flash back to the oughts
For Presidents Day, former president George W Bush wrote an essay on George Washington, that curious foundational figure no one really can say much about. A fascinating document that exists out of time, the equivalent of a fifth grade essay that may as well have been heavily pulled out of an encyclopedia, full of generic patriotic platitudes and pieties. As a celebration of the office, it was then described as a “subtle” rebuke of the current President. A dash too subtle, naturally, to the point where you know it is no such thing. It describes virtues and that we have a president that does not meet any virtues allows a forced reading.
The George W Bush legacy has, I guess, now been fulfilled with military strikes against Iran for the wobbling claim of desiring regime change to free an oppressed peoples. And with that, Donald Trump is now a neo-con. We spent bulk of the George W Bush second term with an “any minute now” warning of impending war / “invasion” of Iran — something that was never coming to fruition. The loudest cohort on this drumbeat included, out of the fringes, the likes of Alex Jones, Scott Ritter, Tulsi Gabbard, Ron Paul, the various writers on The American Conservative. All of whom no love lost for George W Bush and were ready to throw their lot in with Donald Trump. You can toss in figures like Tim Poole and a batch of horeshoe “gonna knock Obama liberal interventionalist” groups in the mix — all ready to call anti-war Obama voters hypocrites for supporting a guy who was busy surging troops in Afghanistan. I am going to make an educated guess — check in with Matt Taibbi and what I will see is a one-sided neener neener “whataboutism”.
For what it is worth that one saving grace of President Trump, why until the last month of office I rated President Trump ahead of President Bush, is now in smoldering ashes. (He talked to North Korea’s dictator — that was a positive in my view.) Also I knew it was coming, so there is no disillusionment on my part — which I suppose is something I would share with this grouping of neo-con busting paleo con and conspiratorial mish mashes. Though I shouldn’t share that.