Why don't I get it? (Second thoughts)

Now, I know that some of you out there are leaping to political conclusions. I would warn against that. This isn't a political issue, and it's not about anyone's policies. It's all about what people do and what effect those actions have on others.

To summarize from last time: the vet gets a bye; there is at least one honorable guy in the picture. The question is: is the caption justified? Well, it turns out we know a bit more about W. than we know about the vet. And what is it that we know?

In no particular prioritized order, we know that he

• was born into a family whose source of wealth is, at a minimum, questionable (in terms of honor)
• grew up as a spoiled rich kid whose parents had money and connections
• got an Ivy-League education on the basis of legacy, not merit
• managed to get into the premier business school in the country, even though he only had his Ivy-League's gentleman's C to his credit
• was a draft dodger
• has undocumented time during his National Guard Service
• unsuccessfully ran more than one business
• was anything but an outstanding governor of Texas before getting to the White House
• was declared the winner in the 2000 election, even though all the votes were never counted; that is, under questionable circumstances
• was president of the United States when the most horrendous attack since the Civil War was carried out on American soil
• blatantly lied to the American people -- and to the world -- about the situation in Iraq
• waged an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation
• authorized the use of torture by the US military and its contractors
• set up the closest thing to a concentration camp the US has ever had in a legal no-man's land in Cuba
• is directly responsible for the deaths of about 4,000 GIs and close to 1,000,000 Iraqis, most of whom were civilians, and
• got nothing but good press from the US media the entire time he was in office.

There is nothing in that list that is not documentable, so we needn't argue about its factuality. At any rate, the discussion is about what that list means.

Next time, I want to take a closer look at it to figure that out.