Useful Idiots

As far as I’m concerned, the “Shorter Perfesser” schtick is owned and operated by Roy Edroso, who regularly performs surgical eviscerations of Instaputz’s perfidious nonsense. Yet via Atrios, we see what passes for Serious Thought for some of the students in the Perfesser’s special-ed class:

I think whats wrong with the President is that he is tired, as we say in the south "slam wore out". Like a good blue tick after hunting, he needs to crawl up under the porch out of the heat and sleep for a good long spell. Look at pictures of him, you can see the graying, the wrinkling, and the fraying take place right before your eyes.

Is this guy fucking serious? Bush has taken far more vacation time than any of his predecessors. And for that matter, look what happens when this guy “crawls up under the porch” for a “good long spell” – Katrina, 9/11. God forbid, but should a nuclear war start someplace, I fully expect it to happen during one of C-Plus Augustus’ five-week brush-clearing benders. Not that he’s terribly engaged when he’s at work, clearly. But Jeebus, you want this guy to take more time off?

The man has had to preside over some momentous events during his 2 terms, from 9/11 to Enron et al to recession to Afghanistan to Iraq to a bitter, long and momentously important election to supreme court appointments.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait just a fuckin’ minute, here, Chief. We’ve all seen the photo of Bush being handed (by Harriet Miers) the famous PDB (again, while on a five-week vacation) fortuitously titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike within the U.S.”, which even proffered the method of crashing a plane into an important building or landmark as a likely possibility. As late as August 31, George Tenet was out at the tumbleweed farm giving him security updates. I’ll give the guy some benefit of the doubt that he didn’t want 9/11 to happen, but there was a pretty clear pattern of lackadaisical approach to the preventive aspects of the job there.

As for the rest of it, tough shit, Hopalong. Enron certainly didn’t happen in a vacuum, and Bush’s disingenuous “Kenny Boy who?” didn’t fool anyone who didn’t want to be fooled. This administration has had zero in the way of an energy policy, even before Cheney felt the urgent need to cover his tracks in that area by going pheasant hunting with Combover Tony. Afghanistan we’ll give him, though that would have resolved much better without illegally diverting $700 million to prepare for Iraq, and Iraq itself is all Bush’s. If he lives to be a doddering 90-year-old, that one should weigh around him like an albatross for all time. That the election and the Supreme Court appointments are important is tautological. Would Mike have cut Kerry any slack for being tired from constant campaigning? Doubtful. But then, the life of the iconodule is never one based in reality.

Every step of the way he has been criticized, demonized, lied about, misrepresented, belittled and opposed. No matter what he has done, he has been trashed out by someone somewhere, often including his own party members and some "supporters". He has been betrayed by members of his own party in the senate. His victories are ignored and his losses magnified a thousand times over.

I wonder why that is. I have no sympathy for people who insist on playing hardball on every single issue, who enforce party discipline at every turn, who operate from a place of spite and intimidation and prevarication, and then whine that the game is rough. Fuck you. You wanted it rough, Junior, you got it.

Funny how Mike just lumps all these manifest sins against Lord God King Junior here, yet never quite gets around to enumerating a single one. Exactly what criticism about Bush has been unjustified, Mike? How has he been misrepresented or unfairly (note the qualifier) belittled? Again, Bush has asked for everything he’s gotten, through his indifference and incompetence, his shameless cronyism and arrogant mal-fee-ance.

As for “victories”, I honestly can’t think of any besides deposing Saddam Hussein. How’s that been workin’ for ya, Mikey?

But what do we do? We start criticizing him again for not being super-human, and we start asking "what’s wrong with the president?", as if we ourselves never get tired, worn-out, run down, and just plain discouraged in our jobs or lives. As a people, have we become this divorced from the realities of high-stakes leadership, and the toll it takes on those who take it on? Worse yet, have we no understanding and empathy for it?
Maybe the real question is, what’s wrong with us?

