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There’s an old saying in Tennessee - I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can’t get fooled again.
The rumor i heard is he might not have wanted to have an audio clip of himself saying “shame on me” that could have been used in any other context. But yeah he made himself look like an absolute twat that way. Not the best fast thinker.
And yet he still managed to sound more coherent than president pedo.
Well that’s not getting anyone a gold star in the notes.
He was a mere 54 when he became president!
Yeah, Bush was very much faking his dumb hick persona. He needed to offset his Yale and Harvard education to his target demographic. He bought his Texas ranch right before running for office.
The current GOP is a caricature of what he was doing.
Play the idiot, attract real idiots that thinks they are in good company (I don’t remember the exact quote).
yup, he needed to obfuscate his origins as a rich family from MAINE, which alot of like some celebrities, lke taylor swift and THE DRUNKARD kid rock.
Just watch clips of Bush when he was governor of Texas. Perfectly articulate, complete sentences and everything. He either had a major stroke in 2000 or it was just an act.
Now Dan Quayle, that dude was a real one.
probably faking it to his dumb hick supporters in texas.
Trump would probably say he invented the old saying itself, just like how he invented the phrase “priming the pump”
Didn’t he invent “wagging the dog,” too?
Is our children learning? All these years later it seems that the childrens did not learned
Jury is still out if the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.
They did make the pie higher though.
Bush had a 90% approval rating following the attack on the twin towers. Americans were not surprised by the “war on terror”, they did not resist it, they were cheering for it.
It was only later once people realised there was no obtainable goal in sight, and no exit plan. That they started questioning it. But the was years later.
In fairness, Bush’s rating declined steadily after 9/11, and was in the mid 50s when he asked Congress for a formal declaration of war in Iraq.
And that makes sense - Americans rallied in the days following the attack. Bush played his role perfectly. He was very presidential after 9/11. He was serious. Somber. He mourned and offered consolation. He was dignified.
The Trump administration missed a crucial step in starting a war. He forgot that Americans hate wars of choice - and especially when the gas prices are affected.
The attack left an emotional impact that could be manipulated to brainwash support. Today’s brainwashing techniques require a lot less, are more effective, and attack people’s egos directly through group psychology and cults-on-demands of the engagement algorithm.
There was no brainwashing… Americans were angry and wanted someone to pay. Who exactly didn’t matter. As long as someone paid.
As of now. There’s no brainwashing. People are not supporting Trump because they don’t know better. They’re doing because they agree with him.
Straight from the horse’s mouth: https://www.military.com/feature/2025/11/16/long-arc-of-influence-how-modern-governments-build-and-weaponize-propaganda.html
How naive can you be? Like literally, after things like Cambridge Analytica, technobro billionaire oligarchs openly buying up social networks and openly admitting that without them, their candidates would have lost elections, like after a gazillion stories about troll factories, bots, users being sold on the market because of their relevance in the platform due to reputation gaming, literally f-ing Project 2025 and the rise of technocracy zealots in power, wealth, and influence, how utterly naive is it openly acceptable to consider someone as being while believing they are a participating in good faith?
I never said you can’t influence anyone through propaganda. But I do not believe Americans were “brainwashed” to do anything. I think they wanted to do it.
I don’t think they’re brainwashed, I think they’re genuinely that dumb and uneducated.
In any other civilised country, if the government started a war without congressional approval. They would riot in the streets of the capitol and stay there until they get what they want.
In any other civilised country, if the government started a war without congressional approval. They would riot in the streets of the capitol
No, they wouldn’t and they haven’t. In Europe, this is what’s fueling the rise of the far-right. The difference is largely that their forms of government are more resilient. You could not be any more mistaken. There are riots in Europe, just like there are in the US, but MAGA is perfectly able to organize riots and protests as well, and so are their fair-right counterparts in the EU, and theirs has much more money behind them and is much more cultified.
Oh, which European country exactly launched a full scale war against another country without congressional approval?
I would love to know just how mistaken I am.
You are so mistaken you have to resort to false equivalence and ignore the explicit evidence given to you while you regurgitate a position whose only foundation is based on pure vibes and stereotypes - basically the same thing that fuels MAGA. You will only ever help extend the the distance towards any real solution because rather than address the psychology and the factors pushing for the division, you are yourself contributing to it.
“Dumb and uneducated” is the same thing as brain-washed.
It’s not accidental.
