Quote:
If he is, as a person, so innocuous, so unfinished and essentially trivial what drives the anger and contempt of so many people? Part of an answer might be that for those outside America, for whom anti-Americanism is professional or ideological, the projection of the person inhabiting the White House as little less than a fool and a stooge adds an extra fillip of insult and contempt to their career animosity.
For those within America who are fervidly anti-Bush, the same characterization offers them a proportionately larger and higher image of themselves. Michael Moore, ludicrous, pompous and banal all at once, preens himself, stands so much taller, morally and intellectually, when set against the dim caricature occupying the White House. The people who hate George Bush have a great deal of their own self-esteem invested in creating the idea of the upstart vacuous dummy in the Oval Office.
They don't have an inferiority complex, they are inferior!
1 posted on
01/31/2004 9:40:23 AM PST by
quidnunc
To: quidnunc
Around here, if one is opposed to the Bush's domestic policy, then they're a "Bush Hater" as well.
2 posted on
01/31/2004 9:42:26 AM PST by
Guillermo
(Hypocrites, all around here)
To: quidnunc
Its like when the dufus next door beats you at chess, and you're sure it was dumb luck. Then he does it again, and again he's not smart enough to have done it, and yet he did. So you're thinking maybe this is one of those Rain Man things where the dumb guy memorizes the phone book but can't read. Or something. Or maybe one of those Forrest Gump things where he's always in the right place at the right time, who knows how. Then he beats you again.
It never occurs to you that the dufus next door is actually smarter than you.
4 posted on
01/31/2004 9:51:39 AM PST by
marron
To: quidnunc
He is simultaneously thought of as bumbling preppie, an arrested-development delinquent, the prototypical frat-boy party animal, the kind of middle-aged man who thinks John Belushi's Animal House is the only real film made in the last 30 years, and whose idea of reading is a Tom Clancy novel, or, on less challenging days, the latest issue of Guns & Ammo magazine. Funny, I don't see him like that at all. Quite the opposite. Just who is it that they are talking about, themselves, perhaps?
5 posted on
01/31/2004 10:05:14 AM PST by
EggsAckley
(..................**AMEND** the Fourteenth Amendment......(There, is THAT better?).................)
To: quidnunc
Bush-Haters, You're Running Out Of Esteem - Rex Murphy
There's a paradox at the centre of the terrific animus towards George W. Bush. For his detractors, who are legion and intense, the man is a cipher, a mere stand-in, for the real powers in the White House. A puppet of the functioning minds and stronger personalities of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and the outer ring of advisers such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle.
He is simultaneously thought of as bumbling preppie, an arrested-development delinquent, the prototypical frat-boy party animal, the kind of middle-aged man who thinks John Belushi's Animal House is the only real film made in the last 30 years, and whose idea of reading is a Tom Clancy novel, or, on less challenging days, the latest issue of Guns & Ammo magazine.
The indictment is scathing and thorough. George W. is an automaton of Pooh-sized mentality ("a bear of very little brain") with the attention span of a slow-witted gnat, the introspective capacity of a starlet, and the mental agility of a stale Fig Newton.
His enemies scarcely credit him with doing his own breathing, and would comment that if he is breathing on his own, he is surely not conscious of his doing so. He lucked into the presidency on the strength of his father's name, a private fortune that was made for him by his friends, and the sheer, eerie incompetence of the Al Gore campaign. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that George W. Bush, of his own merits, or as a consequence of his own actions, contributed to the effort which landed him in the White House, and placed in his late-adolescent hands the exercise of the greatest power that this Earth has ever known.
This is the short and polite version -- but such is the character of George W. Bush in the minds of millions and millions of people who actively detest him, some of these millions his fellow-citizens.
Mr. Bush, in the account of his despisers, is a nullity, a nothing, a creature so limited in the resources of his person, his competence, his presence, that he is almost a non-being. Why, how does such a nothing stimulate so commanding an intensity and range of visceral loathing? The distaste for Mr. Bush is not a casual dismissal; it is passionate.
He inspires a sharpness of revulsion that people usually reserve for more personal antipathies: the bitterness of hostility following the reversal or despoilation of a cherished intimacy. If this Texan is such a perfect nobody, why does anyone care?
It is not because he is President, though that is usually the rationalization put forward. That because he is President, and therefore has such power to do so many evil, stupid things, it is not only right to detest him: It is an obligation.
No. This line of reasoning is a kind of after-scaffolding for an emotion that has little to do with reason at all. Mr. Bush is loathed, first in his own right -- as a pickup-driving, nicknaming, inarticulate and haughty George Dubya. That he should be President just adds rocket boosters to the initial hate.
If he is, as a person, so innocuous, so unfinished and essentially trivial -- what drives the anger and contempt of so many people? Part of an answer might be that for those outside America, for whom anti-Americanism is professional or ideological, the projection of the person inhabiting the White House as little less than a fool and a stooge adds an extra fillip of insult and contempt to their career animosity.
For those within America who are fervidly anti-Bush, the same characterization offers them a proportionately larger and higher image of themselves. Michael Moore, ludicrous, pompous and banal all at once, preens himself, stands so much taller, morally and intellectually, when set against the dim caricature occupying the White House. The people who hate George Bush have a great deal of their own self-esteem invested in creating the idea of the upstart vacuous dummy in the Oval Office.
On the account of his enemies, George Bush does not have the personal force, the sustenance of character, to generate the field of contempt and enmity with which he is surrounded.
By contrast, Bill Clinton, quicksilver Bill, the man of a thousand reflexes, intellectual, at home in think tanks or on a Hollywood stage -- Bill Clinton's personality was as large and volatile as some weather systems.
But it's Mr. Bush the nullity who charges millions with the most profound and negative emotions. The response is all out of proportion to its stimulus. It is irrational. The Bush paradox is the central fact in world politics today. It has one equally curious rider. The world's real villain, Osama bin Laden, very largely gets, by contrast, an emotional bye.
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Any reason why this GREAT article isn't posted in full? Here it is....
FReegards,
- ConservativeStLouisGuy
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