After the Bourbon Democrats were overthrown in the 1900s, conservatism never really recovered its former standing in the Democratic Party.
“George W. Bush (who congratulated Joe Biden for his victory the very day the TV networks called the presidential race for him) emphatically rejected the idea that the 2020 election was “stolen,” said the January 6 Capitol riot left him “sick to my stomach,” and dismissed Trumpism with the words: “History and the United States has shown these populist movements begin to fritter over time, and so I’m optimistic about democracy. …”
I’m now 40 years old.
I was in my early twenties when George W. Bush plunged us into Iraq and Afghanistan, wrecked the economy and pushed comprehensive immigration reform. I think millions of Millennials settled on their political worldview in the 2000s and rejected mainstream conservatism.
“But even if the 45th president himself fades from sight, there’s a new weird cultural frenzy seizing conservatives. The ancient three-legged stool of free-market economics, national security toughness, and social conservatism is now off balance; today’s conservatives are preoccupied with “wokeness” and “cancel culture,” and a racist zest for law and order and closing the borders. All these themes have been evident in conservative Republican politics for many years, but not in this shrill and dominant form. …”
Populism has its own three-legged stool.
The three legs of the populist stool are economic fairness and development, foreign policy restraint and cultural conservatism particularly on open borders and rejection of political correctness. This is paired with a suspicious attitude toward technocratic elites and straight talk or plain speech.
On the contrary, Bush fits right in with the neocon Republicans. He went to war with Iraq over a lie that they had WMD. He does what he told like all good goy presidents.
There was that whole 9/11 thing too. They started the war in Iraq just when people were trying to get the 9/11 commission started, which Bush opposed. Worst terrorist attack in history, doesn’t want any investigation. Funny, that.
The constant media mantra of WMD!!! for a year and a half was a sure sign it was all ZOG lies. Bush and most American morons still fell for it.
To me, George Bush II exemplified everything that was wrong about the modern Republican Party : The United States of America for the benefit of everyone but Americans, particularly White Americans.
Over and over again I prayed that man would figure out how to do the right thing (something for his own people and or something not so damaging to other people) or that something he had done wrong would turn to right.
As He always does, The Good Lord answered my prayer in time, though not quick enough for all the servicemen ruined in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the countless lives of Iraqi and Afghanistani civilians lost for absolutely nought.
In any case, the answer to my prayers over George Bush II were that the country would gradually wake up to Modern Republican insanity and begin the idealogical walk away from them and any party that stands for anyone but us.
It’s happening slowly and the progress is far from a straight line, but, that said, we are a world away from the nation of studied White Snoozers we were in 2004.
We’re still paying the tab for Dubya and his gaggle of geniuses. What a f**kin’ sh*tshow.
@James…
Yes, the negative legacy of George Bush II is long, and is threatening to coming in a good third place, for terrible legacies, after Lincoln and Wilson.
Re: “the countless lives of Iraqi and Afghanistani civilians lost for absolutely nought”:
Countless Iraqi and Afghan lives are STILL being lost, or ruined, and the U.S. Empire’s endless global warfare, including the invasions and permanent occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, is not for nought, but designed purposely to protect and advance the global interests of the ruling elite.
Re: countless lives lost:
Afghanistan under socialism/communism was prosperous and peaceful, and a model of secular religious tolerance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgmwvkSl5xg But then, a TEN-YEAR-long CIA-directed hybrid war using the CIA-created “Mujahadeen” proxy army, overthrew the democratically-elected people’s republic, claiming over one million lives BEFORE the U.S. formally invaded Afghanistan in the winter of 2001-2002 killing at least another million. Afghanistan never threatened the U.S. but it is a strategic location bordering China and Iran and formerly Russian central Asian countries that border Russia. U.S. control of Afghanistan blocks the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, and Afghanistan has large untapped mineral resources that the U.S. and other Western elites want to control. As soon as the U.S. invaded in 2002 it began exploring and mapping mineral deposits in Afghanistan.
@Anonymous…
Yes, platinum deposits have to be a reason why the government that claims to represent us is still in Afghanistan.
This fits in with why they, the government that claims to represent us, overthrew Morales’s government in Bolivia – to keep the profits from the Bolivian lithium mines out of the hands of Bolivians.
The entire Bush II foreign policy, from Russia to Irag and Afghanistan is craven and demonic, and, worse yet, it’s a scandal that most Americans neither know nor seem to care.
I hated that scum with all my heart when he lied about WMD to get us into his Iraq war for the kikes and started the gigantic new Homoland Insecurity bureaucrat boondoggle that’s still ordering us around. Now he’s got the gall to run his fucking lipless yap about how the opposition to the perpetual rule of (((billionaires))) & their whores like him will soon “fritter”.
May that goddam filthy chimp’s greasy guts rot.
GWB was America’s first retarded president.
The highlight of his presidency was dodging those two shoes thrown at him during a press conference in Baghdad.
He’s got a very shoe-able face. Just seeing it now, I got unlaced and was about to throw before I even realized what I was doing.
You’re now 40 yo? Trust me:- life gets very quick from there on. Three years feels like one. Old age no longer feels like forever away. We all must live our lives, and do good for the world wherever possible. Once we’re gone, we’re gone for billions of years.
That’s why it’s important to have the sexy-time with as many women as possible. You don’t want to live a life full of regrets.
Hunter’s just started middle age and apparently married. You’re 51 and still looking right? Maybe you ought to take advice from him lmao
@Spahn
Yes. Life is very short compared with how long you’ll be gone for. Chase that girl. Buy that pickup. Take that trip. You can’t please everyone……..so you’ve gotta please yourself.
@Hunter Wallace
Do you feel any differently now at the big 4 0 than before? Do you identify as a Gen Xer or more with the millennial audience you’re trying to appeal to on this site?
1.) Not really.
My politics and sentiments are basically the same. I’ve learned a lot and have become more experienced though over the last twenty years. I’m married now. I have a son. I have broadened my interests to a wide variety of subjects.
2.) I was born in November 1980 which makes me a Xennial. I feel like I am in between generations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials
Bush Jr. is a war criminal who left this country in far worse shape than he found it. The world will be a much better place once the Jewnited States and the Bushes are consigned to the trash incinerator of history.
The most intersecting thing about the Bush era was how much white conservative voters LOVED the man. It was almost like support for Bush became a proxy identity issue for conservative whites.
American right wing politics is a perversity in the Western world. No other mainstream Western political party is as religiously fundamentalist, plutocratic and gun crazed as the GOP is. You can thank Reagan and Buckley/Schlafly’s New Right for that. It’s a source of amusement and derision in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe.
@ATBOTL…
I agree about the White Conservative relationship with George Bush II.
Sad, very sad, indeed.
His economic agenda was toxic. Didn’t he push a tax cut when we were running deficits because of his unnecessary war in Iraq? Then he cheered on free trade while the entire economy was offshored to China mostly during his reign. Then he did nothing about immigration, legal and illegal. His term was probably the last chance we had to avoid this demographic disaster and he did nothing about it. September 11th was the golden opportunity to shut down immigration and it was squandered. Bush Jr. sucked.
His party? Papa Bush almost got beaten by Buchanan.
Shrub himself should do the honorable thing and follow Colin Powell into the Democrat party.
I think Bush would be alright if it weren’t for that god awful Neocon foreign policy.
Pat Buchanan even endorsed him in 2004