Opposite? Not.
Dec. 3rd, 2018 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrian_turtleGeorge H.W. Bush is dead. You may have heard.
I've seen and heard Bush referred to as "the opposite of Donald Trump." I think they mean to say the two men are completely unlike one another. Maybe some of them mean the life's work of one opposed the life's work of the other. (In that sense, I'm not sure a real opposite of Trump could be president. We'd be talking about somebody like Fred Rogers. Maybe Jonas Salk or Dorothy Day or Pete Seeger.) Bush and Trump did some things differently, sure. They have very different styles. I don't know how much that matters.
No. I have a strong suspicion it doesn't matter very much in the long run.
There's a thing in volleyball called a set. One player throws the ball up gently, right where it's convenient for their teammate to punch it down across the net really hard. When one moves the ball up and the other moves it down? When one moves it slow and the other moves it fast? When they are helping one another move the ball in the same direction? They are not "opposites."
I remember Bush was personally polite to his political opponents, in between making campaign ads with racist dog whistles. Trump pushed the boundaries of how much racism was acceptable in politics--he could tell how much racism was accepted, and pushed it farther. Bush (and Lee Atwater, and Karl Rove) helped set those boundaries. He also set precedents about how the president and his buddies could do whatever foreign policy against Congressional decisions. Nixon tried, but Bush got away with it--Trump is pushing it farther.
Let's look at foreign policy. I mean, let's look SOUTH. (No argument that Bush handled the fall of the Berlin Wall far better than Trump would have.) Bush was heavily involved in Iran-Contra in the mid-1980s. They were funding the anti-communists in Nicaragua, who were not respecters of civil rights. (Understatement alert! Understatement alert!) It encouraged a generation of widespread terrorism. Even when the war technically stopped, there wasn't enough government left to stop gangs from taking over. Would there be so many refugees desperate to leave Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador if the US hadn't invested so heavily in trying to wreck the government?
Trump should be dealing with the consequences of Bush's old Central America policies, though he mostly isn't. He does seem to like the precedent of Bush sucking up to dictators.
Oh. And Bush also figured his buddies could do what he liked in terms of foreign policy, regardless of what Congress wanted...he could just pardon them later. He got away with that one. Do you think Trump knows about that precedent? Sure, Bush might have been doing it because he thought it was a good idea, more than because he thought it was personally profitable. But he was still getting away with it.
I've seen and heard Bush referred to as "the opposite of Donald Trump." I think they mean to say the two men are completely unlike one another. Maybe some of them mean the life's work of one opposed the life's work of the other. (In that sense, I'm not sure a real opposite of Trump could be president. We'd be talking about somebody like Fred Rogers. Maybe Jonas Salk or Dorothy Day or Pete Seeger.) Bush and Trump did some things differently, sure. They have very different styles. I don't know how much that matters.
No. I have a strong suspicion it doesn't matter very much in the long run.
There's a thing in volleyball called a set. One player throws the ball up gently, right where it's convenient for their teammate to punch it down across the net really hard. When one moves the ball up and the other moves it down? When one moves it slow and the other moves it fast? When they are helping one another move the ball in the same direction? They are not "opposites."
I remember Bush was personally polite to his political opponents, in between making campaign ads with racist dog whistles. Trump pushed the boundaries of how much racism was acceptable in politics--he could tell how much racism was accepted, and pushed it farther. Bush (and Lee Atwater, and Karl Rove) helped set those boundaries. He also set precedents about how the president and his buddies could do whatever foreign policy against Congressional decisions. Nixon tried, but Bush got away with it--Trump is pushing it farther.
Let's look at foreign policy. I mean, let's look SOUTH. (No argument that Bush handled the fall of the Berlin Wall far better than Trump would have.) Bush was heavily involved in Iran-Contra in the mid-1980s. They were funding the anti-communists in Nicaragua, who were not respecters of civil rights. (Understatement alert! Understatement alert!) It encouraged a generation of widespread terrorism. Even when the war technically stopped, there wasn't enough government left to stop gangs from taking over. Would there be so many refugees desperate to leave Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador if the US hadn't invested so heavily in trying to wreck the government?
Trump should be dealing with the consequences of Bush's old Central America policies, though he mostly isn't. He does seem to like the precedent of Bush sucking up to dictators.
Oh. And Bush also figured his buddies could do what he liked in terms of foreign policy, regardless of what Congress wanted...he could just pardon them later. He got away with that one. Do you think Trump knows about that precedent? Sure, Bush might have been doing it because he thought it was a good idea, more than because he thought it was personally profitable. But he was still getting away with it.
