The Perfect Storm Has Rained on Bush

Everybody hates George W. Bush, right? We need only a few examples of his disastrous presidency to explain why...Katrina, the economy, the failure to find WMD's in Iraq. But was Bush really so bad or did a few factors all come together to make him one of histories biggest scapegoats? I have noticed a few things that have been unfolding in a holistic way to make me seriously doubt that Bush has been as bad as most people say he was. Firstly, about Iraq, it seems to be commonly forgotten that everyone, including Hillary Clinton (though she denied it later), John Kerry, and others, agreed Iraq had WMD's and we had to take care of that situation. Of course it's fairly easy for other politicians, like Clinton, to weasel their way out of it later, but Bush, at the top, has no such option. He was stuck with the dunce cap for that even though almost the entire congress, and public for that matter, agreed with it at the time. I also feel like we've reached an unfortunate milestone in our nation's development. It's not at all uncommon, throughout history, that a nation slowly but surely advances from conservatism toward liberalism. We have read about it in Israel's past and we've certainly seen the same thing unfold in many European nations. One of the distinguishing components of liberalism as a political system is the people in that system rely on the government for their wellbeing. In America, this has traditionally been the opposite of our mindset...we've intentionally established a system where the government plays a minimal role in our lives. The three branches of government were intentionally created for the explicit purpose of making sure no one ever received too much power (that absolute power corrupts absolutely was discovered years ago). But it seems inevitably, as liberalism advances in a culture, the people become increasingly dependent on the government and I believe the switch in American mentality has occurred during Bush's presidency. I believe during the last 8 years, we toggled just over the boundary line of more people than not wanting the government to provide them with better lives. This is, psychologically speaking, somewhat predictable for the human being. The more we bask in luxury from generation to generation, the more we forget that this all comes at a price of sacrifice and hard work. People increasingly want benefits without hard work and many politicians are willing to provide it if it means extra votes next election day (of course those of us who are informed know that the government never provides anything...we as the taxpayers are doing all the providing). So I think when the economy went down (can anyone say liberalism, Bill Clinton or affirmative action?) and we got into war and a few unpleasant things happened that never happened under Clinton because he was too cowardly to deal with anything, many got their panties in a wad and missed the better life that used to come to them through no efforts of their own and that's another reason why Bush is made out as a villain. And this leads into the next point...now that people have had a taste of a good life with minimal sacrifice, they have started to accept nothing less. This is a reasonable trend in advanced cultures...the more advanced you get, the less you have to work, and the less you have to work, the more time you have for filling your head with thoughts of vanity, entertainment, and lose all touch with what it means to have to fight to survive. In New Orleans, there were many people that believed they had a RIGHT to government assistance. That taxpayers had an OBLIGATION to support them. I'm all for charity, but it's just that...CHARITY. I have no obligation to help anyone. As soon as people get into the mindset that they SHOULD be supported, they can never survive another day on their own. Finally, I think we've also crossed a threshold where pop culture means more to us than knowledge. We, as a nation, receive more of our "news" from David Letterman and Oprah and Greenday than we do from actual education and history. And because all Hollywood is sucking Obama's you-know-what, too many people blindly assume that's good. I'm a student in Environmental Science...if I listened to everything I "learned" in class, I'd think Bush was the anti-Christ. Apparently, his entire 8 years were a ploy to fill the center of the earth with nukes and blow the whole thing up. Luckily, I'm smarter than that but sadly, too many people aren't. For the masses, when they hear something often enough, even if it's from an unreliable source like U2, you start to believe. So poor Bush. With good intentions, he has become the epitome of everything that is wrong with America. I predict time will some day show that it is in fact the vilifying of Bush and the accompanying acceptance of liberalism that will tell the story of our demise. It's not without reason scripture refers to people as sheep.