Does Bush Care?

[LisaLynne]

What is Bush’s focus? Does he really care about his legacy as President of the United States or is this, for him, just another job, another CEO position of a company that he can run into the ground, loot, use to help his friends out, and then get out while the gettin’s good? Does he really think, as some of his supporters do, that he’s the God-picked savior of America, leading all the faithful to the rapture, or does he just know how to use that to gain loyalty from a certain segment of society? Does he want to be a great leader, loved by the masses, or is he just playing a role while he lowers taxes for himself and his friends, makes business the highest ranking value and goal in our country, untouchable by anyone, and plans to duck out from the public eye and go off, laughing all the way to the bank, to live out a life of utter luxury, mocking the institution of American democracy as something so easily manipulated?

Did he have visions of being touted as the greatest president ever, much better than his father, who fought a valiant war against terrorism and brought democracy to the Middle East or is this all just a ploy to him in order to do favors for friends?

[flordehinojos]

1. possible answers.

1. bush's only focus is himself.
2. his narcissistic view (aided by his mother's 'reality may not touch my son' already has him thinking that he is the greatest leader, the greatest pResident ever. he can't see he is the greatest pile of sh*t sitting in the oval office.
3. yes he does think he is God's picked savior, even when he, said yesterday, in answer to a similar question, "heh heh, heh heh, let me tell you what i think...i don't think like that...my attitude changed with 9/11"--but he won't add that he allowed it to happen so that he could get to where he is today.
4. bush doesn't think in terms of the massses. he thinks in terms of himself. he has no insight, no foresight, no hindsight.
5. bush loves power too much. he has every excuse in the book and beyond to hold on to iraq. he will come up with every excuse in the book and beyond to hold on to the oval office.

bush the malevolent, a/k/a poppy bush fought a valiant war against terrorism and brought democracy to the middle east? p-l-e-a-s-e: what a cackle!

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

4. You misunderstood the OP.

bush the malevolent, a/k/a poppy bush fought a valiant war against terrorism and brought democracy to the middle east? p-l-e-a-s-e: what a cackle!

He was saying that shrub junior thought these things of himself, and was trying to be a much better president than his dad.

[LisaLynne]

6. Yes, thank you.

I wrote that in an unclear way. Thanks for the assist. :)

[flordehinojos]

9. oh, apologies extended.

thanks for the correction.

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. Is the Pope Jewish? n/t

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

3. I think he's a lazy "don't give a crap". He is president mostly for the

venal reasons you listed. He's probably been told, and entertains ideas, that he would have the kind of historical legacy you mentioned, but he doesn't have anything resembling the substance or fortitude to pursue that kind of presidency in any serious way.

Rove and Cheney have told him that it's all easy. Just wage war, attack and slime your opponents, mouth the same platitudes over and over, never admit error, and make sure to make your friends richer. That's pretty much all they've done.

[LisaLynne]

7. Yeah, I think Bush is vain enough that there are moments ...

when he would like to think he's truly the great, strong leader that I'm sure Rove and Cheney tell him he is (they do that in order to get him to keep playing along, probably), but yeah, in the end, history will discover the truth. In fact, people might be discovering the truth right now! :)

[EstimatedProphet]

5. Bush cares about nothing but his comfort

He is not capable of being concerned about his legacy It's all the same to him, so long as he gets his rewards.

[LisaLynne]

8. I think the moment it becomes uncomfortable for him...

he's outta there. I think that's why Rove/Cheney/whomever keeps bad press and the protesters so far away from him. He couldn't hack it. I honestly have always sort of thought in the back of my mind that his presidency would end with a big hissy fit (hopefully on live, but recorded, TV) and Bush "taking his ball and going home".

[EstimatedProphet]

10. Yeah, I could see that

[Ino]

11. Entities of the Dark Side

I read this description of entities from the Dark Side in Sylvia Brown's book "Phenomenon." If this doesn't fit Bush, I don't know what does! Fascinating & sobering reading. Excerpt below

They have no conscience, no genuine remorse and no sense of responsibility for their actions. They take all the credit and none of the blame for everything that happens around them, and self-justification is their first and only response to criticism.

In psychiatric terms, they're true sociopaths. They mimic human behavior brilliantly without ever really feeling it. They can simulate extraordinary charm, sensitivity, empathy, love, regret, even devout piety if they can use it to their advantage to gain our trust. Once the act has worked, as it often does, they promptly drop it, having no further use for it and frankly finding it to be too much work. We white entities, because our emotions and faith are genuine, have trouble imagining that we've been witnessing a performance.

As far as the Dark Side is concerned, we white entities are nothing but a collection of walking mirrors. If their reflections through our eyes are flattering, we're valuable to them. But the minute we catch on that we've been looking at a mask, and they no longer like the way they look in our mirror, they'll react in one of two ways - they'll get as far away from us as possible, or they'll repeat the performance that won our approval in the first place in the hope of winning it again.

