(this post will be "sticky" until Thursday October 22nd. scroll down for new content)
Welcome to Edmonton, George W. Bush!
Today's the day: at 5pm this afternoon, The Greatest President of the 21st Century will speak at the Shaw Conference Centre. Tickets (if the event hasn't sold out) are available here (along with a hilariously faggy photo of Gavin Rossdale and the other members of Bush). If you ever do read this Mr. Bush, welcome to your second post-Presidential trip to the glorious province of Alberta [did he ever visit Alberta as a sitting President? I don't believe so, but do you see 'researcher' stamped on my forehead? -ed]. I for one am pleased to welcome you. Pay no attention to the demented left-wing retards who think otherwise.While this is nominally about President Bush, this is more about the idiots who are planning a protest this afternoon. The ultimate question is why? For part of that answer, try to remember that Bill Clinton has spoken in Edmonton with no fanfare whatsoever. I've written about the Bush-Clinton speaking comparisons before. Twice in fact. If I do say so myself, they happen to be very good posts. My favourite is this one: Clinton Faces Protests During Calgary talk. In it I re-do a few of the articles about so-called "anti-war" campaigners and compare them to Bill Clinton, who of course we all remember was also declared as a War Criminal. In fact, as you'll read in that post, all U.S. Presidents are "war criminals" and the perjorative just doesn't hold the revered levels of fear they once did. You've overplayed your "war criminal" hand, my friends. Someday, maybe with Obama in office and maybe with somebody else, you could end up with an actual honest-to-God war criminal in charge of the world's
Instead, what this is about is the psychological problems evident by those who are members of the "Edmonton Coalition Against War and Racism". While I generally eschew pop psychology I will break a few textbooks out here and try to pick apart exactly what has gone wrong with the wiring of the communist brains that will be gathering in front of the Shaw this afternoon. Apologies, incidently, if a lot of this covers ground already discussed in this excellent blogpost on "Bush Derangement Syndrome" -- BDS.
The Bush-haters with their BDS on full display this afternoon are sick people. We should perhaps be sending them a little farther north to Alberta Hospital (its still open, fortunately) where they can be given the care and attention by professionals they obviously need. A little extreme, I admit, but that's the vulgarity of mental illness for you. At the beginning of this post you may have noticed the title referencing the infamous MoveOn.org. Did you happen to know the origin of the name? Back in the days of War Criminal Bill Clinton, when the ultimately-successful move to impeach Clinton started to gain steam, prominant Clinton apologists kept insisting that the Senate should "move on" and not be bogged down by the President's mere disobedience of the law [actual laws, like perjury and contempt of court, of course. We aren't talking some mythical "law against taking military action against aggressive enemies after intense diplomatic and economic measures failed miserably" here which is where the Coalition's little rally sort of falls apart. -ed].
Thus was MoveOn.org began, and without more than a little irony its now the left-wing supporters of the movement who find that they cannot, in fact, move on. Another interesting note is that of course right-wingers did move on: other than a few comparisons with Bush and the previous President in his first year (quite normal in Presidencies) the Clinton years were generally forgotten. Ann Coulter's work on the impeachement trial resulted in her 1998 book High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton. In 2002, with Clinton out of office, she released another book about Clint...er, no, wait, she didn't! She wrote about a different topic entirely. Of all the people not to "move on" after Clinton's election, David Letterman and the other liberal late-night comics were the biggest offenders [clearly Letterman couldn't "move on" from a story about a sleazeball using his power to get women that his ugly face could never give him... -ed]. In fact, liberals were suddenly unable to move on from Florida, and Al Gore's election defeat. If you wanted somebody who couldn't move on in the first eight months of 2001, they had a Gore/Mondale sticker in the back of their car. [Giggle all you want, but odds are you don't remember who Al Gore's running mate was. -ed]We can see now that this MoveOn problem has been a thorn in the side of the liberal brain for a long time now. These so-called 'progressives' are really regressives: when faced with situations that present them with difficulty they regress back. It's a form of angry nostalgia: Gore should have won in 2000 you see, so Bush "stole" something they valued: their belief that their foolhardy philosophy was the right way. Throughout 2001, the political events of the day showed the world and the nation that luckily George W. Bush was the President of the United States of America. Al Gore would have probably given the Chinese an aircraft carrier after the spyplane affair if in return they promised to build a windmill somewhere (remember he and his boss were well known for shady deals involving the Chinese). 9/11 cemented this fact (see today's #1 entry on the George W. Bush Video Countdown later this morning), and the left has never forgiven reality ever since.
That was the day that left-wing media outlets decided they had one mission in their lives (and with the current financial state of the industry we can see they put everything they had into it): bring down George W. Bush. This wasn't just restricted to the news: all of the mentally inferior media folk took part. Family Guy, The Daily Show, and Kanye West all started out during the Bush Presidency. Biased reviewers such as Alan Cross made sure that anti-Bush musicians got all of their second rate anti-Bush albums positive reviews. It would be the Obama administration before anybody learned that Whoopi Goldberg considered rape to be acceptable. The filters were all in place and sure the bosses would all go broke in the process, but another one-term Bush would make it all worthwhile. Except, you know, that never happened. Instead, Bush pushed ahead of John Kerry and got the second term (thanks to tax cuts) that tax increases cost his father. Poetic justice there, I suppose.