“There was no brainwashing…”
Define brainwashing. Tell me why a farmer who lives 3,000 miles away from NYC should be emotionally affected by 9/11, but not by the countless other injustices in the world. How else do you define mass media if not “brainwashing”?
Making someone adopt radically different beliefs, often by force or severe systematic pressure.
Charles Manson would be the classic example of someone that brainwashed vulnerable people into doing things they under normal circumstances would never even consider.
I cannot tell you why your fictional farmer would or would not be emotionally affected by various tragedies… in my experience, people are different and have their own views. Some are deeply affected by attacks on their nation, some are not.
I don’t think mass media is brainwashing people, because I don’t think they’re making them adopt new beliefs. I think they’re re-affirming and confirming people’s already held preconceived notions and prejudice.
If you think it’s brainwashing that’s fine. But I would disagree.
I don’t think mass media is brainwashing people, because I don’t think they’re making them adopt new beliefs.
And where did those beliefs originate?
Where does any belief originate?
If you’re trying to allude to those beliefs coming from brainwashing. Then we are all brainwashed by our parents.
But we generally call that “being raised”. And as you’re well aware, different people are raised differently.
Yes, that’s kind of my point. We all are brainwashed, from Day One. You don’t have a choice which ideas you’re exposed to when you are a child.
As an adult, though, you can start to exert control over the narrative. You can explore ideas that your parents and school didn’t share with you. You can pick up a book, learn what you want to learn, share ideas that were previously off limits.
Mass media (esp. doom scrolling) attempts to regain control of that narrative. And, yes, of course, mass media’s job is to insert new beliefs. Why else would I have an opinion on Israel, a country I’ve never been to, that has no immediate relevance to my life? Why don’t I have a similarly strong opinion about countries like Kiribati or Abkhazia?
Americans: we can go dumber
We’d probably be better off if we elected a golden retriever.
There’s no law that says a dog can’t be president…
Except they have to be over 35 years old. : (
What about dog years?
Golden retievers are loyal
AirBud except politics
Guilty as charged.
I recall squirming in embarrassed discomfort listening to Bush try to form a coherent sentence.
GLORY DAYS
In 2001, I was one of the few against the Iraq war, and we were pariahs. Flags flying everywhere
i remember living in redhatistan in 2003. it was halloween. i thought of the thing that would be scariest to my neighbors so i dressed up as an iraq war protestor. most of my neighbors immediately got it and thought it was hilarious. about 15% of them were insanely offended and two or three grown men squared up to fight me until they realized the puny disabled kid had this long board with nails in it holding a small sign. i was not unprepared in any way.
I was much more outspoken then, and I learned to keep my weirdo opinions to myself. A mob madness overtakes them
oh gods i’ve just gotten weirder and louder as i’ve gotten older.
I went to a Halloween party in 2004 dressed as an Abu Ghreb detaineee. I was basically naked with flesh-colored compression shorts that had a stuffed dog biting the crotch, a black hood, chains and a leash attached to my wrists, and “property of Abu Ghreb” written on my chest. Absolutely nobody got it (this was also in the South, in a Louisiana town with a big air force base, so it’s probably best that it wasn’t understood).
it sounds like we would have made the best group costume
I got garbage thrown at me in school and I was the one called to the the office over it. I didn’t even have a complex opinion on the war. I was just creeped out by jingoism and I wanted to distance myself from it.
I remember in those days I was watching CNN and there was a split screen, one side was a photo of Bush, the other side was a photo of Saddam. I remember thinking “I honestly don’t know who scares me more.” I had absolutely no idea how bad things could get. I wish we were back to the relative sanity of those days.
Not to be too nitpicky, but the Iraq war started in 2003. 2001 was about California wildfires, the fallout from the dotcom bubble, then 9/11 and Enron.
Apologies, we’ve been in Iraq since the 90s (?) and it seems continuous to me in retrospect
He’s ignoring the first mass murders and carpet bombing, egging on the dumb Kurds they then sold out and left to die followed by 100000’s of dead children due to their cowardly sanctions.
true, but years later you couldn’t find a single one who wasn’t against it.
Like you could never find a single person liking Hitler after 1945.I try not to use these blanket statements because they are never true. Lots of people were against the war, you just rarely heard about it because they don’t own NBC
after bush, we had PALIN, we thought she was the worst of the gop.
Isn’t this saying US citizen are the dumber man (as a whole) for electing fucking dimwits again and again and again who have war crimes to their names?
So, voting for war criminals isn’t a sign of stupidity per se. Republicans generally like war crimes.
