Everything After - A 9.11 Youth Circle

Does anyone here hate George W. Bush? I mean, do we have some people here who really, really hate him? I've come to hate everything about him, from his "subliminable" to his killing civilians in Afghanistan. Before the war I never really respected him or anything, but since 9-11 I've suddenly felt this full rage and a compulsive hating of him. Every time I hear a political figure telling us to "back Bush", I hate him a bit more.

I'm a big Bush-hater here certainly, as you could tell by looking at my profile. I certainly feel that rage against the man and all his policies. Of course I suppose the fact that I hear pharisaical adults saying they'll agree with what Bush does no matter what helps a bit.

I will definitely not come out supporting Bush, I never wanted him as President, but, and i know this sounds weird considering he is in "control" of the country, but cut the guy some slack. No matter what he does he isn't going to make everyone happy, in fact, he's going to make a majority of people unhappy. Yet still, none of us are in the position to decide what this country is going to do in given circumstances. true, not necessarily the best choices, true, not necessarily the best outcomes, but also true, who knows what would have happened if he had made a different choice, if someone else had been president.
I'm not saying i agree with Bush as president, or the choices that are being made, but I'm not willing to be in the position to make those choices... apparently, not very many other people are willing to either... (look at how many people run for president ... .000001% of america's population...)...

Before 9-11 I didn't hate him quite THAT bad but since Clinton's speech where he urged the nation to "get behind" Bush, words can't express how much I hate him now! I FEEL a hate for him and it just gets so intense everyone I think of those people whosay you should stand up for Bush because of what he's doing in the war...That knows no end, I mean the man is a Republican, establishment presidential fraud. The shame thay anyone who opposed his cheating after the 2000 election could LIKE this fraud! It's that I hate him for being backed almost more than I hate him for what he does! Hey, how could you not hate someone when fascist government-lovers are going around saying that we should all get behind him!

I don't HATE Bush, but I'm definately not one of his biggest fans. I think he can be slightly, well, let's put it this way: "racist, sexist, anit-gay" (okay, i stole that from the protestors at his inaguartion...). My friend Russell put it best. On Sept 11th, our vice principal came up to us and she told us "don't worry, our president will do everything in his power to help our country." Russell: "we've got George Bush for a president! What's HE going to do?!"

slashall's feelings on Bush bring up some interesting questions. While Locke wrote in Group 2 about a blind adult support of Bush (at least among the baby boomers; adults who are even older don't sound QUITE as blind in their support for Bush as Locke described but there are many among them, and Gen-Xers don't really seem like adults to begin with), I feel a similar yet opposite vibe from the school environment (as supposed to the environment in the ring of politics). The atmosphere I feel is like-minded opposition to Bush (especially as a person) instead of like-minded support for Bush. Just as one feels when standing among people in power that everyone around him is supporting Bush blindly, might I also be able to say that on the campus environment it seems everyone around me is OPPOSING Bush blindly? I certainly hate Bush myself, but could some of the blind rage possibly stem from the patriotic image of the people who support him, regardless of what he's doing? (Although he hasn't DONE much to commend so far, so it's hard to tell). As slashall put it, "when fascist government-lovers are going around saying that we should all get behind him"?

I don't hate Bush. I just can't believe he is president. To me, he has like two brain cells that always seem to be fighting. (I got this line from a participant in my workshop) I don't think that Bush is very smart and I can't believe he is our PRESIDENT. How did this happen?

It happened because of some very dishonest and racist people from my own home state who pretended it was an "accident" that they had lost the ballots from African-American precincts or had them hidden somewhere, combined with the convenient Floridianness of Jeb Bush, apparently deciding to leave Texas so he could settle down in a swing state. Combine this with a State Supreme Court made of older Sun-belt conservatives who have stayed here for a long time, and an archaic "electoral college" system behind it all, and you get an easy way to pull a swing state over to the direction the Bushs want it -- even when the majority of individuals across the nation voted against him.

You Americans should stop looking for the bad in people, and start looking for the good. You should be proud to have someone even running your nation in times like these! Stop being so ungrateful, and open your eyes and be thankful that you have someone who can atleast try there best to make decisions for the best of a country and yet still put up with all the critisizm from their own people! Let alone most of the rest of the world. It's not like it's easy to run a COUNTRY! Take a minute and imagine yourself in Bush's shoes.

I don't think that it is easy to run a nation but it is easy to run it down. I believe that some big mistake is going to take place in Bush's presidency. Maybe I say this because I don't think he is very bright. Whatever happens, I do hope that people can deal with the fact that Bush wore his shoes, found out that they were too tight, and shot them to make them bigger. America can remain a superpower but it doesn't have to be a bully. Bush is making The US into a bully.

Exactly. Take a president who's a major idiot, then get some people who like him based on no merit at all just because he just happens to be president when a terrorist attack and war come along, and it becomes easy to hate him. The war doesn't change the fact that Bush's son should never had crawled his way up into a presidency when he didn't know what he was getting into. I used to be amused in some ways that we had a certifiable idiot who was also a frat boy and drunkard in the president's seat . . . but since he declared war on terror and the nation bled over its visible split on whether to blindly support him or hate him, I don't feel amusement any more; I just feel a sense of hate and dread.

I definitely felt as if there was a pressure to feel anti-government and anti-Bush thoughts emanating from my campus too, and the reason is that these feelings come largely from knee-jerk reactions. Especially after situations like this where emotions run high. Things like patriotism and the nation being at war touch on just the right issues to make people assert their ideology. Watching Clinton ask people to "get behind" the president, and a Republican American president at that, appealed to counterculture Americans to give them the impetus to want to hate the president and NOT announce any allegiance to the United States just as it appealed to conservative Americans to give them to impetus to wave flags and proudly announce how tied to the president they were and show off their refusal to question anything the government did. This has played on all the right chords.