It's barely even close. Everything that was horrible about Trump was presaged by Bush. He unleashed far more harm on the world than Trump did.

  • star_wraith [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    I agree with everything you said, but I'd also add that Bush gets less hate because everyone in this awful country other than leftists (and tbf, some libertarians too) was all-in on the invasion of Iraq. And going after Bush too hard on that would force them to accept that they had a hand in making it happen, by supporting it at the time. Even now, most Americans aren't sorry about the invasion or recognize the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths as a tragedy. No, they only have vague notions that Iraq was a "failure" and therefore was bad.

      • KrasMazovThought [comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I may be off base but reading and rereading this had me confused, and I realized I took it for granted that our friend Bush was W. and not H.W, I had assumed it was 2004 that had the country all-in on invading Iraq until the portraits!

        What a fucking existence where I can legitimately confuse two invasions over my lifetime of a distant nation by two presidents who are in fact father and son and America was gorging itself on stars and stripes and just throwing money after money and lives into killing people in the desert Americans would have zero interaction with ever if things ran their course

        like really? Is it a joke?

        • read_freire [they/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          it's dubya, he did the portraits too

          but there were a lot of blue no matter who-type libs who were anti-war. though that's indistinguishable from support for the war when you'll still vote for imperialists because they're on your team

    • shitstorm [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      There was a significant amount of anti-war movement and Bush hate during his years. Do agree with you though that he has been whitewashed now, but when I grew John Stewart and Steve Colbert built their careers around Bush hate. The GOP floated Comedy Central through the oughts the same way Donald Trump floats every late night host now.

      • star_wraith [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        True, but the libs didn't turn against it until a year or two after it became clear it wasn't going to be a quick and painless little invasion. I was involved in anti-war protests in early 2003 and I can tell you, most libs were totally on board with it.

        • read_freire [they/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          from my POV then the libs I surrounded myself were all against it but would just sigh and go 'blue no matter who' and generally stick their heads in the sand when it came to their team being imperialist warmongers too, and that definitely hasn't changed

          and even in the street it was probably occupy-tier libs and not folks concerned with organizing as much as activizing (especially in stark contrast with 99 WTO), curious if that was what you saw first-hand