George Bush was a simple child elevated to power. He believed in dangerous fantasies and was easily manipulated, but I think he broadly needed to believe he was doing the right thing, so that made implementing the most bald faced evils more complicated. Torture is justified because Jack Bauer needs to save millions of lives from bad men who wanted to kill daddy.
Donald Trump is a mean child elevated to power. He needs no convincing for why the state should do evil. He relishes it. Torture is justified because you’re powerful and you don’t like them.
Right? Remember when “Bushisms” were a thing, they feel almost sensible now, just silly little mistakes in speech. Or how the media discussed that his calls for a fight of “good vs evil” were crossing a line, and people were still concerned abotu that. Or how there was a real discourse that warned, that debating if torture is “sometimes justified” would lead to a descend into barbarism…
In retrospect, it is sort of adorable the way I thought George W Bush was the dumbest, most incompetent and easily manipulated president ever.
George Bush was a simple child elevated to power. He believed in dangerous fantasies and was easily manipulated, but I think he broadly needed to believe he was doing the right thing, so that made implementing the most bald faced evils more complicated. Torture is justified because Jack Bauer needs to save millions of lives from bad men who wanted to kill daddy.
Donald Trump is a mean child elevated to power. He needs no convincing for why the state should do evil. He relishes it. Torture is justified because you’re powerful and you don’t like them.
It’s bad when George Bush seems like a better president than Trump
Right? Remember when “Bushisms” were a thing, they feel almost sensible now, just silly little mistakes in speech. Or how the media discussed that his calls for a fight of “good vs evil” were crossing a line, and people were still concerned abotu that. Or how there was a real discourse that warned, that debating if torture is “sometimes justified” would lead to a descend into barbarism…
And then comes the moment where you think “will we think the same about Trump in a couple years?”