It’s been almost seven years we’ve been living under the Bush regime. And I’ve been angry on almost every single day. There was a period during the summer of 2001 when I was somewhat resigned to the outrage in Florida during the election. I was a Bradley man anyway and pretty actively detested Al Gore. So, I might have been okay if Bush had actually governed like a typical Republican.
After 9/11, I rallied around the flag a bit and I was supportive of our foreign policy until the 2002 State of the Union speech where ‘axis-of-evil’ was unveiled. That’s when I knew that we were going to invade Iraq and that there was absolutely nothing that could be done to prevent it.
Ever since that day I have been unable to pursue any other activity but political activity. I have been obsessed. It’s hard, though, to decide which day, of all the days of the Bush administration, pissed me off the most.
I’ll just throw out a few. The one that stands out the strongest was the day Mohamed ElBaradei announced that the Niger documents were forgeries. I remember just sitting on my couch, hanging my head in shame for my country.
Another day was the day that Duncan Hunter excused torture at Guantanamo Bay because the recipients of torture were fed orange-glazed chicken and rice pilaf.
Another day was when the Bush administration revealed that, far from apologizing and discontinuing illegal electronic surveillance of American citizens, they intended to run their 2006 midterm election strategy on the necessity of such unconstitutional measures to keep the country safe.
There have been so many days.
But today rivals them all. The testimony in the Pat Tillman hearings has me seething.
If you had to pick the day on which you were the most pissed off, what day would it be?
So many day, like yesterday when Bush claimed the 2006 election gave him a mandate for the surge.
Well, Katrina would be high on the list.
It’s hard to beat Katrina, but the days after Baghdad fell and we couldn’t control the looting come close. I was, like, What the fucking fuck? We knew this would happen, right? So why can’t we stop it?.
The day habaeus corpus was quietly buried as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
And then, of course, there is the decision of the Commander-in-Chief not to meet with a grieving mother whose son had been killed in Iraq — or to attend military funerals.
Well, I’m not sure about pissed off, but inauguration day 2001 I was so depressed I couldn’t talk. All my friends, and even Mr. dks thought I was really losing it to clinical depression. Then in the run-up to the war I just got madder and madder and started doing politics every day. Then, in 2005, Mr. dks got mad enough to run for our state house in a 70% red district. He lost, but felt as though he really did his part to excise the beast. Now he is very active with our local Stonewall Dems, because they are the best-organized and most effective Dem organization in our county. Plus they have become our second family
I’m so pissed off nearly every day that I can hardly speak some days. Last week was so bad, I nearly came unglued at a bunh of county Dems with their bullshit commentary on the SCOTUS travesty.
Waaaayyyy too long an answer, I reckon.
The day the levees failed.
I spent every waking moment shortly after Katrina had crossed Florida online splitting my time between the hurricane blog at WeatherUnderground.com and every online gathering point I could think of posting those deteriorating forecasts. I had seen a PBS documentary about the Mississippi River more than a decade that briefly told about how vulnerable New Orleans was to a hurricane, and the rest of the research I had done on my own online.
Only a couple people who saw all those posts actually believed me and did something. Mostly got yelled at by people. When the announcement went out that the levees had failed, I just started crying. Beyond anguish. Beyond anger. Beyond frustration. Just beyond.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
But that was the high point of my anger.
Here’s more:
I mean, I can go on and on.
What’s in my mind is one of those memorable quotes from Casablanca. It’s spoken by Major Strasser, played to lizardly perfection by the underrated Conrad Veidt, to Ilsa Lund:
I think that I’ve already referred to this quote in another diary, but if the shoe fits–and it does fit the most corrupt, divisive and inept administration in American history–we’re going to make them wear it.
“What’s in my mind is one of those memorable quotes from Casablanca. It’s spoken by Major Strasser, played to lizardly perfection by the underrated Conrad Veidt, to Ilsa Lund:
I think that I’ve already referred to this quote in another diary. But substitute America for that city in North Africa. Substitute Strasser’s arrogance and what the Nazis meant regarding the expenditure of human life, for that of Bush and Cheney and Rove and their administration, and the tragedy of Pat Tillman can be explained. And if the shoe fits–and it does fit the most corrupt, divisive and contemptuous administration in American history–we’re going to make them wear it whether they like it or not.
Similar for me but not exact. I knew there was a good chance levees would fail so my initial reaction was sadness rather than anger. That changed to rage Wednesday listening to rescue radio channels on the internet when I realized that the aid was very scattershot and the administration clearly didn’t prioritize evacuating large groups of people before they started dying from a basic lack of clean water. They just didn’t care, thousands of dead poor people were acceptable losses as long as property was protected from looting.
I’m going with the day the Iraq war began knowing they were full of shit.
not to sound prescient….but 12 dec 1999…when the supreme court ruled in Bush v. Gore, it was clear in my mind we were fucked….second place would have to be 3 nov 2004, when in spite of everything that had transpired, we got another 4 years.
everything else is just the same old shit on a different day.
Another vote for the day SCOTUS threw us to the wolves.