Dark entities live by their own self-serving rules, which change at their convenience and don't necessarily apply to anyone else around them. In their minds, their behavior is always acceptable, but they might become outraged or deeply wounded if someone else aims that same behavior at them. The result is that the white entities close to them are kept constantly off balance, which gives the dark entity that much more power.

She goes on to say it's impossible to help a dark entity. "You can't appeal to a conscience that doesn't exist; you can't inspire genuine remorse in someone who takes no responsibility for his actions; and you can't ignite sincere love in someone who loves God Himself only on an as-needed basis."

[EST]

12. I, too, have pondered this question.

The results were that he doesn't do anything like we are thinking.
His mind just doesn't go that deep.

He has coasted into everything, education, plum military assignment, baseball bigshit, oil magnate, all that has just fallen in his lap. For him it's pretty effortless. His past, present, and future have been watched over by indentured experts, every step of the way, with the edges smoothed, the road ahead not overly demanding, and even the past re-ordered and the fubars cleaned up, paid off, covered up or killed. I do not doubt a lot of the thinge he used to remember as particularly trying or disturbing have been so dressed up that his own memories have been altered over time such that he mostly remembers it in the new, redrawn fashion. (1984, anyone?)

Most of us have no real conception of the near kingly, spoiled rotten little prince, who must be watched over by some magical wizard, guardian angels or Yahweh, himself, lest he hook his toe on a stone and come to grief.

He wants to be remembered as a great man, adored, admired, the object of great affection and respect, paragon of great power (stern, kindly daddy power) who could unleash world cracking desolation on the entirety of all living creatures, visibly demonstrating his king like/godlike restraint, thus no all out atomic missile exchange (yet) and insisting on only sending a barely adequate force into Iraq, at great forebearance and pain, while making sure the locals understand that he could flatten Baghdad in three minutes, if he wanted.

George Dumyah Bush has no more notion of what it takes, in terms of intellect, application, industry, and yes, a bit of luck to create himself as a real, deserving, great man or leader. His world does not intersect with ours. He really thinks he is working hard, making momentous decisions, showing his strength but with god/princeling humility. I am also sure he is totally puzzled that a large percentage of the populace despises him (if he even notices it,) keeping in mind the packing of his public appearances is not just a political ploy, but serves the more important underlying purpose of maintaining his artificial world, intact.

Should he start seeing the little oddities and aberrations, a man of deeper penetration or even normal intellectual curiosity would surely start seeing a lot of incongruities and begin questioning the setup. But a lifetime of conditioning has taught him not to notice the staging scenes. The times when it gets hairy show up when he decides to test the elasticity of his carefully constructed reality or does something silly, like riding a fallible mechanical contrivance-giving his handlers fits with the speeded up, less than totally scripted action, without his stunt double, of course, he hits the wall that isn't really there and gets mangled. His soothers and scripters are right there (they'd better be,) on the spot, to edit his memories and blend the rough edges to bring the action back under control.

He really does not know his entire universe is a construct. Imagine a Rod Serling "Twilight Zone" from fifty years ago, not done with magic or fifth and sixth dimensional manipulation of details, just modern technology, devoted detail mappers and handlers, and tightly controlled backdrop with limited boundaries.
No damn wonder his staff is totally burned out with dizzy exhaustion! That is where the really hard work is executed!

Imagine the huge implications of his zero veto administration - no need for a veto when all the big decisions are already scripted, totally foregone conclusions. When he screws up and goes off script or gets a wild hair, he thinks he will test his mettle with something like that fu**ed up veto threat of the Dubai ports deal. That wasn't supposed to happen. What a wild ride: that whole deal was supposed to simply slide through, under the radar, like several trillion bucks worth of other deals have done, but no one has happened to turn over the right rock. If a bit of nosy, off the record investigation gets done, there is going to be an explosion and aftermath like no one has ever seen.

The big tools for limiting the attention paid to the fact that the very soil under your feet has already been sold include paying bribes, very easy, safe and, with unlimited funds, far preferable. More wars of distraction are also fairly easy to arrange and execute, since it really doesn't matter who wins if the game has been set up correctly. Assassination, too, if some stubborn SOB catches on and won't shut up, has been used and will continue to be used with impunity, and if used judiciously, since the courts are owned and available secrecy exercized, attract little objective attention.

A mechanical/electronic cyborg would have been more convenient but the available technology won't support it and as long as he doesn't get out of line, the current arrangement works well.

Hell, by 2008, they may have a workable cyborg for McCain or he may have died at about the time of the 2004 RNC convention and a surgically altered forty-year-old slipped smoothly into place, neatly explaining the McVain McCain McMadness.

The first part of this essay is pretty accurate, the last part mostly conjecture, with a dollop of tin foil hattism going a long way. Enjoy!

[LisaLynne]

13. I always enjoy a little tin foil hattism!

Great post, BTW. I tend to think along those lines, myself. I agree that once in a while we see behind the facade, as does Bush, although as you note, they must quickly close the curtain for him and distract him so he doesn't make sense of it -- not that, as you note, there is much chance of him figuring it out. He's happy in his guilded world of quasi-reality.