Fucking moron. Bush knew the stakes when he got in the game. I do tend to agree with Bill Maher when he says that Bush is having to work a lot harder than he thought he’d have to. But that is a by-product of the terribly low bar of achievement Bush has set for himself throughout his life. This is not some bullshit oil company stocked with Daddy’s bootlickers, just waiting for Junior to pop in once a week with a couple of dirty jokes to shake hands and slap backs for a couple hours. This is quite literally a job that holds billions of human beings’ lives in the balance. Every decision Bush and his minions make affects my life, your life, our families’ lives, Mike’s life and his family’s. Now if I get tired and run down (which I am), or Mike gets tired and run down, worst-case scenario is that we might let each of our respective families down. It happens.

And Mike is right in pointing out how much older Bush has gotten in office. I’m sure it is at least in part a response to incessant stress and mounting political troubles, both within and without. So what? That’s the nature of the game, son, and Bush and his henchmen have been instrumental in driving up the stakes. To reiterate the compassion theme from the previous post, I have zero empathy for a guy who is really just reaping the whirlwind he and his friends have sown.

Bush has, has always had, a support system that we proles can only dream about. They got him into prep school, into Yale and Harvard, into the Texas Rangers ownership, into the Texas governor’s mansion, into the White House. And as the stakes rise, the support system grows in direct proportion. So spare us this “one brave soul against the cold, cruel world” soft-soap, Mike. It’s a crock of shit. Bush could have avoided at least half his woes by not being a lazy, corrupt, glad-handing sack of shit. As long as the nation is in this condition, I don’t care if that motherfucker never gets another vacation. Hell, they oughta be working weekends, and not just for Terri Schiavo.

Another reader has more nougaty goodness to share:

You have frequently reminded us that democratization is a 'process, not an event.'

I would add that it's more a bursty process not a continuous one.

Heh. And you thought “truthy” was a fun word to coin. “Bursty”. I gotta remember that one.

We saw a lot of good news in the 1st half of the year from areas of interest to those of us who actively support extending human liberty. This streak lasted roughly from Arafat's death to Condi's visit to Egypt and included the Iraqi elections. Now things have slowed down, at least in terms of large headline grabbing events with protest hotties.

Yeah, for those of you who equate actual liberty with the visual of Lebanese sweater-fruit dangling perkily in protest action, you might be disappointed. You might also take a more serious look at the region, and realize that actual democracy would very likely result in yet more Islamic theocracies. That Beckwith spends more time ruminating about pussy than he does realizing the irony of Egypt’s most recent cynical stab at “democracy” tells you a lot. I mean, I like hot chicks too, but that is largely orthogonal to Freedom™, and the incipient marching thereof.

I would like to think that the president, as is his pattern in September, can alter that environment a bit and regain some public support, but there is only so much he can do with words. Events will matter more and we can expect them to pick up relatively soon. I doubt Bush sleeps too well at night, but if he does it's because he has done what he can up front to maximize the likelihood that the next flurry of activity will break in a good direction for our country and allies.

Your reader's blue tick metaphor is apt. Bush has taken a lot of criticism for the R&R he takes and his 'early to bed' habits, but they are the actions of a leader who understands the that the tempo of events is bursty. We should cut him some slack on this basis.

I don’t get these fuckin’ people, seriously. What other job can you literally fuck up everything you touch, and people would actually rather let you take more paid vacation time, rather than getting your shit together and cleaning up your damned mess? What the flying fuck is wrong with these people? Yes, sorry, guys, I do want a president who puts more time into learning about problematic situations than he puts into brush-clearing and bike-riding. I want a president who can extemporize at some level, at least. It shows capability of thought and process, which in turns informs seriousness of purpose. Memorizing Unca Dick’s flashcards, not so much.

In fact, because the tempo of events is, erm, “bursty”, it is counterproductive to the point of being recklessly negligent to take extended vacations. “Bursty” would seem to require a week here, a week there, not August. What if it gets “bursty” in August, Chief?

Oh, right.

These are sad little people in a sad little world of their own creation, these bedwetters. They are endlessly mobilized, forever ramping up for action against people that they paradoxically trust will be automatically civilized by having Freedom and Democracy forcibly imposed on them. They seriously seem to think that it’s all the media’s fault for making such a big deal out of a needless war, out of thousands dead, tens of thousands maimed, hundreds of billions of dollars wasted. They think the media made too big of a deal out of an American city being wiped out, out of 1,500 Americans drowning in their attics while the head of their federal government was fucking around in San Diego.

Doug Feith had nothing on these clowns, when it comes to being the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.