Shit people have forgotten about the Bush Era:
Bush watched that Batman Beyond splicing episode and had nightmares for a week
was it hidey-hole? i thought it was spider-hole.
Yeah, it was spider-hole
I think my favorite was how we un-ironically referred to a whole set of countries as the “Axis of Evil” as if that phrase gives us some kind of meaningful understanding of their geopolitical role and isn’t borrowed straight out of a mediocre made-for-TV superhero movie.
And then there was:
We literally got a terrorism forecast on the news every morning like it was pollen. So many of the things that happened, if they were in a dystopian novel, people would be like, “That’s way too goofy and ridiculous to actually happen in real life,” and yet they did.
THE LAST ONE’S REAL?
Yeah https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeland_Security_Advisory_System
I genuinely forget that people, even within my own age group, has forgotten the Bush era since they were teenagers and below the voting age at the time, and so forgot how fucking horrifying it was.
Free Speech Zones, which were a real thing and not a plot element in a particularly ham-handed dystopian novel.
The phrase “hidey hole.”
Watching a budget surplus become a massive deficit that was bigger than it even looked because the White House was just like, “Okay, we’ll just not put the wars on the books and just ask for more money for those every few months.”
The sheer number of times Alberto Gonzalez said, “I don’t recall,” to Congress regarding war crimes and human rights violations.
“…now watch this drive.”
Mission Accomplished.
“The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence,” “yellowcake uranium,” Condoleeza’s “mushroom clouds” fearmongering, and all the other bullshit we were fed to get into Iraq.
The President of the United States said so many stupid things that there were one-a-day calendars consisting of an individual quote for each day of the year. They didn’t all have the exact same quotes.
George W. Bush actually calling countries an “axis of evil”. Like this was a James Bond movie or something. Like all the people from these countries weren’t people but cartoon villains.
Americans pouring French wine down the drain in the streets. “Freedom” fries in the White House cafeteria and the phrase “Cheese-eating surrender monkeys“ appearing all over pop-culture, because we were opposed to the invasion of Iraq.
A huge percentage of Americans believing that at least part of the suicide team from 9/11 was from Iraq, because the media made it seem so to justify the war. Colin Powell lying to the UN about weapons of mass destruction and nuclear material being stored in Iraq. The words “enhanced interrogation technique” being used, because if you say you strapped a guy to a table and drowned him multiple time, it *sounds* like torture and that’s bad for public opinion.
That goddamn “Mission Accomplished” banner.
This is essential context for Obama’s presidency. Had Obama come after Clinton, the Left would be much less enthusiastic about his presidency. But after Bush he was basically Superman.
Both Obama and Hillary benefit from Bush moving the Overton Window (the range of political policies the public considers acceptable) so far to the stupid fear mongering Right that the Center Right politics of Obama and Hillary can be believably sold as leaning to the Left.
This post is like those one-a-day calendars because whenever I see it come around again, it has something new on it.
I can’t believe there’s nothing about the Florida recounts in here. This generation has seen so much weird interim technology that we know about things like hanging chads.
Also, are you old enough to remember the word “Halliburton” but not old enough to remember why? Thank George Bush, the oil hungry “anti terror” liar.
Can I get a “No child left behind” anyone? The American education system before Bush was not perfect but this rash of testing that is an existential nightmare in our schools has its roots in the Bush Administration.
Also Dick Chaney actually shot a man to death.















