing out the instructions. If you want to believe that, fine, but really I think we all know (at least on some level) that it's a bunch of horsecrap.

We are wiping out terrorism. Are we really? Bin Laden is hiding somewhere laughing his fool head off. Since 9-11, we have spent untold billions on security and the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are a nation very much divided. We have lost over 700 troops (and killed thousands - yes many who were trying to kill us, and many who were not), and we have engendered enough animosity in the Middle East to fuel terrorism for the next century.

Nice work. Mission accomplished. For Bin Laden, that is.

 

You're assuming quite a bit there.

I think the root of Bush bashing goes to a deep-seated hatred of Bush's religious beliefs, and what they stand for. The "elite" hates to think someone could be so "stupid" to believe in a God and still rise to the Presidency. Kinda like at my business where I am the undisputed top performer, to the angst of the Yalies there, because I graduated from a non-Ivy law school.

What's the alternative to the 'war on terrorism"? Assuming the position? How do you deal with people who want you dead, no questions asked?

 

terrorism caused 10.000 victims within the last 5 years in the us. 80.000 died on aids (of currently about 1 million HIV positive), countless numbers on cancer, the tobacco industry caused 15.000.000 victims the last 5 years in the us, 50.000.000 million have died worldwide due to malnutrition.

no question, war against terrorism is the top priority, billions and billions well spent.

 

First, it's impossible to hate someone's beliefs. Bush's stupidity has nothing to do with his religious beliefs per se. How he uses those beliefs has everything to do with his studpidity. I don't despise Bush because of his faith, and I suspect that most liberals feel similarly. The problem is he seems to think his beliefs somehow validate his actions. He violates, in the most fundamental way, the separation of church and state. Unwittingly, he turns the war on terrorism into a war about religion. Thus he fuels hatred for who knows how many generations to come.

Why is it so many conservatives continue to point to the giant chip on their shoulders by referring to all liberals as "elites", and implying that we all graduated from ivy league schools? What sort of nonsense is that? In doing so, they just invite ridicule, which, I suppose, just intensifies their "hatred" of "elites."

If one defines "elite" in monetary terms, then the Republican conservatives are probably the more elite. Bush referring to liberals as "elites" is almost hilarious. Is it possible to be more elite than Bush? He grew up in a wealthy family, and had virtually everything handed to him, including the presidency. All of his jobs could charitably be described as sinecures.

If one defines "elite" in intellectual terms, then, no escaping it, the liberal view is the more defensible on intellectual grounds. Thinking about things other than yourself is the germ of philosophical thought. Conservatives can't stand this, and, admittedly, liberals heap on the ridicule.

You ask what's the alternative to the war on terrorism? The alternative is to realize that those who want us dead are (or at least were) a small minority, and that you don't alienate an entire region trying to smoke out a minority. You also realize that by doing it the Bush way: starting illegitimate wars and invoking religion in front of religious zealots, you do not make us safer. You also realize that we are not a better country when divided. In short, you try to think about the larger picture, instead of your primal, brain-stem-generated urge to kill people you disagree with. In short, you try to be smarter, instead of a better killer. This is the pure liberal view, and many, including me, see what's happening instead as stupid.

Signed,

not a Yale, Harvard et al. graduate

 

Tom57

Although we don't share the exact political beliefs, I can tell by your writing style and artiulation that you think before you write. Keep up the good work and the good debate. It makes for great reading!

 

<<terrorism caused 10.000 victims within the last 5 years in the us. 80.000 died on aids (of currently about 1 million HIV positive), countless numbers on cancer, the tobacco industry caused 15.000.000 victims the last 5 years in the us, 50.000.000 million have died worldwide due to malnutrition.

no question, war against terrorism is the top priority, billions and billions well spent.>>


This is a really poor way of looking at things, truly. You can't judge the severity of a problem simply by counting the numbers of the dead. Yes, AIDS is a major problem, but terrorist attacks threaten to unravel the fabric of an entire society. The attacks of 911 absolutely crippled the economy. If people are afraid to go out and do things, if insurance companies are afraid to provide coverage at reasonable costs, if investors are afraid to invest...the entire country implodes in short order.

