Attitudes

In particular, those of a lot of folks who label themselves 'liberal' or 'progressive'. There's some of it on both sides, but the problem seems worse on theirs.

In particular the absolute hatred of George Bush. I'm not talking about those who disagree with him on points, and argue those points; I'm talking about those who 'know' he STOLE the 2000 election, and he's an IDIOT, and he's a DICTATOR, etc. And, in particular, those who would rather see this country fail than have him get credit for something he's done.

That's something that really bothers me. I did not like Bill Clinton, but when he did something that was good, I gave him credit. For instance, in Kosovo my big problem was not that he sent troops in, it was the way he did it; I knew he would give lots of deference to the U.N., and he was so scared of casualties on our side affecting public opinion that you had pilots dropping bombs under conditions that guaranteed misses and civilian casualties. But I do give him credit for actually doing something.(I wish he'd early on told various Europeans to either do something themselves or shut the hell up, but that's another matter). I know that he was pushed into some of the good things by the Republicans winning majorities in the House and Senate, but whether because he was calculating for his own future good or actually saw that it was good, they got done.

I give him credit for those things, just as I give him blame for the things I think were bad. But the nutcase L & P people absolutely refuse to see anything good coming from Bushs' actions, refuse to admit that he might not be a certifiable idiot, refuse to admit that he ever did anything that was good. Used to know a lady who would positively gloat on any news that might be bad for Bush, even if it would also be bad for the U.S. Nothing seemed to matter other than "Now he'll get what's coming to him!"(this is also where I first heard that Reagan did nothing to actually help bring down the Soviet Union; he just showed up at the right time to take credit. She also thought Jimmy Carter was one of the best presidents we ever had). When one country of the coalition announced that they were going to withdraw their troops(I can't remember who, and after you got through the headline it turned out it was pretty much on schedule) she smiled and said something along the lines of "Yes, that's a BIG coalition he has": she was happy at the idea of it falling apart. Mention some good things that had happened so far, mention that things are moving forward, and you'd hear about how it was actually nothing, that we were just being fed this news so we wouldn't see how 'everying is crumbling' and we DESERVE what's going to happen, etc. I failed to see how she thought the mainstream media was blindly 'feeding us' good propaganda from the administration, but apparently they were.

I've said this before: George Bush is not my ideal guy. He's done things that I think he should not have, he hasn't done things I think he should have. But the guy is not a fool, and he has done some good things. I can see someone pushing that they think he's wrong on something, no problem. It's the insistence that he cannot do ANYTHING that's good, or will have a good result, that gets me.

And it's usually connected with some idiot hoping for disaster; they'd rather see things fall apart bloodily than see success. And I just don't understand it.