Whereas history tends to repeat itself, one necessary element in this process is the time required to forget shit. Typically there are decades or even centuries between identical historical blunders (IHBs) as that’s how the whole eventually-shit-is-cyclical thing is supposed to work. But Republicans are like that guy who gets three DUIs in a 24hr period and then decides to drive to a bar. They’re insisting on F-ing everything up again, not in 2050, but by the end of their next news cycle. Quantdumb?
As we approach the midterms, the GOP’s warp-speed idiocy maximization project (WSIMP) is percolating nicely. Regardless of what you think of Barack Obama, it does not somehow vindicate the W shit-show. According to our local alternate universe, all this country needs is a return to a Bush-style economic plan and a Bush-style foreign policy. I’m not making this up…What’s the worst that could happen? And the far right is somehow becoming the authority on issues again, which is disturbing if you’re forced to live on Earth.
“So the party that was primarily responsible for the years of grinding, bankrupting war, a descent into torture, and an evisceration of many core liberties is now regarded as superior to the man originally tasked with trying to recover from that experience?”
—Andrew Sullivan
This week the Wall Street Journal brings us this gem:
“Real median household income rebounded smartly in the middle of the last decade. That rebound occurred after the Bush tax cuts on capital income and marginal income-tax rates became law in 2003. What’s needed now is a return to policies that put growth as the country’s highest economic priority.”
Smartly? A Bush policy ended smartly? Is this supposed to be followed by canned laughter? If this guy worked for The Discord I’d fire him. Hey, that’s it! Maybe Fox News had a canned laughter machine but they cut funding for it…that would make their segments make more sense—ish.
Dear Wall Street Journal dude, waaaay more jobs were created under Clinton and he approached this problem from the exact opposite direction. There’s no evidence Bush’s tactics created jobs, none. It did create a global economic recession; I do seem to remember something about that…or:
Meanwhile, now that all economic indicators are improving, our President is slipping even further in the polls. Obama-hate is at an all-time high, higher than even Bush or Clinton, here. Am I missing something? Fox News would say yes, but that’s your first clue I’m not. Obama is beating Reagan on private job growth, here, and overall unemployment is way down, here. All economic criteria are improving, final, so I guess it’s time to F shit up again. Why can’t we connect good news with approval ratings anymore?
Dear Foxeteers,
History will judge Obama’s predecessor much, much more harshly. Funny thing about scholars and historians, they tend to be scholarly and historical. But luck on your next bullshit news cycle.
Sincerely,
Reality
P.S. And you’re supposed to wait a few decades before making the same mistakes. History is supposed to be cyclical, not news-cyclical. And some of you may now want to look up the word predecessor.
But now that we’re starting another trillion dollar campaign in the Middle East we can recreate the circumstances that existed just prior to the last economic collapse. Awesome! If that’s not cool enough, there are also calls to return to a more Bush-style foreign policy, and by that I mean Obama should invade Ebola.
How did we track from chicken hawk to war weary and then back again to chicken hawk in five minutes? In the republican universe, the Iraq War was essentially all but won until Obama managed to botch the withdrawal which sent the Middle East into a tailspin. And now the right feels somehow vindicated because of Panetta and a growing laundry list foreign affairs complainers.
Hint of the Day:
No one that discusses ISIS has the same idea how we should handle this situation. There are no two identical plans in or outside of Washington. Why? Because there are no good answers, unless you build a time machine and….hmmm, Bush or Bin Laden?
Yes, Pokey, Obama should have gone to Congress for his little ISIS venture, but I understand the desire to keep the buffoons out of it, especially when the buffoons go, uh, we don’t want a vote, keep us out of it, here. Well, we elected them—okay, not really—they were gerrymandered into their positions by Constitution-loving voter suppressors (CLVS). That makes sense. Besides, it’s legal. Today on NPR General Wesley Clark reminded us how Bush’s requests to wage war on terror were too broad. Giving the executive branch the ability to unilaterally wage war was a mistake—one of many as it turns out.
“In retrospect, what the country needed was a radical break from the Bush/Cheney national security policies: A reestablishment of American moral integrity; a rejection of decision-making based on fear (of terrorism, or of political blowback); a reassertion of the international laws of war; and a national reckoning. Instead, the hopes for any change are slim.”
—Dan Froomkin
In the same article, Froomkin blames Obama for institutionalizing Bush-era atrocities. Pokey recently uttered a similar sentiment, but I don’t think it’s a fair estimation.
As I’ve already said Alert:
Obama was never going to restore the rule of law, in fact, it was naïve to think he would. When Cheney told Obama, “You need to use these new tools to combat terror” and, “You’ll thank me some day” (paraphrased). The implication was, Oh, and if we get hit again and you role this shit back, history will nail you to the fucking wall, bitch, which is probably the only relevant thing Dick Cheney ever said.
But there’s no defense for defending torturers, which is Obama’s true failing, here. Obama should be impeached for this and Bush should hang. But the truth has no place on Fox News, so the only real argument for impeachment will remain on a spoof news site…BENGHAZI!!
Besides the aforementioned torture part, if I were in Obama’s shoes I would have done most of the same things. Does it fly in the face of the Constitution? Sure. Should we be concerned? Yes…especially if we are ever shortsighted enough to hand these tools back over to republicans. They would then use them to torture walruses for colluding with Al Gore on Climate Change and then nuke Canada.
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
—George Orwell (snagged from a Sean McElwee feature)
There is no event republicans can’t spin and there is no lesson from history too basic for them to misinterpret. We are currently losing this game called reality to a pack of crazy, no-nothing sociopaths. We cannot let this happen. The future you save may be your own.
“Rage, rage against the lying of the right!”
—Dylan Zano
Vintage musings on multiverse theory here.