Pug

 

Just another thought....

Fear is the ultimate weapon to use against a society, and it is a terrorist's weapon of choice. It's cheap (and sometimes free), and it has no borders or limitations. You may recall the Beltway Sniper of Metropolitan Maryland and Virginia. Well, living and working in the metro area, I can tell you that people here were absolutely terrified to leave their homes, go to gas stations, park at shopping malls or restaurants, etc. Two guys with a beat up car and a rifle, paralized an entire region. Schools stopped allowing children outside for recess, all outdoor sporting activities were canceled, field trips to the zoo or downtown DC were stopped, pedestrians ducked and zig-zagged at crosswalks, gas stations had to offer free pumping services to attract people back to the pumps, shopping centers had to hire security firms, beltway traffic came to a dead stop after every shooting while the police set up road blocks and searched cars, etc. All of this fear cause by two guys with a rifle! The real danger of terrorism is NOT the number of casualties it causes (although with the threat of chemical/biological/nukes, casualties is also a real concern), the real danger of terrorism is the fear it spreads through society, and the speed at which it spreads. It can, and will, literally cripple a nation.

Pug

 

Hard-Core Looney Left Unleashed!

Hard-core leftists like Michael Moore (the Herman Goebbels of the Democratic Party), Hillary, Kennedy, and he-who-is-left-of-Kennedy Kerry hate because hating and pessimism is core to what being a leftist is! It is in their nature. They cry. They moan. The sky is falling. Where is government? They love government control of everything and HATE the people. Keep more of your money???? OMG, the people are TOO STUPID to know what to do with THEIR OWN money! Note Hilary and others of that ilk are telling us to our faces they will take away the tax relief. THAT IS OUR MONEY, DAMMIT! But they think all we earn is THEIR and they decide how much to give us back.

The fun thing for me is the looney left thinks it is safe to come out... so this should be fun to watch.

 

I'm not a leftist and you annoy me, Orson.

A. Your posts are divisive. Degreeinfo is a distance learning board. That's a subject that brings all of us together. We should be allies and we could be friends. Setting us against each other accomplishes nothing except creating lasting hostility where there was none before.

B. Your posts often aren't even your own words. Once you start a thread and generate a heated confrontation, you usually don't participate in it but instead sit back and admire your work.

C. Your points are usually hyperbole. They don't introduce issues for thoughtful discussion so much as they try to rally crusades. Everything is reduced to good-guys and bad-guys.

 

Orson

I think threads like this that you make are devisive, offensive, and tear the community of Degreeinfo apart. I think they are a true diservice and I wish you would take them else where. Short of that, I think the moderators should delete them. We need posts that bring us closer and let us debate ideas respectfully not with hate.

 

Re: Re: Why Bush is SO hated by the left (explained)!

I don't see it that the topics of such threads must be divisive as long as the ideas are debated respectfully. I don't see why we cannot mostly agree and have considerable unity on what constitutes quality and/or utility in education, but disagree on other matters as politics, religion, war, marriage, or gun control. Shared beliefs about education do not require agreement about every other issue, and a good education in any area of learning should be allowed expression.

I for one, admit ignoranance about politics, and would like to see here both the views of the political left and the political right represented. These respectful discussions should be based on properly presented facts and good reasonings not on fantasies or fallacious logic. As long as posting is done in this manner on such topics , I don't see such threads as divisive at all .

I suppose if the overwhelming majority of posters wanted Orson to stop causing the discussion of such issues, then were that overwhelming majority to stop reading and responding , his threads would quickly die from malnutrition.

 

I think that there's a lot of truth to that.

