I Think it is Cool Now…
to hate Bush. It’s like this trendy little thing here. Yesterday alone I heard at least five off handed remarks about how much Bush is hated…in contexts where government and politics weren’t even concerned. Just miscellaneous mumblings about “…or like our president…” followed by a roll of the eyes. Or when we were learning how to create databases on palm pilots. Several of the teachers realized that they could edit the presidential database and changed Bush’s “living” status to “deceased.” Then they beamed it to me thinking I would chuckle and laugh and participate in their gantor. I just looked at them and said, “You do know that Bush is NOT dead, right?” They gave me a chuckle like “hee hee…it was a joke.”
I don’t want to joke about my president. Regardless of if I support him or not…I don’t want to joke about him in that light context (especially not in front of my colleagues).
I had a student last semester jokingly say to me, “Mrs. L, can I make a sculpture of George Bush’s head then smash it after you grade it???” Obviously there is some Bush hatred going on in her household and in the school yard. So, I asked her why she hated Bush and she was like, “He’s just an idiot.” That’s all she could give me. Real thoughtful. Now, I realize that she’s just a middle schooler picking up her parent’s beliefs (I did the same thing). But it does point to a larger issue.
Why do we hate Bush? I don’t want to start a list on all the reasons we should hate Bush, because then I’m just going to start a list of reasons why we should hate anyone…including me…including you. It does seem to me that, despite what Bush does, he can’t seem to win. Everything he does is wrong.
I think for many people, they don’t care who Bush is or what he does…they just hate him. And they don’t just hate him, they hate everything he does. That makes no sense to me. Even when there were presidents in office whom I disagreed with, they still did things here and there where I was like, “Hey…way to go!” It seems that we don’t reason through things anymore. It’s easier to have blind hatred than to be informed.