Reply #43: Can people not at least use some original insults to dehumanize people they disagree with? [View All]

[JoeyT]

Are people so hard up they have to steal insults from the right? And not just the right, the bottom 20% or so that still think Bush was the best president ever. Seriously, borrowing debate tactics and rhetoric from Krauthammer isn't a good sign.

It doesn't help that it's being used exactly the same way Bushbots used it. To demean anyone that dares claim that perhaps your a specific politician isn't absolutely perfect. Any day now I expect to start hearing "The left hates us for our freedoms!" and "We have to fight the liberals over there so we don't have to fight them over here!". After all, if we leave now the liberals might follow us home. And then where will we be? Not from Obama, of course. As far as I know he hasn't used any of those phrases, and I seriously doubt he ever would. Including Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Best I can tell the Hamsher post BooMan is griping about was basically saying that it's awfully hard to chant "Look forward not back!" like a mantra while simultaneously trying to blame Bush. It's a valid point that's difficult to dispute rationally. After all, if Bush was that bad someone might have prosecuted him for war crimes or exposed exactly how he destroyed the economy in excruciating detail by releasing records on all the TARP and banking silliness or at the very least perpwalked Darth Cheney just for being the most evil SOB on the planet. You can either look forward and refuse to look back, or you can blame the guy before you. They're mutually exclusive goals. The economic mess, illegal wars, Patriot Act, and all that jazz certainly are Bush's fault and his fault alone. We should have never started the "Look forward, for the love of God, look forward! Otherwise we might have to prosecute someone and that would make Republicans that already hate us angry!" attitude. People would be perfectly happy to look back if they'd been led by example. Unfortunately the example that was set was to completely ignore all crimes and coverups of the previous administration...So can you blame the average low or moderate information voter for not realizing the extent of Bush's crimes, failures, and outright stupidity? Especially given a media that was for the most part perfectly happy to go along with it? Most of us may be policy wonks and political junkies, or we wouldn't be here, but the vast majority of people aren't.

So now that Bush's "legacy" has been covered over, ignored, and legitimized, people are starting to forget about it, which makes anyone that mentions it seem petty because only hardcore political junkies actually remember what the hell he did wrong. Seriously, did anyone not see this coming?