Putting my friend on blast

fun fact about HW; when he was asked the "what were you doing when JFK was shot?" question he answered that he was in texas but didn't recall what he was doing
which is a wild thing to say when you're director of the cia

This person clearly doesn't know the difference between HW Bush and W Bush.

It's an easy mistake to make. It happened twice in this thread!

I’d probably be purged, I can’t keep my mouth shut

I'm just a smol bean cia director and president or maybe just his son who was also president twice as long as his dad but still too dumb and smol

Man what the fuck

We mostly talk about our personal lives and media
- Truly, what no materialism does to a mf

Oof. I am used to seeing people not think too badly of Bush because it is common to not be informed about him. Thinking that he is a hapless unwitting puppet controlled by a nebulous Greater Power(TM) after being shown he is an irredeemable piece of shit is a total smooth brain move.

As the head of the CIA he was probably totally controlled by the Deep State™
Well... if we're being generous I didn't really go through the list of things he did. I kinda figured "CEO of CIA" would cut it. Their argument doesn't really suffer from having more examples thrown at it because he's always "part of a larger system." I would have to have a whole abstract argument about ethics and participation.
- My bad. I assumed there was some prior context because you just mentioned an episode about Bush and that prompted the other person to put their knight armour on.

First one seems like there's some confusion between GH and GW.

2nd one is just

off the charts

This person has already lost and they know it. As soon as someone says "We could get into it, but I don't really want to because I don't actually care that much. After all, I am just a third party observer and don't have any biases." and then continues to post defensively has already decisively lost the argument, because they are already lying to you.

You wouldn't have been summarily executed for not keeping your mouth shut unless the things you were saying were things like what the Nazis were saying, or, you know, actually participating in genocide or acts of war?

Your friend is a loudmouth know-nothing, unfortunately.

GW Bush isn't bad is a fucking wild take. Is this person too young to remember it or something? Bush admin is easily one of the most evil groups of people in modern US politics. Honestly I think they were worse than Reagan.

Yeah they and I were both learning to read around that time
- Ok it makes more sense to me then. A lot of people have made Bush Jr look way better than he was and played up the "he's just too dumb" angle a lot, especially liberal media after Trump showed up. If someone isn't purposefully looking for information critical of Bush they're probably only going to see very gentle criticisms in today's media.
  All anyone needs to understand is how they lied to start a war in Iraq, allowed extreme forms of torture at Abu Ghraib and other sites, and their response to Katrina. Iraq war alone is literally responsible for 100s of thousands of civilian deaths

This is like the evangelical dodge of "well, it was all part of God's plan" applied to historical materialism "Bush was reacting to the material conditions and trends and forces in the US at the time. You can't blame him as an individual"

I doubt the argument would work in reverse. Especially with someone heavily vilified, like Stalin.
- Yeah the comparison is why I included the second snippet

I covered my name in red and theirs in black if it wasn't clear.

I care very much for this person and I consciously don't really confront or challenge them (they have enough stress generally) about politics despite they describing themselves as 'anti-capitalist' and having literally every brainworm you'd expect from someone who just reached the level of consciousness to say something like that. Stg a couple years ago they said something like "I'm starting to think cops aren't generally good"

Anyway this is a vent post.

Ah yes this wealthy well connected white man in the most powerful position in the country actually had no agency and no power and it's not his fault. Yes that definitely makes more sense than "Bush was a bad person." I'm so intelligent

and you are friends with this fucking loser why?