Taibbi writes: "Donald Trump isn't the beginning of the end. George W. Bush
was. The amazing anti-miracle of the Bush presidency is what makes today's
nightmare possible."
GOP insiders are now frantic at the prospect of an uncultured ignoramus
winning the presidency. (photo: Aude Guerrucci/Getty Images)
Revenge of the Simple: How George W. Bush Gave Rise to Trump
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
01 March 16
Bush was just an appetizer - Trump would be the main course
To hear GOP insiders tell it, Doomsday is here. If Donald Trump scores huge
on tonight and seizes control of the nomination in the Super Tuesday
primaries, it will mark the beginning of the end of the Republican Party,
and perhaps the presidency.
But Trump isn't the beginning of the end. George W. Bush was. The amazing
anti-miracle of the Bush presidency is what makes today's nightmare
possible.
People forget what an extraordinary thing it was that Bush was president.
Dubya wasn't merely ignorant when compared with other politicians or other
famous people. No, he would have stood out as dumb in just about any
setting.
If you could somehow run simulations where Bush was repeatedly shipwrecked
on a desert island with 20 other adults chosen at random, he would be the
last person listened to by the group every single time. He knew absolutely
nothing about anything. He wouldn't have been able to make fire, find water,
build shelter or raise morale. It would have taken him days to get over the
shock of no room service.
Bush went to the best schools but was totally ignorant of history,
philosophy, science, geography, languages and the arts. He once had to read
War and Peace. His take? There were "thousands of characters" in it.
"I guess it had an influence because it was a discipline," he said. "It was
more that than remembering anything in it."
So Bush's main takeaway from reading one of the greatest books ever written
was that it contained many things to memorize. But he couldn't remember any
of those things.
Bush showed no interest in learning and angrily rejected the idea that a
president ought to be able to think his way through problems. As Mark
Crispin Miller wrote in The Bush Dyslexicon, Bush's main rhetorical tool was
the tautology - i.e., saying the same thing, only twice.
"It's very important for folks to understand that when there's more trade,
there's more commerce" was a classic Bush formulation. "Our nation must come
together to unite" was another. One of my favorites was: "I understand that
the unrest in the Middle East creates unrest throughout the region."
Academics and political junkies alike giddily compiled these "Bushisms"
along with others that were funny for different reasons ("I'm doing what I
think what's wrong," for instance).
But Bush's tautologies weren't gaffes or verbal slips. They just represented
the limits of his reasoning powers: A = A. There are educational apps that
use groups of images to teach two-year-olds to recognize that an orange is
like an orange while a banana is a banana. Bush was stalled at that
developmental moment. And we elected him president.
Bush's eight years were like the reigns of a thousand overwhelmed congenital
monarchs from centuries past. While the prince rode horses, romped with
governesses and blew the national treasure on britches or hedge-mazes, the
state was run by Svengalis and Rasputins who dealt with what Bush once
derisively described as "what's happening in the world."
In Bush's case he had Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove thinking out the problem of
how to get re-elected, while Dick "Vice" Cheney, Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld and
Andrew "Tangent Man" Card took care of the day-to-day affairs of the country
(part of Card's responsibilities involved telling Bush what was in the
newspapers he refused to read).
It took hundreds of millions of dollars and huge armies of such
behind-the-throne puppet-masters to twice (well, maybe twice) sell a voting
majority on the delusion of George Bush, president. Though people might
quibble with the results, the scale of this as a purely political
achievement was awesome and heroic, comparable to a moon landing or the
splitting of the atom.
Guiding Bush the younger through eight years of public appearances was
surely the greatest coaching job in history. It was like teaching a donkey
to play the Waldstein Sonata. It's breathtaking to think about now.
But one part of it backfired. Instead of using an actor like Reagan to sell
policies to the public, the Svengalis behind Bush sold him as an authentic
man of the people, the guy you'd want to have an O'Doul's with.
Rove correctly guessed that a generation of watching TV and Hollywood movies
left huge blocs of Americans convinced that people who read books, looked at
paintings and cared about spelling were either serial killers or scheming to
steal bearer bonds from the Nakatomi building. (Even knowing what a bearer
bond is was villainous).
