I Cogitate
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Bush the ultimate divider
George Bush is the ultimate divider.
Remember him tossing out claims, among them this from a David Horowitz May 6, 1999 interview in Salon:
DH: Let's start with my list of questions. In a year when Republicans lost ground or had trouble holding on to it, you won reelection with 69 percent of the total, 49 percent of the Hispanic vote, and the endorsement of every major Democratic politician in the state. How did you do it?Then his initial act as POTUS, an executive order, denied funding of family planning organizations. This banned funds for overseas family planning organizations if such entities use privately-raised funds to lobby their own governments in favor of less restrictive abortion laws.
GB: "...Second, I showed the people of Texas that I'm a uniter, not a divider. I refuse to play the politics of putting people into groups and pitting one group against another..."
Bush said: "taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for abortions."But the use of taxpayer funds for such purposes stopped in 1975.
Bush's first 'uniting' effort prevented family planning organizations worldwide from even mentioning, let alone talking, about abortion, lest they be denied U.S. funds.
Simply put, George Bush couldn't unite this country, in peace or in war. Prior to 9/11, his presidency was adrift, lacking purpose. Country wide unification, however defined, wasn't even a particular goal.
Right after 9/11, Bush had his chance to not only unite this country but most of the world. Very few people, inside the U.S. or abroad, disapproved of ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban and Al-Queda. Bush did so and profited politically.
But before that mission was anywhere near accomplished, he also chose to invade Iraq.
When the United States military, as expected, removed Saddam from power, Bush was riding high in domestic political polls.
Then came the rough patch that has continued to this day. The so-called 'democratization' of Iraq went astray and, drip-by-drip, damaging information appeared about the rush up to the war, the lying, the prevaricating. the 'massaging' of flimsy evidence, the 'manufacturing' of reality and Bush's so-called 'strength' became weakness.
So, George Bush had 'enjoyed' opportunities under widely varied situations to unify our country and failed every time. The problem is that one cannot command unification. Unification isn't a by-product of coronation. Unification takes effort, humility, give-and-take, follow through, honesty---all the elements George Bush has in short supply.
Of course, maybe, just maybe, he was confused when David Horowitz posed the question to him. Could he have been thinking 'well, I'm terrible at division, just never could get the hang of it, you know, four goes into three how many times, gotta carry that decimal point and all that" so he gladly grabbed on to the uniter life raft being tossed to him, not really knowing what it meant.
After all, when one is a divisional idiot savant, as with many who falls into the savant category, this self-awareness may be missing. He just divides, without thinking, so what's the big deal? After all, what he has to do is just, as The Beatles covered, act naturally.
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