Sunday, December 07, 2008

The World According To Shrub.



It's extraordinary to watch Bush incoherently attempt to put a positive spin on the last eight years, but he's left making simply crazy claims. He claims that Iran has been marginalised by American action in the Middle East and that Iran ended it's nuclear programme because of the actions of his administration, despite the fact that during the same speech he warns of the danger of the Iranian nuclear programme.

And it's not the coherence of the President elect which makes Bush's pronouncements sound so batshit crazy, he's always sounded like that, but the fact that Obama is waiting in the wings is certainly making Bush sound like a throwback to darker time which most people are anxious to be rid of.

He was always a man who insisted that reality was whatever he claimed it to be and, as he leaves office - rewriting history as he does so - his claims have never sounded more absurd.

3 comments:

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Todd Dugdale said...

Kel wrote:
"He was always a man who insisted that reality was whatever he claimed it to be"

Spot on, once again. This will most likely be Bush's "legacy", or at least the thing most people will remember about him.

On virtually every issue, the Administration's pattern has been clear: decide what you want to happen, and then convince yourself that any action taken taken will bring about the desired result. It is magical thinking - if one believes something will happen, then it will. Critics are routinely dismissed as "non-believers" - e.g traitors, terrorist-sympathisers, victims of Bush Derangement Syndrome, etc.

So many who attempt to analyse the Republicans fail because they do not recognise that the Party is much closer to a religion than it is to a traditional political organisation. We saw this in the election campaign. No matter what the polls said, the Bradley Effect would neutralise Obama's lead, or hordes of unlikely voters would swarm the polls due to the terror of "socialism". Even now that the Republicans have lost, they push the idea that the majority agrees with them, though they won't vote for them.

The GOP has framed their magical thinking as "if you don't believe in us, then you don't believe in America", and this worked for them as long as the Democrats ran policy against them. Obama offered an alternate belief system of "if you don't believe in the American people, then you don't believe in America". This peeled off the "belief-oriented", and his policies sealed the deal for the "policy-oriented".

The challenge for the blogosphere will be to keep reminding people (who would rather forget) how bad Bush was, lest we once again fall under the spell of Republican magical thinking.

Kel said...

Todd,

That has been the defining princple under which this administration has governed. With us or against us.

And, as you say, anyone who did not agree with them was treacherous and wanted America to fail.

And yes, that same mindset was evident during the election when McCain insisted that the polls were wrong and that he would be victorious.

Thankfully, Obama appears to be a member of the reality based community which was so spurned for the last eight years.