THE SCAPEGOAT GAME: AND IN THE CENTER RING, BILL CLINTON!!
Scapegoating is a fun game to play. I was at Ms. Liberty's blog this morning and read her comment about Bush being at fault for 9-11. In some ways I agree: more could have been done to prevent it. Anyway, I left a comment on her blog, and thought I would reprint the comment, with modifications, here. Enjoy, if you can. If you don't enjoy the following, consider yourself entertained:
Omigawd! BILL CLINTON! He is the Root of All Evil! What a horrible, horrible man! I could be wrong, but I think Ms. L. is mainly just trying to catch our attention and point out what she views as the general incompetence of the Bush bunch.
Talk about "liberals" having scapegoats... Bush is certainly easy prey for the left, but it seems like lots of folks on the right like to deny the fallibility of their fearless leader by bringing up the name of Bill Clinton. It's kind of a reflexive action that has probably been conditioned by listening to too much talk radio or watching too much FOX "News".
So if G.W. Bush really did inherit all this AWFUL stuff (like a nice budget surplus, good relations with Europe, and the start of welfare reform) when he was "elected" in 2000, what has he done to correct all these horrible, awful things? If Clinton didn't get Bin Laden, then why hasn't Bush?
I won't go so far as to say Bush was personally responsible for 9-11, but I think his administration could have paid better attention to information prior to the tragedy. And it's very possible that the previous administration (yes, Clinton's) was lax on intelligence or had priorities that seemed correct at the time but that weren't on target due to the nature of many future happenings being unpredictable... the Clinton administration certainly wasn't perfect either, although I doubt they were able to predict 9-11 as some on the right might like to suggest.
When many on the right go the scapegoat route, it's always Bill Clinton. I see passing references to Hillary once in a while, or maybe to "Hollywood", FDR, or the catch-all word "liberals" which to many of them includes atheists, murderers, rapists, communists, etc.
When we on the left go the scapegoat route for the sorry state of the nation, we tend to say it is most often the entire Bush administration and many, many other far-right conservatives who are at fault. After all, isn't it better to blame bad stuff on a bunch of people rather than an individual? It allows for more sweeping generalization, which is, like scapegoating, lots of fun.
When I examine what I see as a downhill trend in our nation's economic, domestic and foreign policies over the last four years, I like to blame Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Powell, Rove, Bush Sr., most of the GOP House and Senate, faulty intelligence over the years, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Tim LaHaye, Gary North, Gary Bauer, Bob Jones University, Alan Keyes, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Anne Coulter, FOX News in general Mona Charon, Linda Chavez, Cal Thomas, unbridled capitalism, the growing of government, economic Darwinism, the oil industry, the auto industry, the pharmaceutical industry, lobbyists, flat-out corporate greed, the general greed and hunger for power found in politicians on both sides of the aisle, and too many other hardcore right-wing people to mention. There are often simple facts of life, such as Yassir Arafat, that tend to make things difficult regardless of which party is in charge of the US. Who or what did I leave out? With so many things to blame, it's hard to be specific sometimes.
Even though the GOP has been in the White House 16 of the last 24 years (and 24 of the last 36, soon to be 28 of the last 40 years... 70%!), I suppose simply blaming Bill Clinton for everything under the sun is much easier and involves far less thought. Go for it, you guys! Let's get creative!
Last I heard, Bill Clinton was to blame for the tsunami that killed so many in SE Asia. He was responsible for all the hurricanes in Florida during 2004. He influenced the Romans to go after Christ, he sacked and burned the library at Alexandria, and he used biological warfare to start the Black Plague in Europe in the 1400's. He was also a close personal advisor to Adolf Hitler, and later to both Idi Amin and Pol Pot. And he pronounces the word "nuclear" incorrectly... it is really "nucular", as demonstrated so well by Bush. (Bush isn't responsible for his speech errors... it's Clinton who is behind all that.)
But if you want to go WAY back in history, Clinton was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs about 60 million years ago! And Clinton definitely stands for the BIG BANG theory.
Anything else we can blame on Bill Clinton? Comments? Come on, let's get this out of our systems once and for all.