And liking war crimes is a sign of what?
Greed, sociopathy… And yeah probably also stupidity, but it’s not required.
The intelligence of the american people cannot be underestimated.
The unnamed common republican is the final boss of stupidity
When i turned 18 and voted in my first election, i knew george w was astoundingly stupid. And i knew even more so every election with trump. But those that vote for them are even worse.
But lumping all Americans into one box is also dumb
Both of those men stole elections to get into office.
Whatever makes you sleep at night.
It was about 50/50; and knowing the choice candidate for the other ‘smart’ voters was a senile genocider collaborator who massively put kids in cages.
Really, fuck them all
I mean, I always assume that americans as a whole vote for whoever is representing average american the best.
Yup.
I know this is a meme so I shouldn’t look for historic accuracy here but a the vast majority of the US, and many of our allies, were on board for an invasion of the Middle East (Afghanistan) in 2001 after 9/11. It was the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that turned many people off.
Afghanistan is in Southwest Asia, not the middle east, fyi
The middle east is also southwest Asia.
Thanks for the info! In the early 20th c. “The Middle East” was defined as the land between India and the Ottoman Empire. The term has since changed to not include Iraq and Afghanistan. During the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the US government used the term “Greater Middle East” to encompass those two countries. That’s where my confusion lies. Learn something new every day.
Most Americans couldn’t locate it on a map in either case.
I dunno, the TV showed sand and camels and that’s the only thing I understand to exist in the middle east.
Natal, RN, Brazil:
https://guiaviajarmelhor.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Sonia-Furtado.jpg
deleted by creator
Fool me once!
vast majority in many of our allies
Not in Spain, it was not. I think the biggest demonstrations ever recorded in Spain to this day are the ones of those days, saying a very clear NO TO WAR. The president still sent the army any fucking way.
the vast majority of the US, and many of our allies, were on board for an invasion of the Middle East (Afghanistan) in 2001 after 9/11.
Spain did support the US in the war in Afghanistan after 2001. They did not support the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Bold of you to assume most Americans knew the difference.
They stole that election.
His daddy is cia.
One of the varieties of voting machine (the ones made by Diebold) in use during that election used Microsoft Access as its database for storage. Only oldheads will understand how horrifying that is. Access did have an audit table (a part of the DB that records all transactions made to the data) but it was hand-editable.
The south doesn’t deserve to vote.
Suspend their statehood and keep them as permanent territories with zero voting representatives.
The south isn’t the only states that voted for the pedo…the midwest is filled with evangelicals who voted for him all 3 times.
yea those too, and they are also alot of anti-vaxxers, and pseudoscience believers too.
give them the puerto rico treatment
the south has a great many good people in it whose voting access has been stripped from them by criminalization schemes and gerrymandering. you want the south to stop ruining elections? federalize national reforms on voter access and gerry mandering.
the exploitation of the south isn’t initiated by southerners, it’s initiated by the bosses and the bankers. basically the solution to the south being a problem is to return to Ulysses S Grant’s strategy of prosecuting the KKK and handing out money to poor people.
Can’t wait to see how stupid the next quarter-century idiot will be
Well yeah, who’s the more foolish? The fool or the one that follows him?
“…you can’t get fooled again”
Growing up is learning 75% of that population are the dumbest civilians on Earth.
If idiocracy has taught me anything, there is a dumber person out there and they shall lead legions of idiots.
The worrying part is people in idiocracy were smart enough to listen to the advice of the smartest man they could find. Magahats could never.
Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him without getting a cut of the action?
Harry and Lloyd?
I love the idea of a Dumb and Dumber short or reboot with Dubya and Trump, but I can’t listen to Trump-speak at all.
Guard the Leaf turns his voice to a chipmunk
Relaaaaxxx guy
You claim Trump is dumber than Bush, and yet Trump has made billions while President compared to Bush who only made hundreds of millions.
Hell, I’m beginning to think Cheney was dumber than Trump, at least on these grounds.
The one thing Trump is somehow good at is grifting, Ill give him that.
Stealing money doesn’t make you smart
A lot of people wouldn’t choose billions if it means raping kids and starting wars and etc etc that he regularly does
I would argue he’s emotionally dumb, morally dumb, intellectually dumb. He’s not dumb at grifting? I guess that’s what people like?
I fucking hate this shit
Bush had a smarter population. Gen Z kids can’t read these days. I was dumber than hell at 18, but not quite that bad.
Gen Z kids can’t read these days.
