George W. Bush: The Amazing Disappearing President

Of all the Republicans who now flood the media swearing to be suffer from Traumatic Political Brain Injury and are thus completely unable to remember anything that happened between Reagan's Second Inaugural and Donald Trump descending the Escalator of Doom, Michael Gerson bids fair to be the most transparently ludicrous.

After all, before he began his current career as a reliable Beltway Republican stalactite, Mr. Gerson was George W. Bush's chief speechwriter and a senior Republican policy adviser.  

And yet, if one happened to be complete ignorant of recent American history and happened to read Mr. Gerson's op-ed in The Washington Post yesterday...

"So another norm of public decency falls, like a historical building demolished to make way for one of Donald Trump’s tasteless towers."

...one might mistakenly conclude...

"When the president of the United States goes after an American Muslim — in this case Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who came to the United States as a Somali refugee — using images of the 9/11 attacks, it is cruel, frightening and dangerous in new ways."

...that Donald Trump was the first Republican president...

"It is cruel because Trump essentially delivered his political rant while standing on desecrated graves. The images he employed not only included burning buildings but burning human beings, drafted into a sad and sordid political ploy. Is nothing sacred to Trump?"

...to ruthlessly hijack the nation's grief and rage over 9/11 for cold-blooded partisan gain.

But of course, he wasn't.

On fact, as I wrote back in 2009 during what is now apparently the Lost Histories of The United State of America, the first Republican president to ruthlessly hijack the nation's grief and rage over 9/11 for cold-blooded partisan gain was Mr. Gerson's former employer.

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After conspiring to bring about two of the most destructive events in modern American history -- the impeachment of a US President over trivia, and the probable theft of the subsequent Presidential election -- to what God could Republicans possibly pray that their eight years of insanity, venom and violence "might be wholly blotted out?”

On 09/11/01, their dark miracle came winging its way out of a clear, blue sky.

Eight years ago, this is what we all saw.

All of us, all together across all political, cultural and religious spectra watched the worst thing many of us had ever seen.

Together.

But in what now seems like less time than it took to wipe away our tears, the same depraved thugs who sponsored eight years of "Clinton Murdered Vince Foster!" hysteria began hijacking of our pain and patriotism to serve their partisan interests right before our eyes.

The minute the Bush Administration began trying to stretch the war they got into an excuse for the war they wanted, 9/11 stopped being merely a national tragedy and started being the Bush Administration's bottomless political ATM machine.

The minute the Party of Personal Responsibility began using the mantra "9/11 changed everything" as the political equivalent of the Blood of Christ -- as a means to absolve themselves of their personal responsibility for eight years of malice and derangement -- for them September 11, 2001 stopped being a moment of shared, national anguish and started being a suit of cultural body-armor which magically deflected any criticism of their lies and their hypocrisy.

An impervious sniper's nest from which they could cynically escalate --

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Mr. Rove, the senior political adviser to President Bush, said at a fund-raiser in Midtown for the Conservative Party of New York State.

-- their war on the Left.

Or don't you remember the day the Right robbed the graves of all those who perished on 9/11 to turn this



into their all-purpose

"Get Out of the 90s Free" card?...

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I wrote that a decade ago, and I still stand by every word.

How many Republicans can say that? 

How many Both Siderists?

About anything?

Behold, a Tip Jar!