Omigawd! BILL CLINTON! He is the Root of All Evil! What a horrible, horrible man! I could be wrong, but I think Ms. L. is mainly just trying to catch our attention and point out what she views as the general incompetence of the Bush bunch.
Talk about "liberals" having scapegoats... Bush is certainly easy prey for the left, but it seems like lots of folks on the right like to deny the fallibility of their fearless leader by bringing up the name of Bill Clinton. It's kind of a reflexive action that has probably been conditioned by listening to too much talk radio or watching too much FOX "News".
So if G.W. Bush really did inherit all this AWFUL stuff (like a nice budget surplus, good relations with Europe, and the start of welfare reform) when he was "elected" in 2000, what has he done to correct all these horrible, awful things? If Clinton didn't get Bin Laden, then why hasn't Bush?
I won't go so far as to say Bush was personally responsible for 9-11, but I think his administration could have paid better attention to information prior to the tragedy. And it's very possible that the previous administration (yes, Clinton's) was lax on intelligence or had priorities that seemed correct at the time but that weren't on target due to the nature of many future happenings being unpredictable... the Clinton administration certainly wasn't perfect either, although I doubt they were able to predict 9-11 as some on the right might like to suggest.
When many on the right go the scapegoat route, it's always Bill Clinton. I see passing references to Hillary once in a while, or maybe to "Hollywood", FDR, or the catch-all word "liberals" which to many of them includes atheists, murderers, rapists, communists, etc.
When we on the left go the scapegoat route for the sorry state of the nation, we tend to say it is most often the entire Bush administration and many, many other far-right conservatives who are at fault. After all, isn't it better to blame bad stuff on a bunch of people rather than an individual? It allows for more sweeping generalization, which is, like scapegoating, lots of fun.
When I examine what I see as a downhill trend in our nation's economic, domestic and foreign policies over the last four years, I like to blame Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Powell, Rove, Bush Sr., most of the GOP House and Senate, faulty intelligence over the years, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Tim LaHaye, Gary North, Gary Bauer, Bob Jones University, Alan Keyes, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Anne Coulter, FOX News in general Mona Charon, Linda Chavez, Cal Thomas, unbridled capitalism, the growing of government, economic Darwinism, the oil industry, the auto industry, the pharmaceutical industry, lobbyists, flat-out corporate greed, the general greed and hunger for power found in politicians on both sides of the aisle, and too many other hardcore right-wing people to mention. There are often simple facts of life, such as Yassir Arafat, that tend to make things difficult regardless of which party is in charge of the US. Who or what did I leave out? With so many things to blame, it's hard to be specific sometimes.
Even though the GOP has been in the White House 16 of the last 24 years (and 24 of the last 36, soon to be 28 of the last 40 years... 70%!), I suppose simply blaming Bill Clinton for everything under the sun is much easier and involves far less thought. Go for it, you guys! Let's get creative!
Last I heard, Bill Clinton was to blame for the tsunami that killed so many in SE Asia. He was responsible for all the hurricanes in Florida during 2004. He influenced the Romans to go after Christ, he sacked and burned the library at Alexandria, and he used biological warfare to start the Black Plague in Europe in the 1400's. He was also a close personal advisor to Adolf Hitler, and later to both Idi Amin and Pol Pot. And he pronounces the word "nuclear" incorrectly... it is really "nucular", as demonstrated so well by Bush. (Bush isn't responsible for his speech errors... it's Clinton who is behind all that.)
But if you want to go WAY back in history, Clinton was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs about 60 million years ago! And Clinton definitely stands for the BIG BANG theory.
Anything else we can blame on Bill Clinton? Comments? Come on, let's get this out of our systems once and for all.
3 Comments:
Thanks, Phil! LOL, that's great!
But is that something for which we should BLAME Clinton? 8-)>
Everytime I hit a certain pothole on my street, I mutter to myself: "grrr, it's Bill Clinton's fault."
And, lets not forget it was Bill Clinton's idea to give Jethro Tull the Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Performance in 1988, instead of Metallica.
Then there's those melting polar ice caps. Clinton himself is using a blowtorch to melt each and every one of them.
That BASTARD!! I knew it!
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