The media and George H.W. Bush

The coverage and eulogizing of former President George H.W. Bush by the mainstream media can be boiled down to these basic elements: 1) We come not to bury him but to praise him, and 2) the only good Republican is a dead Republican.

Both are hypocritical, and both reveal the Deep State.

The standard trope is that Bush harkens us back to a time when politics was civil or in which “bipartisanship” ruled the day – though it escapes me how it is a good thing when both the Republicrats and Democans agree on a way to steal more of your money and liberty. This is exactly the same treatment the mainstream media gave John McCain. Remember how the media loved McCain when was bashing conservativism and hated him while he was pretending to be conservative in his bid for president?

By and large the MSM hated, or at least pretended to hate, Bush during his time in office as both vice president and president, alternately calling him a racist, a wimp, reckless, out of touch, a shill for the rich and other calumnies. After the 1992 election, Time magazine’s William A. Henry said on PBS, “The White House press corps by and large detested George Bush.”

Arguing that the media’s coverage was so biased that it hurt journalism among conservative and Republican voters, Henry said, “Their real contempt for him showed through in their reporting in a way that I think got up the nose of the American people.” Which reminds us of the wise man’s adage, “There’s nothing new under the sun.”

Deconstructing the Bush legacy is not black and white. It’s peeling back layers of the onion and finding that the deeper you go the more of a putrid, rotten mess you find.

He was born into an establishment family that made its fortune supporting Hitler’s rise to power and the Nazi war machine well into 1942 – long after Hitler had invaded Poland and his designs on all of Europe were well-known and the country had declared war on America. Bush Granddaddy and former U.S. Senator Precott Bush was the patriarch of the Bush political dynasty and a founder and director of UBC Bank which was set up by Averill Harriman (son of railroad money) and investment banker George Herbert Walker to do business with the Thyssens, Germany’s leading industrial family and admitted Nazis.

The family’s connection to the Royal Institute on International Affairs and its American spin-off, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) are documented. George H.W. Bush became a leader in both the CFR and the Trilateral Commission, carrying water for the international bankers when Chase Manhattan Bank president David Rockefeller chaired both organizations.

Bush once said, “Everything I am I owe to David Rockefeller,” and of Bush’s run for president, Rockefeller said, “Go, Bush, go!”

All this set the stage for Bush to be put in charge of an oil company – financed by the CIA – which was part of the Carlyle group, a shakedown organization for stealing the wealth and resources of Third World nations.

At times it appeared that Bush was also in service to the British crown, advocating world union or empire with the anglo-American establishment on top. As a former U.N. ambassador, Bush always spoke on behalf of the global elite’s dream of a New World Order. As president, he went so far as to proclaim the fulfillment of the New World Order in 1991 when he started the Persian Gulf War with Iraq.

That Bush lost the Republican primary to Ronald Reagan in 1980 was one of the great political upsets of modern times. Reagan was persona non grata to the establishment, but his charm and wit and acting skills drew so many voters into his sphere that he overwhelmed both CFR men: first Bush and then incumbent Jimmy Carter. But the CFR quickly co-opted the Reagan presidency by forcing him to accept Bush as his veep and Alexander Haig, George Shultz, Donald Regan, William Casey, Malcolm Baldridge, Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick, Frank C. Carlucci and William E. Brock, among others, into his cabinet.

The attempted assassination of Reagan by John Hinkley Jr. served as a subtle reminder to Reagan as to who was running the show. Hinkley’s parents were – coincidentally (or not) – longtime friends of the Bush family.

There’s no question that Bush and his family could and did often demonstrate compassion and kindness on a personal level. McClatchy’s Andrew Malcom listed “his little-known kind gestures to many.”

Malcolm also writes of the former president:

Bush had quite a consequential presidency, calmly presiding over the peaceful end of the Cold War and German reunification and, among other things, assembling with quiet determination the international coalition that rescued Kuwait from Iraq’s invasion.

It’s curious – or maybe it’s not – that Malcolm doesn’t tell us about the quiet determination Bush used to promote the Iraq invasion based on a lie. The fabricated tales of Iraqi soldiers murdering Kuwait babies, made by Nayirah, the daughter of Kuwait royalty, before a phony congressional committee were repeated for weeks by Bush as he sought to convince the American people to support his war for oil, Saudi Arabia and Israel. As a result we are now nigh on 28 years of war in the Middle East. Millions are dead. More are homeless, destitute, starving and living under brutal tyranny – Middle Eastern Christians, especially — thanks to the two Bushes and their desire to “spread democracy.”

As for Bush’s “kinder” brand of politics, as it became evident that Donald Trump was securing the Republican nomination, Bush announced he would be voting for SHillary Clinton, presenting iron-clad evidence there is no difference between the two political parties.

Note that Bush – and Bush Jr. – frequently cozied up and still cozy up to the Clintons and the Obamas while expressing nothing but disdain for Trump and his supporters. Neither Bush ever had anything negative to say about the Obama administration’s eight-year run of domestic policies that were ostensibly anathema to “Bush Republicanism.” They are all peas from the same pod.

His support of SHillary also secured his “legacy” with the media, which was further cemented when he called Trump a “blowhard” who was “driven by a certain ego” in a book that came out last year. So much for Bush’s “civility.”

There was always something about Bush’s appearances in public that seemed odd or out of place. It’s as if he failed to connect with the rest of us – with reality. It was not merely his aloofness, but his inability to draw simple, common sense conclusions. Nor was it his constantly goofy, uncomfortable manner that distinguished him as different. Like that time he abusively criticized those who revealed such CIA operations against the American people as MKULTRA, calling it a “ghastly period of disclosure.” Or when he groped a woman and dismissed his assault as the actions of a dirty old man.

No, it was mostly the clear pattern displayed time and again that Bush was never his own man, but one led by others. George H.W. Bush always acted like he had something to hide because he did have something to hide.

If we’re going to harken back to any time, let’s harken back to a time when presidents weren’t imperial, all-powerful rulers. A time when shrines weren’t built in their honor like for the pharaohs. A time when they weren’t worshipped like saints with wall-to-wall media coverage and national days of mourning.

Because, as constitutional scholar, historian and author Kevin R. Gutzman reminded us yesterday in a Facebook post:

A president is not a king. He’s certainly not a saint. Calling a former president “President” for life, giving his wife a title and a staff, building a temple (“presidential library”) in his honor, calling on his acquaintances/retainers to lionize him in the media for days, allowing pilgrims to file past his coffin, etc., are not republican traditions. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe… the people who created this country would have been disgusted by this celebration/worship of even the most unsuccessful of these people. Enough already.

Enough indeed.

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