The hero in American culture, meanwhile, was always a moron with a big gun
who learned everything he needed to know from cowboy movies. The climax of
pretty much every action movie from the mid-eighties on involved shotgunning
the smarty-pants villain in the face before he could finish some fruity
speech about whatever.
Rove sold Bush as that hero. He didn't know anything, but dammit, he was
sure about what he didn't know. He was John McClane, and Al Gore was Hans
Gruber. GOP flacks like Rove rallied the whole press corps around that
narrative, to the point where anytime Gore tried to nail Bush down on a
point of policy, pundits blasted him for being a smug know-it-all using
wonk-ese to talk over our heads - as Cokie Roberts put it once, "this guy
from Washington doing Washington-speak."
This is like the scene from the increasingly prophetic Idiocracy where no
one can understand Luke Wilson, a person of average intelligence rocketed
500 years into America's idiot future, because whenever he tries to reason
with people, they think he's talking "like a fag."
The Roves of the world used Bush's simplicity to win the White House. Once
they got there, they used the levers of power to pillage and scheme like
every other gang of rapacious politicians ever. But the plan was never to
make ignorance a political principle. It was just a ruse to win office.
Now the situation is the opposite. Now GOP insiders are frantic at the
prospect of an uncultured ignoramus winning the presidency. A group of major
donors and GOP strategists even wrote out a memo outlining why a super PAC
dedicated to stopping Trump was needed.
"We want voters to imagine Donald Trump in the Big Chair in the Oval Office,
with responsibilities for worldwide confrontation at his fingertips," they
wrote. Virginia Republican congressman Scott Ringell wrote an open letter to
fellow Republicans arguing that a Trump presidency would be "reckless,
embarrassing and ultimately dangerous."
Hold on. It wasn't scary to imagine George "Is our children learning?" Bush
with the "responsibilities for worldwide confrontation" at his fingertips?
It wasn't embarrassing to have a president represent the U.S. on the
diplomatic stage who called people from Kosovo "Kosovians" and people from
Greece "Grecians?"
It was way worse. Compared to Bush, Donald Trump is a Rutherford or an
Einstein. In the same shipwreck scenario, Trump would have all sorts of
ideas - all wrong, but at least he'd think of something, instead of staring
at the sand waiting for a hotel phone to rise out of it.
Of course, Trump's ignorance level, considering his Wharton education, is
nearly as awesome as what Bush accomplished in spite of Yale. In fact,
unlike Bush, who had the decency to not even try to understand the news,
Trump reads all sorts of crazy things and believes them all. From theories
about vaccines causing autism to conspiratorial questions about the pillow
on Antonin Scalia's face to Internet legends about Americans using bullets
dipped in pigs' blood to shoot Muslims, there isn't any absurd idea Donald
Trump isn't willing to entertain, so long as it fits in with his worldview.
But Washington is freaking out about Trump in a way they never did about
Bush. Why? Because Bush was their moron, while Trump is his own moron.
That's really what it comes down to.
And all of the Beltway's hooting and hollering about how "embarrassing" and
"dangerous" Trump is will fall on deaf ears, because as gullible as
Americans can be, they're smart enough to remember being told that it was OK
to vote for George Bush, a man capable of losing at tic-tac-toe.
We're about to enter a dark period in the history of the American
experiment. The Founding Fathers never imagined an electorate raised on
Toddlers and Tiaras and Temptation Island. Remember, just a few decades ago,
shows like Married With Children and Roseanne were satirical parodies. Now
the audience can't even handle that much irony. A lot of American culture is
just dumb slobs cheering on other dumb slobs. It was inevitable, once we
broke the seal with Bush, that our politics would become the same thing.