The day the TV showed the first “shock and awe” bombs hitting Baghdad. And every day there was another lame lie from Bush and his crime family to justify it.
Boo sez: “I might have been okay if Bush had actually governed like a typical Republican.”
I beg to differ. Bush might be even dumber than Reagan, but he’s no more corrupt, homicidal, dishonest, or sociopathic. Isn’t a quarter century enough to establish what’s typical?
The day he spoke the “Bring em on” line. I got way bent. While people were stranded at the Superdome I was a raging madman. Those two were the worst. Its been stressful pretty much since his first tax cuts. It makes you tired.
Sorry, but this administration defies picking a single moment. After 6 years of this shit, day after day, hour after hour of intolerable humiliation that they represent me, more than anything I am afraid that the cummulation of their policies will leave me somehow insensitive to each individual un-American act, somehow diminishing or exluding any of their others. Who have we become that we tolerate this?
at Fort Bragg talking a few seconds on NBC Nightly News.
I guess this was the response re Tillman.
She was asking why are they (the soldiers) in Iraq, getting killed for nothing. Of course the press had no answer, since they helped bring them there.
The First, Second, Third, and Fourth Estates failed the American people.
If you want a refresher, it’s the executive, legislative, judicial branches and the press or information centers for public debate, respectively.
Since civics is hardly taught in schools any more.
November 8th, 2000 and November 3rd, 2004 – the days after both (s)elections. I couldn’t believe that this country would stoop so low.
Let’s see – other days: the votes on Military Commissions Act, the approving of “alternative techniques”, the Terry Schaivo charade, Shocking and Awful, etc etc etc.
oh, and how could I forget that His Petulancy stayed on vacation during the Indonesian tsunami and Katrina disasters.
I would pick Katrina, when you fail your own citizens in such a grand/obtuse way you should resign. Babies without formula, seniors citizens without their high blood pressure medicine. When Wal-Mart beats FEMA with food, water and other supplies.
30,000 Americans at the NOL Superdome who were betrayed and left to survive on their own by the President of the United States.
Tom Ridge telling Americans to buy Duct-tape and plastic.
First of all- 1999 was the earliest??????
WOW am I Old! The most pissed off- OK, the day they got Jack! Boy were we on a roll and then …………
billjpa
…declared the Niger documents forgeries a lot sooner than he did. But they were held back from the IAEA for three months by the U.S.
As the British publication Private Eye pointed out (thanks for eriposte at The Left Coaster for obtaining and citing this material, which is not on-line):
The worst day of many bad ones for me: The day Mister Bush said: “Bring them on!” If I believed in the death penalty, I’d say he should be hanged for those words.
Just about any day Darth Cheney opens his mouth and calls me a traitor.
The day they called Congress back to Washington for Terry Schiavo.
When I saw those folks on their roofs in N.O. with the water all around them. (No one could have predicted this….not) The first day I read about the Downing Street Memo. The Terry Schiavo-return from Crawford to sign a bill day. When Valeri Plame was outed. When we invaded Iraq. When 9/11 happened. (It was ON HIS WATCH) When the US Supreme Court appointed W president. When the GOP nominated him in 99. To mention a few.
Mine would actually be yesterday, when Bush made a ceremony of accepting a Purple Heart for his bravery in verbal combat.
I knew then that American atrocities in the 21st century would exceed Nazi atrocities in the 20th. Once I had researched what White Phosphorus is, I realized its use was the signature of sadistic killers for whom military objectives are less important than the infliction of suffering and death. Godwin’s Law was repealed by Executive action–although most in the US did not notice.
People in other countries sure did!
Not that we are at the end of our run! Far from it. First we are going to replicate the genocide of the Warsaw ghetto–this time on the Sunnis in Baghdad. A replica of the Nazi wall that sealed off the Polish Jews prior to extermination is already being built–only the US wall in Baghdad is wider and taller.
Of course, the Jewish resistance was the stiffest fighting the Nazis had encountered up to that point. We will soon see what the Sunnis can do.
And that won’t be the end either. We are still waving our nuclear bombs at all and sundry. Hard to tell if–like the Virginia Tech killer–we will really do it.
While we argue of over the import (or lack thereof) of his Korean origins–the real point is that he was completely American in every way. If you can understand his mind, you can understand American foreign policy. Not just its blatant 21st century manifestations, but its underlying impetus across time.
Meanwhile at home, we are being set up for the bait-and-switch. About a year ago I wrote about how sweet it will be to see Bush finally kicked out.
But there is no plan to restore the republic. I lived through Watergate and I can tell you: The system of abuses will not be corrected. Only the faces will change: The plan is for more COMPETENT masters.
The structure of law is the touchstone: Is the Patriot ACT being repealed? Is the right of habeus corpus being reinstated? Is “Real ID” being scuttled? Somehow the restoration of rights never gets talked about in Congress.
The War for Oil is seriously heating up. This week oil fields in Ethiopia were attacked by “rebels.” Since the oil fields were under development by the Chinese, there is the question of just who the “rebels” are. Next door in Somalia, the US is in a proxy fight for control of the oil region just off the southern Somali coast.
