Garth Ennis really couldn't stand George W. Bush

[history79]

from 303 #6 published in 2005

Comments

[monsieur_safior]

Who could blame him?

[cyberghostface]

Surprised no one got any flack for this.

[aperturedreams]

George Bush is tame and tolerant compared to this year's nominee.

[janegray]

Granted, that's like saying that getting the shit beaten out of you is not so bad when the next guy wants to lock you and your entire family inside of a burning building.

[arilou_skiff]

Yeah, it's kind of scary. I'm almost looking back on GW with... Not fondness exactly, but a certain forebearance.

I guess part of it is that no matter how incompetent or privilegied, I never got the feeling that Bush was particularly *malicious*.

[reveen]

The retrospective consensus I see emerging is that Bush was actually rather intelligent and wasn't a particularly bad person, but the flaw of his presidency was his sense of blind loyalty to people in his inner circle that led to legitimate pieces of shit like Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld gaining power to influence foreign policy.

And never understate the role defense contractors and the military industrial complex in skewing the narrative towards an obsession with terrorism to feed into corporate interests. The PC game Deus Ex was pretty damn prophetic in this regard.

[shadur]

While governor of Texas he held a record for the highest number of executions in the state -- including a mentally ill woman that multiple psychiatrists vouched for, and then joked about it afterward.

[janegray]

Really? I'd be more inclined to say the flaw of his presidency was that he lied to his people and to his allies about WMD, blaming an innocent country for them and fabricating fake evidence against it because he knew damn well that there wasn't a shread of real evidence against it, and dragging both the USA and Europe in a war against said innocent country, which caused countless deaths as well as a domino effect that over 15 years later still has the world in a constant state of terrorism alarm and it doesn't look like things are going to get better any time soon. AND when asked about it he keeps insisting that he did nothing wrong and his actions are totally justified by his old belief that Iraq really did have WMD you guys he was so sure how could he ignore his gut feelings just because there was no evidence???

But hey, he looks like a cheery chap to have a beer with so I'm sure he is not that bad.

[doctor_spanky]

http://www.theonion.com/video/george-w-bush-debuts-new-paintings-of-dogs-friends-35799

[mrstatham]

I think based on his background and antics in his youth, Bush Jr as President seems to have been more directed by the people in place around him, to be honest, who have actively displayed more maliciousness and malevolence; Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc.

There have been multiple studies....

[7dialsmystery]

...showing wealth leads to a lack of empathy and that there is a high cororalation between wealth and sociopathy.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/1/16/1269980/-The-rich-really-are-different

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduces-compassion/

Re: There have been multiple studies....

[alicemacher]

Don't tell that to Oliver Queen! :-)

[halloweenjack]

George W. Bush seems to have become president in order to show up his old man, and specifically to do two things that his father couldn't or wouldn't do: get two terms as president, and overthrow Saddam Hussein. The most motivated that he was during his eight years in office was when he was pressing the case for war in Iraq, and when he was running against a smart and dedicated politician who, unlike him, had actually had experience in combat. Once he did those two things, his interest in governance was almost nil. (Ironically, his biggest impact domestically, aside from running up a shitload of war debt, was to name two Supreme Court judges who subsequently were instrumental in the Citizens United decision, which has had a huge influence on elections subsequently. That probably wasn't really Bush's decision, though; his idea of a Supreme Court nominee was Harriet Miers, who was a buddy of his who was on no one else's short list for the job, and was withdrawn from consideration. The desire of the Republicans to keep a Citizens United-friendly majority on the court can be seen in their utter refusal to let any further nominee of Obama's appear before the Senate for approval before the election.)

[reveen]

Well, Dick Cheney is clearly standing there with his head intact, so that was more or less totally fruitless.

Also, that look of shock on Cheney's face? Totally unrealistic.

[captainbellman]

One of my favourite Onion headlines, "Cheney entertains media by drinking milk while Bush speaks"

[owlbrigade1]

No point trying to kill Cheney until you've got all his Horcruxes.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Don't insult undead soulless wizards by comparing them to Cheney. That wasn't fair to Darth Vader, and it's not fair now.

[byc]

It's like he's never seen somebody shot in the face before.

[mastiff]

To be fair, there wasn't nearly as much blood when Cheney shot his target.

[cricharddavies]

"Garth Ennis really couldn't stand George W. Bush". Which is hilarious, given how similar the two cowboy wannabes are.

[mastiff]

Well, to my knowledge Ennis has never started a decade-long war that resulted in over 100,000 deaths. That's a fairly important difference between the two.

[cricharddavies]

Given that Ennis' with his masturbatory enthusiasm for manly thrills would prefer it if MORE had died, like in the good ol' days, I don't see the distinction.

[doctor_spanky]

You don't like his writing so he must be a sociopath.

[cricharddavies]

He doesn't like superheroes, so they must be fascistic.

And yes, he is a sociopath.

[tianyulong]

Based on what? No fan of Ennis, but to write him off as a sociopath seems a bit cruel to me.

[mastiff]

So you believe writing about war is equivalent to actually starting a war. You're so edgy.

[cricharddavies]

I believe that enthusiasm for war is sufficiently vile that how it manifests doesn't matter. And yes, he is a sociopath.

[mrstatham]

Blah blah blah no honour and integrity in the current war on terrorism like Ennis' REAL MANLY MEN WAR HEROES blah blah blah check out this overly fetishised fantasy sequence of murdering a man.

This is the kind-of shit that gets me to write Ennis off as a writer.

[dcbanacek]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj8N8Nvv6ys

[bradygirl_12]

This high school teacher got his class to write them. They're all from this one place in Boston.

Damn, it's always those Boston rabble-rousers!

[halloweenjack]

The problem with Ennis deciding that W was a bad president and, gee, someone should have done something about that, is that he still buys into the macho cowboy/gunslinger bullshit that helped get W elected in the first place. There's not a lot of daylight between the mythology of the American West celebrated by Ennis in Preacher and W, the scion of East Coast old money who skated through life on family connections, being retconned as an authentic man's man by making sure that he was photographed cutting brush on his dude ranch.

[starwolf_oakley]

To me, Ennis' thing is to make fun of something and get paid for it: religion, superheroes, zombie apocalypse, etc. I am not entirely sure what he is making fun of here.