But the 2008 election already feels like ages ago: its time for the left to defend their man in 1600 Pensylvania Avenue. They will be the ones who have to endure their guy vilified for his actions/inactions. They will have to watch YouTube videos that expose his hypocrisy and listen to him being called a chimp. The problem is, they aren't very good at it. They can't handle being on the defense, only the offense. Anti-Bush liberals are the Robbie Schremp of political theory. That doesn't entirely explain the crowd with Bush Derangement Syndrome at the Shaw Conference Centre this afternoon, but its a good start. They miss being in opposition where they can rally for attention. I'll get back to that in a bit.
Defending Barack Obama, it turns out, isn't too easy for them to do. I condecendingly posted to Twitter a week and change ago the comparison at this point of the approval ratings of Bush/Obama, but its more than that. Obama hasn't done anything (positive, at least) of consequence. When you place your entire life to getting a "transformative" politician elected and then the few changes he makes are negatively received, its a tough pill to swallow. From the dumbest black man on Chicago's southside to the most pretentious Norwegian Nobel Committee member to the first member of Edmonton Coalition Against War and Racism to get their teeth bashed in by Edmonton Police Services, those who pushed for Barack Obama as the "anti George W. Bush" are discovering that the "anti George W. Bush" is -- surprise surprise -- more imcompetant than their friendly media outlets labelled the actual George W. Bush. It's hard to swallow, and the natural reaction (not meaning to defend such psychologically pathetic reactions) is to continue to blame everything on the man who quietly retired into private life until convinced to travel to Calgary one evening in March to deliver a speaking engagement. One notices that not a lot of "not Clinton"ing was going on in Bush's first eight months in office (9/11 understandably changed enough to not be include-able) and instead was comparing Bush to Gore, the person he beat. You never hear about John McCain anymore. Why? Because he isn't "the enemy". Bush is, and for a group claiming to oppose war they certainly have no difficulty acting as if it indeed is a war.
Left-wing thought is probably to blame here: if there are no good guys and bad guys, then there are no enemies. Like any emotion, anger and hatred beat within us all as powerfully as love and charity do. Queen (and Jefferson Airplane) have famously asked for "Somebody to Love" [and one of them meant actually falling in love, rather than AIDS-free sodomy -ed], but deep down we also really do need somebody to hate.
When the lies are found to be truthGeorge W. Bush fits this mold in a way that, say, Osama bin Laden does not. Osama isn't white, you see, and liberals brains are really so distorted by modern day indoctrination that they cannot possibly see somebody who isn't white as a black hat (oohhh, irony). Bush is also a Republican you see, and politics are really an "us versus them" game where liberals are certain that their opponents aren't just political opponents but enemies to be fought.
and most your votes come from youth
don't you want somebody to hate
don't you need somebody to hate
wouldn't you hate somebody to love
you better find somebody to hate
But fighting real enemies is hard work, and left-wingers don't really like that sort of stuff. In a way, protesting a retired President is like a reflexive anti-American version of "Hugs for Darfur". Doing things is hard. Joining the army or starting a mercenary firm to attack those who engage in violence in Sudan or Iraq or Pakistan takes work, and offer no opportunities to shamelessly advertise your "compassion". Hugs for Darfur won't help a single person, but provide a security blanket of such for the inadequacies of the Edmonton Coalition Against War and Racism members. They didn't stop Saddam's starving of his own children while Iraqi missiles were equipped with circuits from smuggled Playstation2s, George W. Bush did that. All throughout the 90s liberals like Steve Notley whined about the Taliban. George W. Bush removed them from office, and in response Steve's equally vile sister Rachel had no kind words to say about him. With a hostile media at home and a block of his own population who would rather side with the Che Gueveras and Saddam Husseins of this world than their own President, he achieved numerous foreign policy goals over the complaints of the do-nothings in the House and Senate (both, it can be reminded, ended 2008 with far lower approval ratings than Bush himself).
Which leads us to the final psychological point here: attention. The media coverage of the protests is part of it, but the rest of it is the real psychological issue with the mentally unstable folks you will see at the Shaw this afternoon. They want to be seen as outraged. The reasons for the outrage are nonexistant with Bush out of office, but the desire to be outraged and to be seen as being outraged is critical. Members of Edmonton Coalition Against War and Racism don't give two shits about wars, and they really don't have a problem with racism (ask them to combat Japanese bigotry against other asians and their eyes glaze over). They don't, really, and any members claiming otherwise in the media today are either lying or are so delusional that they believe lies (given the other effects of Bush Derangement Syndrome, it could easily be the last one). They care about opposing capitalism, a (nominally) pro-capitalist President, a (nominally) pro-capitalist nation, and those in this world who are smarter than them, better than them, more accomplished than them, and more moral than them. Obama isn't really the "anti George W. Bush" -- they are. They are all 1/100th the man Bush is, and it eats away at them that somebody who "isn't on their team" can do well. The protests are a validation of their beliefs in the face of crumbling support from reality: Obama's election didn't end the world's problems, it in fact increased them. Continuing to protest George W. Bush is really all they have. They can't let go. They can't MoveOn.org, and they cannot accept that.
There's something wrong with them. Remember that when you see their pictures on the news tonight.