Madison and Jefferson never foresaw this situation. They knew there was
danger of demagoguery, but they never imagined presidential candidates
exchanging "mine's bigger than yours" jokes or doing "let's laugh at the
disabled" routines. There's no map in the Constitution to tell us how to get
out of where we're going. All we can do now is hold on.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
GOP insiders are now frantic at the prospect of an uncultured ignoramus
winning the presidency. (photo: Aude Guerrucci/Getty Images)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/revenge-of-the-simple-how-george-w
-bush-gave-rise-to-trump-20160301http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/r
evenge-of-the-simple-how-george-w-bush-gave-rise-to-trump-20160301
Revenge of the Simple: How George W. Bush Gave Rise to Trump
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
01 March 16
Bush was just an appetizer - Trump would be the main course
o hear GOP insiders tell it, Doomsday is here. If Donald Trump scores huge
on tonight and seizes control of the nomination in the Super Tuesday
primaries, it will mark the beginning of the end of the Republican Party,
and perhaps the presidency.
But Trump isn't the beginning of the end. George W. Bush was. The amazing
anti-miracle of the Bush presidency is what makes today's nightmare
possible.
People forget what an extraordinary thing it was that Bush was president.
Dubya wasn't merely ignorant when compared with other politicians or other
famous people. No, he would have stood out as dumb in just about any
setting.
If you could somehow run simulations where Bush was repeatedly shipwrecked
on a desert island with 20 other adults chosen at random, he would be the
last person listened to by the group every single time. He knew absolutely
nothing about anything. He wouldn't have been able to make fire, find water,
build shelter or raise morale. It would have taken him days to get over the
shock of no room service.
Bush went to the best schools but was totally ignorant of history,
philosophy, science, geography, languages and the arts. He once had to read
War and Peace. His take? There were "thousands of characters" in it.
"I guess it had an influence because it was a discipline," he said. "It was
more that than remembering anything in it."
So Bush's main takeaway from reading one of the greatest books ever written
was that it contained many things to memorize. But he couldn't remember any
of those things.
Bush showed no interest in learning and angrily rejected the idea that a
president ought to be able to think his way through problems. As Mark
Crispin Miller wrote in The Bush Dyslexicon, Bush's main rhetorical tool was
the tautology - i.e., saying the same thing, only twice.
"It's very important for folks to understand that when there's more trade,
there's more commerce" was a classic Bush formulation. "Our nation must come
together to unite" was another. One of my favorites was: "I understand that
the unrest in the Middle East creates unrest throughout the region."
Academics and political junkies alike giddily compiled these "Bushisms"
along with others that were funny for different reasons ("I'm doing what I
think what's wrong," for instance).
But Bush's tautologies weren't gaffes or verbal slips. They just represented
the limits of his reasoning powers: A = A. There are educational apps that
use groups of images to teach two-year-olds to recognize that an orange is
like an orange while a banana is a banana. Bush was stalled at that
developmental moment. And we elected him president.
Bush's eight years were like the reigns of a thousand overwhelmed congenital
monarchs from centuries past. While the prince rode horses, romped with
governesses and blew the national treasure on britches or hedge-mazes, the
state was run by Svengalis and Rasputins who dealt with what Bush once
derisively described as "what's happening in the world."
In Bush's case he had Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove thinking out the problem of
how to get re-elected, while Dick "Vice" Cheney, Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld and
Andrew "Tangent Man" Card took care of the day-to-day affairs of the country
(part of Card's responsibilities involved telling Bush what was in the
newspapers he refused to read).
It took hundreds of millions of dollars and huge armies of such
behind-the-throne puppet-masters to twice (well, maybe twice) sell a voting
majority on the delusion of George Bush, president. Though people might
quibble with the results, the scale of this as a purely political
achievement was awesome and heroic, comparable to a moon landing or the
splitting of the atom.
Guiding Bush the younger through eight years of public appearances was
surely the greatest coaching job in history. It was like teaching a donkey
to play the Waldstein Sonata. It's breathtaking to think about now.
But one part of it backfired. Instead of using an actor like Reagan to sell
policies to the public, the Svengalis behind Bush sold him as an authentic
man of the people, the guy you'd want to have an O'Doul's with.
Rove correctly guessed that a generation of watching TV and Hollywood movies
left huge blocs of Americans convinced that people who read books, looked at
paintings and cared about spelling were either serial killers or scheming to
steal bearer bonds from the Nakatomi building. (Even knowing what a bearer
bond is was villainous).
