Was the Bush regime an abberation or a culmination of US history?

[JackRiddler]

Poll question: Was the Bush regime an abberation or a culmination of US history?

We all agree it was a bad eight years, but which of the following do you think better describes the actions and policies of the Bush regime?

a) an abberation from the history of US government and policies prior to Dec. 2000.

b) an extreme but logical culmination of the history of US government and policies up to Dec. 2000.

Note: Both can be true, the question is: Which is more true to you?

Thank you!

[ColbertWatcher]

1. I voted culmination.

Although most presidents didn't fuck over the citizens the way the GOP has since Reagan, they have manipulated other parts of the system beyond elected offices.

I would describe the path more like a spiral staircase as opposed to a more linear drop.

[readmoreoften]

2. Excellent question. Culmination. It was no revolution. /nt

[JackRiddler]

6. Yes. It was a coup by a hardline faction (stolen election) but not at all a revolutionary...

approach. They did what had been done for decades by all presidents since Truman and the CIA and the assumption of world empire, only to a greater extreme and during a greater systemic crisis.

This is not to excuse them. They must be brought to justice. But understand an indictment of these criminals is also an indictment of an entire system.

[leftstreet]

3. Continuation n/t

[old mark]

4. Certainly a culmination - the high water mark of the fundamentalist

view of America as a nation run by biblical prophecy and the destiny of great men.

They are all fucking crazy and should be in prison.

mark

[JackRiddler]

5. Here's where we differ. It was a predictable strategy of a spook cabal around Bush Sr,...

and groups within the military industrial complex (hardline imperialists, neocons and fundamentalists), given the context of crisis in empire and crisis in capitalism already emerging in the late 1990s. A set of interests whose strategies were impossible without substantial "bipartisan" support, in fact. This is the American reality: a large part of the ruling class, neoliberal as well as "neoconservative."

They didn't invade Iraq out of fundamentalist anything. It was about empire, oil, and the needs of the war machine to keep growing and to keep eating most of the available resources that in other countries are devoted to the good life (the "welfare state"). It was predictable.

Have a look at the cabinet and key spook positions under Bush Sr., especially those involved in Iran Contra. They were back, almost to a man, in similar roles under Bush Jr.

Not understanding this means a lot of disappointments for those who think very much changes just because one office is now occupied by Obama. Not without massive popular mobilization: the only thing that ever got any changes that served the vast number of this country's (or this world's) people.

And this is what too many DUers don't want to understand. It's not at all that Obama is "Bush Lite". Rather, the US is still home to the same empire, economic system and schools of thought who have controlled most things since WW II and who logically brought forth the two Bush regimes as a culmination of the empire's needs. No one changes that without a massive movement that goes beyond what any politician can voice on his own.

[Douglas Carpenter]

7. unrestrained empires and political movements almost always become self-destructive at some point

Globally speaking, with the collapse of Soviet power, we were left with a single super power world. With little besides global public opinion to restrain the interventions of unrestrained capital power and with the delusions of imperial grandeur propagated by the most blindly nationalist political elements, it was almost inevitable that this situation would get out out of hand, sooner or later. As Lord Acton once said, "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Domestically speaking, the current forum of radical-conservatism which first organized in a national way with the Barry Goldwater campaign in 1964 found a voice with Ronald Reagan and rose to significant albeit somewhat restrained power. Following Ronald Reagan, the movement led by Newt Gingrich moved into a much more highly ideological direction.

Way back in the late 1960's, the right-wing realized that they could never become a majority movement with their country club/Wall Street titan image. Thus appealing to a cultural conservative backlash against rapid social changes - they consciously nurtured and created a kind of working-class populist right-wing radical-conservative culture believing that this would give them the working majority. But in time, as the saying goes, "the loonies took over the insane asylum."

[Occam Bandage]

8. Bush only differed from his predecessors in extent and in tactlessness. nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. "America is the first country to have gone from barbarism to decadence without the usual intervening

"America is the first country to have gone from barbarism to decadence without the usual intervening period of civilization." -  Oscar Wilde

[LSdemocrat]

10. Culmination - i.e. last gasp of the Goldwater/Nixon/Reagan conservative era

[JackRiddler]

17. But what about the MIC/CIA/black budget oil empire era? (1945-2???)

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

11. As long as no one at the top is held accountable for their illegal actions, I vote

for culmination.

Oh! I forgot, we're supposed to not look back but forward. My bad.....

[GreenArrow]

12. Niether.

It wasn't an aberration, nor yet the culmination, but part of an ongoing process.

[JackRiddler]

13. Neither. True, the history continues, and the process may yet culminate in downfall...

fascism, revolution, or some kind of centuries-sustainable imperial condominium (the last is doubtful, imho).

[blindpig]

14. Other

With this administration continuing so many of the previous administrations policies I'd say that a culmination has yet to be reached.

Capitalism marches on. When the streets are full of red banners culmination will have been achieved.

[Uncle Joe]

15. I would choose nadir as opposed to culmination but even in that, it's not all certain to me

that we've reached the nadir yet.

Thanks for the thread, JackRiddler.

[JackRiddler]

16. Methinks most of those who'd say abberation are avoiding this thread.