The US is the world's one super-power right now, in the sense of being able to act globally and being able to overpower all but a handful of states. I think that many countries out there fear that this power could be turned against them, and even some of our allies (particularly the former great powers) resent their own comparative inability to influence events.

It's why the Americans are so often accused of "unilateralism". It's why the French and Germans want so badly to make the European Union into a new great power competitior to American influence.

That's a pretty simplistic view of "the right", isn't it?

When did Bush or Reagan ever preach a holy war?

In real life, things are different. After 9-11, the United States was in a state of severe anxiety. The public wanted blood vengeance. There was a very real danger of an anti-Muslim pogrom taking place in this country. The President moved quickly to defuse that, making daily media appearances with American Muslim leaders, counseling calm. The danger abated.

Countries around the world have increased their security postures in recent years. It's not a uniquely American thing. I'm not sure how one could argue for not doing it.

The war in Afghanistan was inevitable, given the Taliban's alliance with bin Ladin and his state-within-a-state in that country.

It did take courage to pursue though, given the fact that Afghanistan was a land-locked country with no US allies as neighbors. It took courage considering the pundits who predicted it would be the new Vietnam for America, just as it had been for the Soviets.

I am more troubled by Iraq. I really wonder if the unexpectedly quick Afghan success didn't create some hubris in the White House. The President was very likely advised: "Look how easy that was. Look at the things that American power can accomplish if we just dare to use it."

So we moved on from knocking off a peripheral extremist regime whose fanatic excesses were disliked by most of the Islamic world to striking at the heart of the Arab world. Baghdad is a city of fabled history to Arabs, the home of the Caliphate and of Islamic learning. Saddam may have been hated and feared by his own people, but he was also the strongest of the Arab strong-men. Throwing him out of power in such a humiliating fashion was a reminder even to Saddam's enemies that the same thing could very easily be done to them. That in turn generates fear and resentment among proud people, just as it would in us.

Maybe, maybe not.

Before we can form an intelligent opinion on that, we probably need to raise our sights above cheerleading for the "left" or the "right" and above a belief that all the world's problems are traceable to "this administration".

I think that we are in the midst of events of world-historical importance. These globalizing events, the homogenization of world cultures and the gradual evolution of a world economy and a world civilization, the erosion of traditional forms of authority and the fragmentation of societies into atomistic individuals with their accompanying anomie, have been underway for many generations.

It's difficult for us to even see that stuff happening because the scale is so large, both in terms of time and geography. It's also much easier to take these changes for granted when they involve the extension of our own secular Western worldview as opposed to having a radically different foreign worldview imposed on us. The instantaneous contemporary state that we call the present simply forms the unexamined framework of our everyday world.

It's so much easier to lay all the angst at the feet of the party in power and reduce it to simple-minded political ideology. Both the "left" and the "right" are very adept at doing just that.

But while we can't even focus on the larger events, that's the war that Osama bin Ladin is fighting. He doesn't care about George Bush or John Kerry. He's fighting what's happening to his traditional Islamic world. He lives in a context of centuries, not months.

 

Re: Hard-Core Looney Left Unleashed!

"Hard-core leftists like Michael Moore (the Herman Goebbels of the Democratic Party)"

If you're comparing Michael Moore to a Right-Wing propagandist, I can compare Rush Limbaugh's EIB to PRAVDA.

Gotta love the first amendment.

 

I'm glad there's someone out there thinking of the big picture. Refreshing.

 

I thought youse guys were college edukated there hey....

I do believe the correct reference would have been to JOSEPH Goebbels (1897-1945).

HERMAN (actually Hermann) would have been associated with Hermann Goering.

I love it when right-wingers demonstrate their utter ignorance and deficiency in education. About the only one these days who doesn't is the eminent scholar, William F. Buckley, Jr.

For an example of this bright light in the conservative constellation's thought process, see:

http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/buckley.asp

Do any of you "Rush guys" even know who Buckley is?