The hero in American culture, meanwhile, was always a moron with a big gun
who learned everything he needed to know from cowboy movies. The climax of
pretty much every action movie from the mid-eighties on involved shotgunning
the smarty-pants villain in the face before he could finish some fruity
speech about whatever.
Rove sold Bush as that hero. He didn't know anything, but dammit, he was
sure about what he didn't know. He was John McClane, and Al Gore was Hans
Gruber. GOP flacks like Rove rallied the whole press corps around that
narrative, to the point where anytime Gore tried to nail Bush down on a
point of policy, pundits blasted him for being a smug know-it-all using
wonk-ese to talk over our heads - as Cokie Roberts put it once, "this guy
from Washington doing Washington-speak."
This is like the scene from the increasingly prophetic Idiocracy where no
one can understand Luke Wilson, a person of average intelligence rocketed
500 years into America's idiot future, because whenever he tries to reason
with people, they think he's talking "like a fag."
The Roves of the world used Bush's simplicity to win the White House. Once
they got there, they used the levers of power to pillage and scheme like
every other gang of rapacious politicians ever. But the plan was never to
make ignorance a political principle. It was just a ruse to win office.
Now the situation is the opposite. Now GOP insiders are frantic at the
prospect of an uncultured ignoramus winning the presidency. A group of major
donors and GOP strategists even wrote out a memo outlining why a super PAC
dedicated to stopping Trump was needed.
"We want voters to imagine Donald Trump in the Big Chair in the Oval Office,
with responsibilities for worldwide confrontation at his fingertips," they
wrote. Virginia Republican congressman Scott Ringell wrote an open letter to
fellow Republicans arguing that a Trump presidency would be "reckless,
embarrassing and ultimately dangerous."
Hold on. It wasn't scary to imagine George "Is our children learning?" Bush
with the "responsibilities for worldwide confrontation" at his fingertips?
It wasn't embarrassing to have a president represent the U.S. on the
diplomatic stage who called people from Kosovo "Kosovians" and people from
Greece "Grecians?"
It was way worse. Compared to Bush, Donald Trump is a Rutherford or an
Einstein. In the same shipwreck scenario, Trump would have all sorts of
ideas - all wrong, but at least he'd think of something, instead of staring
at the sand waiting for a hotel phone to rise out of it.
Of course, Trump's ignorance level, considering his Wharton education, is
nearly as awesome as what Bush accomplished in spite of Yale. In fact,
unlike Bush, who had the decency to not even try to understand the news,
Trump reads all sorts of crazy things and believes them all. From theories
about vaccines causing autism to conspiratorial questions about the pillow
on Antonin Scalia's face to Internet legends about Americans using bullets
dipped in pigs' blood to shoot Muslims, there isn't any absurd idea Donald
Trump isn't willing to entertain, so long as it fits in with his worldview.
But Washington is freaking out about Trump in a way they never did about
Bush. Why? Because Bush was their moron, while Trump is his own moron.
That's really what it comes down to.
And all of the Beltway's hooting and hollering about how "embarrassing" and
"dangerous" Trump is will fall on deaf ears, because as gullible as
Americans can be, they're smart enough to remember being told that it was OK
to vote for George Bush, a man capable of losing at tic-tac-toe.
We're about to enter a dark period in the history of the American
experiment. The Founding Fathers never imagined an electorate raised on
Toddlers and Tiaras and Temptation Island. Remember, just a few decades ago,
shows like Married With Children and Roseanne were satirical parodies. Now
the audience can't even handle that much irony. A lot of American culture is
just dumb slobs cheering on other dumb slobs. It was inevitable, once we
broke the seal with Bush, that our politics would become the same thing.
Madison and Jefferson never foresaw this situation. They knew there was
danger of demagoguery, but they never imagined presidential candidates
exchanging "mine's bigger than yours" jokes or doing "let's laugh at the
disabled" routines. There's no map in the Constitution to tell us how to get
out of where we're going. All we can do now is hold on.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
