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David is an occasional blogger, software engineer, Nintendo fanboy, liberal, news magazine addict, voracious TiVo user, and bibliophile. He was born in St. Louis, grew up in southern Indiana, and returned to St. Louis to attend Washington University. He hasn't managed to escape yet. He's a fan of free wine tastings, too many tv shows to name, and eating out. David makes his living developing web applications used internally by his employer. He doesn't blog about work because he's heard too many stories about that causing workplace troubles. There's more on the about page. |
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The Five Stages of Dealing with Bush
In the 90s my grandparents had the habit of muting the television any time President Clinton appeared on it. I've developed a similar habit with President Bush. I don't mute him on TV, but I find that I can no longer stomach reading news articles about his policies. For example, Slate published an article about President Bush's new torture executive order. I made it through the first two paragraphs before I had to give up on it. It has become too depressing to face the reality of Bush, so I've decided to operate as if he hasn't actively acted to curb civil liberties and make America a worse place than it was when he took over in 2000. The Kübler-Ross model describes five stages of grief that people go through when dealing with tragedy. I feel like I'm in the fourth stage. I've already been through denial ("he isn't really doing that"), anger ("we must stop him"), and bargaining (bipartisanship). I'm now in the depression stage of the game, unwilling to deal with this crisis. I hope I don't ever end up in stage five: acceptance.
Posted by david on 24 July 2007 at 11:45 AM
Comments
I can't even remember why people were upset with Clinton. I won't say I agreed with it in those years, but now any complaints I can remember about Clinton seem so minor and unsubstantial as to be comical. For example, the bombing of Al Quaeda and Osama bin Laden's strongholds, which I thought was just the tail wagging the dog, turned out to be real threats. Bush campaigned on returning integrity to the White House; I just wish he'd have half the integrity that Clinton had. (And even that isn't a great amount!)
It's extremely unfortunate that those trumped up impeachment charges in 1999 so damaged the idea of impeachment. Now, when a president is brazenly and dangerously expanding the power of the executive branch and shielding traitors from punishment, even arch-enemy Nancy Pelosi won't consider the necessary constitutional check and balance of the impeachment process.
18 months until a new president is (hopefully) sworn in. I can only hope it is a somewhat more sane person, rather than someone so drunk on power and ideology.
Posted by Charlie on 24 July 2007 - 9:44 PM
I agree. I remember why people were upset with Clinton, and I thought then as I do now that they made a big tsimmis out of nothing.
Sadly, I think nobody in power now wants to impeach Bush because to do so could backfire to the extent that those who undertake the effort will lose the next election.
Today, the time limit expired for Bush's administration to hand over their defense about why warrantless wiretapping was OK.
I do think that Bush really thinks he's doing the right thing. I wish he could listen more to reason because his gut instincts have so far been quite wrong.
Posted by rkc on 20 August 2007 - 10:49 PM