 

Re: Re: Hard-Core Looney Left Unleashed!

No, that would not be a proper analogy to draw. The EIB is not state funded.

Rush Limbaugh is successful because many people agree with him and CHOOSE to listen to his show. Radio stations carry his show because advertisers line-up to pay top dollar to run their spots during those three hours.

The Pravda analogy would more appropriately be applied the NPR, which is state funded and enjoyed by far fewer people than the EIB.

 

Re: Re: Hard-Core Looney Left Unleashed!

No, that would not be a proper analogy to draw. The EIB is not state funded.

Rush Limbaugh is successful because many people agree with him and CHOOSE to listen to his show. Radio stations carry his show because advertisers line-up to pay top dollar to run their spots during those three hours.

The Pravda analogy would more appropriately be applied the NPR, which is state funded and enjoyed by far fewer people than the EIB.

 

My analogy

Ok, A few things and I am not going to click quotes, just respond to the board the best way I know how.

I do not think Bush is hated by the Left, actually I do not see much difference between Bush and Kerry.


Both have close views in regard to the situation in Iraq, which is the same stance we have had in the Middle East for the past 40 years.

Thrust power, coddle Isreal, and send troops to take action, then become social workers. Nothing in this area has changed, nor will it. No matter what rogue runs which country, we are not going to change thinking that has developed over centuries.
Arabs do not want to be Americans, they do not have the first idea about democracy, nor do they care to have it. Their teachings are a 180 of the Western world.

No matter what politican, rather a neo-con like Bush or a leftist used car salesman like Clinton will ever make a difference. The only result is billions of taxpayers dollars thrown down a bottomless pit and over a thousand flag drapped coffins of our returning troops.

As far as the comment about anyone "Rush Fans" I think it stated, knowing Billy Buckley? Yes I do, yes I have subscribed to his magazine in the past.
I was quite intrigued about his analogy in regard to Libya and the tent dwelling Moomie Qadaffy.

If Bill Buckley, GW Bush, John Kerry, or Jesus Christ himself think this guy has turned the corner then they must be smoking crack.
I spent a year of my life close to this dictators border. His tours into Chad, terror support, and basic support of genocide in regard to dark skinned Africans cannot be changed through calm discussions.

The only think Moomie has been able to do is model the Communist Chinese. Be nice, be polite, and shake a numbnut politicians hand while keeping fingers crossed on the other.
Given the opportunity, he or his followers would waste no time at all to slice your throat from ear to ear.

Oh yes, his goal is still to destroy Isreal and not to mention his plan to cause anarchy in Saudi Arabia as early as a few weeks ago. But that is ok to our politicians because he said he was sorry. Awww. I think Buckley needs to hang it up and retire.

Now to Rush and Moore.
Both are entertainers who have the run of the mouth.
Heck Rush, Mr. Conservative, Mr. Moral, Mr. Right seems to have drug difficulty.
Just another example of a neo-con who wants to preach to the dimwits, why, because he is superior and you and I? Well, were just stupid.

Michael Moore is the same thing. Hell, this smudge cannot even take a bath, crys about child labor in Asia and at the same time wears clothing made in sweatshops.

All in all, they are just products of the baby boom pop culture clans.

Entertainers do not bother me, what does is neo-cons like Bush who want to control our personal lives and preaches his new world order crap, and Kerry, a left wing Lib who feels our personal lives need to be controlled by confiscating our hard earned wealth. We all know Libs claim the rich as anyone who makes $1.00 more than you.

Sorry, when I look at this ticket, where we are with our military spread a thin as light butter on a slice of bread, our borders open for anyone to come in all the while Tom Ridge places more restrictions on honest citizens has this old boy a little concerned.

So am I conservative, yes I am but not a neo-con.
Am I Liberal, yes I am, but not a socialist.

Just my "very quick typed" thoughts so forgive my sloppy paragraphs. Im running out of battery.

Fire away