With the US Army effectively destroyed in Iraq, the role of mercenaries and black ops will grow. The alternative is a military draft. Frying pan or fire? Which do you think they will do? But the War will go on.
Why is there no way to stop this? Because Americans love their SUVs. Everything else follows from that, not least the need to keep the oil flowing by any means whatever. As someone who remembers the shootings in the gas station lines during the gas crises in the 1970s I tell you: Murder and death are on the agenda.
What can be done? A key question. Surviving the coming troubles will not be easy. Every little thing you can do to disconnect yourself from dependence on the American political economy improves your chances–for that is a rock that is sinking to the bottom of the Burmuda Trench.
i have been pissed off since I heard that coward jr was running for this job he now holds and then anything and everything up to and including today and every day he is still living in our house making the stupid jokes he knows of about our citizens and the likes of around them. I could say every day he takes a breath to say anything at all that we all knwo is a lie. But you know, I am still holding out the faith that that which goes around, comes around. I hope someday they all will be spending time in prison where they all belong and have for years and years ago.
No way to choose only one. I will say the day Colin Powell disgraced himself and our country in front of the entire world was the exact moment I knew we were well and truly fucked.
The worst day (night really) for me was when I knew for sure that the fix was in. I knew after that that American democracy had been badly tainted maybe beyond repair, but I was not sure and still am not sure why this is so.
The exact incident I am talking about was after the networks declared Gore the winner on election night 2000. Almost immediately after this, the network coverage cut away to a living room with Bush Senior in it, and Bush Senior declared the networks wrong. He said they must have faulty data because he know Florida had not gone for Gore. The fact that exit polls had not failed before was never mentioned and how he knew they were wrong was never mentioned. Anyway, within a few minutes of Bush Senior’s declaration, the Gore victory was retracted and the rest is miserable history. That was the real beginning of this horror for me which leaves me constantly feeling sick!
but on a personal level, the day I heard about the details of NCLB, I knew that public education in this country would soon be a thing of the past.
Too many pissed off moments to count, but I was at the local school board meeting when they laid out what NCLB was to the public, and I was stunned to realize that almost no one else there understood that it was merely a 5-year plan to destroy and defund the public education system.
To bad I was right.
I can’t even begin to name one.
Habeas and the caving of the Democrats was the worst i think I have ever felt outside of Alito.
After Katrina I nearly punched a stranger at a bar who dared to parrot the bushco line.
Just thinking about the whole thing, the past 7 years, makes me sick.
I have to admit that the hopelessness for the future and the present engendered by this administration is behind a LOT of my present depression. As much as every other circumstance.
Every day is another outrage, and you know it gets tiring, just fucking tiring. I read it in your posts about Tillman: you get to this point where you’re like WTF, how much more can I possibly take? How much more?
October 17th. Liberty died (habeas corpus was only one of the essential protections we lost). America officially became a police state, governed by the whim of an idiot puppet and the malice of an entrenched cabal.
and don’t forget this one.
“I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.” – G.W. Bush, 3/13/02
Lying while people are dying. He does it everytime he opens his mouth.
The worst days? Katrina. Playing air guitar while the bodies were piling up. The photo op with the earthmover going nowhere.
48 hours after it hit, I was in the hospital for surgery. I don’t have cable at home so this was my first exposure to non-stop coverage. News people who normally shove reality under the rug are freaking out in the streets, asking questions and telling the truth for a change. Reality is not suspended, at least for a 72 news cycle.
I have a Christian Scientist friend who told me this is what the rapture is really all about: when people change the way they think.
Yesterday, listening to his stand up routine in Twit City, Iowa. The laughter from the crowd made me physically ill.
We still don’t have cable. My husband says my bp can’t take it. He’s probably right. Small doses of online news or radio. Then I call my senator. She’s getting used to it.
There was that day he smirked…
But seriously, Bush doesn’t make me angry. He makes me afraid, or overcome by the wrongness of his actions. Like when he called our response to Islamic terrorists a “crusade”, or when he refuses to speak to any head of state that doesn’t cooperate with him. The only time I felt really angry was when he wouldn’t pressure Israel to stop the bombing in Lebanon.
In contrast, Democrats make me feel acutely angry – not stopping the Alito or Gonzales nominations, voting for the MCA, approving the AUMF and the Patriot Act, without reading it, saying that impeachment is off the table, not supporting Feingold’s censure resolution… Because I expect better.
I had the same sick feeling in my stomach that I had on 9/11, only I knew it was OUR fault this time.
Sorry if this pisses off more…
Giuliani warns of ‘new 9/11’ if Dems win
Repubs fight their core foes – us. Any Bush, McCain, Gullian – they sing the same litany.
Thanks, George W. was exactly trusted on this “no offence anticipation”.
Katrina, Brownie, Ridge, Chertoff, Alberto, Condi, Karen, Alito.
Just pick a crony or a date.
My number one day of infamy is the day they said “The hell with what the Constitution says, Dick’s not a Texas oil man, he’s really from Wyoming. We’re gonna do this no matter what anybody says.”
That was the moment that filled me with dread. Anger has dominated every day since.