I don’t take joy in anyone’s passing, great or small. We’re all living beings with a limited time in this timeless universe, and there’s nothing to celebrate when death takes its toll, even when the departed is someone you are not at all fond of. I would have to count George H. W. Bush as someone who fits that description. Despite all of the glowing tributes from members of our political elite and millionaire media personalities, he was an awful president in a lot of ways – one that left a toxic legacy we’re still grappling with. The invasion of Panama alone was enough to wipe away any pretense of a “kind and gentle” leader, but the administration of Bush 41 went far beyond that atrocity.

In listening to the hagiographic coverage put out by NPR, NBC and MSNBC, it’s clear that H. W, Bush’s conservative politics is a kind of “sweet spot” for our mainstream press – the ideal foil to the uncouth hair-hatted fiend who currently occupies the White House.  Like the McCain funeral, this is an opportunity to demonstrate their middle-of-the-road reactionary bona fides. It’s as if there’s Trump and then everyone else, and they take the side of the latter. The stupidity of the rhetoric is kind of sobering, though. On Morning Joe, Willie Geist was talking about how Bush 41 chose to join the Navy as an aviator, as if that was a singularly selfless act. The guy is so distant from the notion of conscription that he barely knows what he’s talking about. Note to Willie: Practically everybody ended up in uniform and shipped overseas in those days. Aside from a draft, there was enormous societal pressure to join up and do your part. Every military age male in my extended family at that time was sent to fight in World War II (one didn’t return, another committed suicide afterwards).  No shade on Bush 41 – he sacrificed during the war, but his experience was very, very common.

I won’t tick through George H. W. Bush’s record on Panama, on Haiti (supported the 1991 coup), on Iraq, on Central America (consummated the criminal terror war against Nicaragua), on the war on drugs, on AIDS policy (hands off), on Clarence Thomas, and so on. It’s been treated elsewhere in much greater detail by better writers than me. All I can say is that, while I’m sorry he’s dead, he was not a “kind and gentle” leader by any stretch of the imagination, and he played a central roll in getting us to the awful place we find our selves in now. While I was never a fan of Clinton, I was glad to see Bush go in 1993, and I’m still glad he never had that second term.

No secret why I wasn’t invited to the funeral. Again.

luv u,

jp