Regarding the Trump Administration's shortcomings — what high ground do former Presidents Bush II and Obama have to speak from?

© 2017 Peter Free

 

23 October 2017

 

 

Background — Bush II and Obama recently spoke against the general atmosphere embodied by the Trump Administration

 

Bush II:

 

 

George W Bush sharply condemned bigotry, conspiracy theories and lies in American politics on Thursday, in what seemed to be a coded attack on the presidency of Donald Trump.

 

Without mentioning Trump by name, the former US president urged Americans to reject white supremacy and embrace globalization . . . .

 

“Bigotry seems emboldened . . . . Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.”

 

“Bigotry in any form is blasphemy against the American creed and it means the very identity of our nation depends on the passing of civic ideals to the next generation. We need a renewed emphasis on civic learning in schools.”

 

“Our young people need positive role models . . . . Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry, and compromises the moral education of children.”

 

© 2017 Sabrina Siddiqui, George W Bush condemns bigotry and lies in coded attack on Trump, The Guardian (19 October 2017) (excerpts)

 

 

Obama:

 

“What we can’t have is the same old politics of division that we have seen so many times before that dates back centuries,” Mr. Obama told a campaign rally for Philip D. Murphy in Newark.

 

“Some of the politics we see now, we thought we put that to bed. That has folks looking 50 years back. It’s the 21st century, not the 19th century. Come on!”

 

© 2017 Peter Baker, Without Saying ‘Trump,’ Bush and Obama Deliver Implicit Rebukes, New York Times (19 October 2017) (excerpts)

 

 

The moral? — Who is calling the kettle black?

 

President Trump, for all his despicable personal traits, has committed less massive crimes against humanity than both of his predecessors.

 

Consequently, when the two preceding commanders in chief piped up to criticize the Trump Era's ethos, I had to laugh. Evidently these two paragons of social appropriateness would like us to continue to hide the United States' racist imperialism behind Eloquence's whitely hypocritical gloves.

 

The only difference between President Trump and his predecessors is that Trump is not especially shy about letting the American Establishment's parasitic racism show for what it is.

 

While president, George W. Bush knowingly set the whole Middle East afire with his fraud-based invasion of Iraq.

 

And his successor (the equally plutocrat-loving) Barack Obama — elegantly intelligent though he is — did him one better by blowing Libya up, nudging the Syrian debacle, and funneling yet more arms into the region. Obama also much extended the geographic scope and intensity of Bush's blatantly illegal drone-murder program.

 

These statements don't even address both men's happy toleration of massively disproportionate African-American incarceration in the United States.

 

In sum, I did not see any "Peace and Brown Person Love" embodied in the actions of either of those two once commanders in chief. For them to criticize the Orange Pufferoo's unconcealed, but less actively implemented racism seems the height of unconstrained hypocrisy.

 

In truth, I would rather have a crass person like Trump "talking shit" about my alleged inferiority, than one who politely and hypocritically kills my family and thousands upon thousands of my fellow humans in indiscriminate swaths.

 

If ethics and propriety are to be the alleged standards, devils should beware pointing fingers at slimeballs.