[EST]

15. Great mind do think alike eh?

The real fly in the ointment comes from using this paradigm as a template, the implications become awesome, the facts all fit and the shock of astounding discovery can easily become terror and deep, deep paranoia.
Reading through the other thoughtful posts on this thread, it becomes obvious that these concerns are not unique, and in a very real sense, hardly original.
One of the astounding accomplishments of these grand puppeteers is the straw dog argument/conclusion that liberal is, somehow, the opposite of conservative. Ask almost anyone whose nose is far enough out of the mud to allow them the opportunity of thinking about that question and they will tell you what they have been induced to conclude: what is the opposite of liberal?--conservative!

I, myself am very liberal. Progressive is a term that does not compute for anyone who does not adopt that label as self descriptive.

I am totally opposed to the death penalty. I am a bleeding heart do-gooder whose own pain reflexes are kicked off by someone else's claim of being hungry, even if it's a lie; even if I know it's a lie and meant solely to manipulate and use me. I don't like the idea of abortion--it makes me enormously uncomfortable and I actually hurt for the unfortunate fate of a bit of unthinking, unfeeling protoplasm. I feel the pain that such a decision can inflict on the person burdened with it, but I am so clear about the need for personal privacy and autonomy and the importance of the need to have no one owning anyone else's body, or any part of it, that there is never any doubt about how that issue should come out.

I am very clear that GBLT people do not sit down one day and imagine all the excitement and pain of handling all the complications that telling the truth about and to oneself engenders, then choose to be gay because of the thrill of it all. People are the way they friggin' are and anybody deserves my respect as a fellow human, as do I, and it's none of my damn business whom they choose to sleep with or share life's deepest visions with, unless they choose to include me in their awesome living creation and I choose to accept their invitation.

I am clear that one man's religion is another man's belly laugh but it is not my place to tell you anything at all about how you ought to run your life unless you ask me to...and I agree to accept that burden/gift, depending on point of view.

I haven't a lot of worldly possessions, but (and) I am just about the most fiercely conservative person I know. I don't buy shit I can't afford. I have a house and a small farm, totally paid for, by scrimping and saving and not going out, drinking and drugging, and trying to outdo the next guy with all the new toys. I don't owe another person one thin dime and, if I need a replacement vehicle, I buy what I can afford and pay cash.

I don't embrace change easily, but when I've reviewed the options, I make the best decision I can and go for it. (Of course, all the while second guessing myself and doing the old butt pucker 'til it plays itself out)

The master manipulators would have us believe liberal and conservatives are not, at some level, one and the same because, like using fear, it serves their purpose to keep us divided, all the while assuming the other side is pure evil.
Of course the evil meme persists because there is a huge bunch of people who really are evil, hanging out mostly with the so-called conservatives and neocons, because the fit of their agenda goes better with those beliefs and understandings. They only hang out with us when there's some kind of score or swindle to be made. It's tough trying to consciously make the types of decisions a truly compassionate, self aware, introspective person makes, with little effort.

The whole system is rife with false dichotomies, rigged up by those very swindlers, in order to milk us to feed their greed.

The only solution is to tell the bold, unfettered truth, to refuse to accept "spin" to the point of disappearing that hateful word from language and thinking. To demand that the people who represent us not engage in gratuitous smearing, dissing another's record using selective, cherry-picked information or misleading crap about anyone else and to severely chastise anyone engaging in such "political speak."
I would like to see, at the primary level, for instance, whoever first uses such filth be automatically disqualified. Not to bang on Kerry, not my place right now, but as an illustration, when he and whats-his-name, from Missouri started swiftboating (in a gentler fashion, perhaps) Howard Dean in the '03-'04 primary campaign they should have been given one warning. If it recurred, the misleading/cherry-picking so common to politics that it is actually expected and planned for, they would automatically be disqualified, the ashes of their political aspirations unceremoniously dumped in the ash bin of history.
Truth, ridicule, scorn and laughter are our most powerful weapons, perhaps our ONLY weapons of any substance.

With that, My memory (I've been up about thirty eight hours, now) has been jogged! I gotta run out and vote in the Dem primary, RIGHT NOW!
I'll be back in an hour or so--this has been a thoroughly provocative discussion and I'm well and truly hooked on the wonderful minds here at DU. Back soon. No time even to spell check.

[grasswire]

14. understanding the Bush psyche..

..requires an understanding of the Skull and Bones mentality. It really does. Members of the elitist secret society answer to a "higher" calling -- a calling that requires them to learn manipulation through the manufacture of strategic chaos, among other things.

In the world of the elite financiers and industrialists, George W. Bush has moved their game forward in a big, big way. He has positioned them to reap immense fortunes, and set in motion a global shift in power for them.

In that world, he's heralded. When he presents himself in our lesser world, he's increasingly despised. He doesn't give a shit about that. The Bushes have always held the "lesser people" in disdain.

[leftofthedial]

16. he cares about today's golf game

bike ride

video games

having to do zero work if at all possible

and being treated like royalty by the little people around him

he has no higher order thoughts at all.