The Big Lie Part One: Bush

"All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying."

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

From year to year I contemplate whether or not I want to continue teaching The Tragedy of Julius Caesar to my sophomore Honors classes. Shakespearean drama based on Ancient Rome, written in Elizabethan blank verse, does not combine into a sure sell to teenagers who would rather parse the language down to its struts and pylons rather than savor it in it's purest uncut form. Then I read the newspaper and Facebook and hear Talk Radio and I realize that, Yes, indeed - this is important stuff. 

One of the central themes to the play, in my opinion, is how vulnerable people are in the face of information manipulation - what the political writers refer to as spin. Whether it's Cassius seducing Brutus to lead an assassination of Caesar, or Mart Antony seducing the plebians at Caesar's funeral, the real protagonist of the play is Spin, which makes people chose against their own best interests to fulfill an end planned by someone with no altruistic goal. 

Believe it or not, I'm no big Obama supporter. I am proudly registered at my polling place as an Independent. Oh, sure, I was seduced by the promise of Mr. Obama early on and excited by all that his election presented. But politics more often than not is a meatgrinder for saviors and charlatans alike. And Mr. Obama, like so many of his predecessors, is neither: he walks the broadway of mediocrity.

Therefore, what disturbs me the most these days is being forced into a corner where I feel a need to defend the president. I've got nothing against him at all, but I'm also not one of his cheerleaders. Yet time and time again I feel pushed onto the stump to defend him against the storm of detractors who attack him and his record in increasingly hysterical and illogical ways that stun and repel and disgust me, which puts me squarely in the eye of the storm. Everyone I know and come into contact with, all those "friends" on Facebook, are militantly in the Other Camp - which is fine. But somehow I've become the poster boy for Defending the President, which not a role I take to naturally. I voted for him, yes. But that's all. As a Mad-Dog Moderate he doesn't reflect my politics any better than anyone else does these days.

Still, here I am, and this is why: in the Year of Our Lord, 2008, the casket was nailed shut on what was arguably the worst presidency of all time. George W.'s record was so toxic that even now, when the Democrats are on the ropes and history has been smudged and fudged, W. was conspicuously absent from the RNC in Tampa. His brother - the one-time superstar of the Republican Party, Jeb Bush, was not even a candidate despite being seen years ago as a particularly powerful contender. His only role in Tampa this August seemed to be as an angry man, the last Torchbearer left for W. His speech was memorable only as a clumsy attempt to paint his brother a little less harshly for posterity.

And that's a hell of a task. Let's go back to the eight years of Bushism in 2008 when W. limped away into obscurity as "One of the least popular and most divisive presidents in American history. At home, his approval rating has been stuck in the 20s for months; abroad, George Bush has presided over the most catastrophic collapse in America's reputation since the second world war. The American economy is in deep recession, brought on by a crisis that forced Mr Bush to preside over huge and unpopular bail-outs" - in the words of The Economist, hardly a banner waving member of the Liberal Media. The Economist for those of you unfamiliar with it is a Business and Market friendly publication that is solidly conservative, and which had no issues originally endorsing W. In addition, it is a British publication and thus is able to take a much longer view of American politics than somebody nostril deep in the muck.

A quick review of the eight years of Bushism reads like a sitcom of disaster and incompetence: he entered the White House with the government holding it's first budget surplus in decades, which he threw away in ill-advised tax cuts that fell heavily on the wealthiest Americans and then by funding two simultaneous wars. By the time he was done the government was deeply in debt.

In the words of even friendly, conservative journalists, "the three most notable characteristics of the Bush presidency: partisanship, politicisation and incompetence. Mr Bush was the most partisan president in living memory. He was content to be president of half the country—a leader who fused his roles of head of state and leader of his party. He devoted his presidency to feeding the Republican coalition that elected him."

In fact, the Bush presidency, in more ways than one - with a nod towards that old jedi master of partisanship, Newt Gingrich - sowed the seeds of Government Gridlock that haunts us to this day. Again, according to The Economist: "Relentless partisanship led to the politicisation of almost everything Mr Bush did. He used his first televised address to justify putting strict limits on federal funding for stem-cell research, and used the first veto of his presidency to prevent the expansion of that funding. He appointed two “strict constructionist” judges to the Supreme Court, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, turned his back on the Kyoto protocol, dismissed several international treaties, particularly the anti-ballistic-missile treaty, loosened regulations on firearms and campaigned against gay marriage. His energy policy was written by Mr Cheney with the help of a handful of cronies from the energy industry."

"The Iraq war was a case study of what happens when politicisation is mixed with incompetence. A long-standing convention holds that politics stops at the ocean's edge. But Mr Bush and his inner circle labelled the Democrats “Defeaticrats” whenever they were reluctant to support extending the war from Afghanistan to Iraq. They manipulated intelligence to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had close relations with al-Qaeda. This not only divided a country that had been brought together by September 11th; it also undermined popular support for what Mr Bush regarded as the central theme of his presidency, the war on terror.

"Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton, remarks how unusual it is for a president to have politicised such a national catastrophe: “No other president—Lincoln in the civil war, FDR in world war two, John F. Kennedy at critical moments of the cold war—faced with such a monumental set of military and political circumstances, failed to embrace the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle. But Bush shut out and even demonised the Democrats.”

"The invasion of Iraq was like much else in the Bush years—an initial triumph that contained the seeds of disaster."

My point here, in documenting the massive failures of the Bush years - and I've only scratched the surface - is that many of those howling about Mr. Obama remained silent and, through their silence, indicated their satisfaction and support for those disastrous policies of George W. Bush. If you remained quiet and complacent from 2001-2008 and then suddenly reared up in Righteous Rage against Obama then I'm calling you out.

I don't want to defend Obama because I've tried to maintain neutrality. But really - where is all this sputtering tea party rebellion coming from? Where was it for eight years previous? If you didn't post raging, frothing I Hate the Government posts on Facebook then, if you didn't rage and scream and roll your eyes around at the excesses of Little Big Government Bushism and ruinous fiscal and foreign policy during that administration then I'm calling you out. You are myopically partisan and your views are frighteningly one-sided.