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Originally Posted by wittynickname
But the thing about Bush/Cheney is that's the start of a lot of this madness with Trump. (Well most really truly awful things in American politics goes back to Reagan but that's a bigger discussion for another time) Bush/Cheney led to the Tea Party, the Tea Party led to types like Cruz and McConnell, which led to Trump, Trump's popularity brought us MTG and Gaetz and Boebert. It's all connected and it goes back to the Bush administration.
Bush/Cheney got the ball rolling on just...ignoring political norms for personal gain. They started wars unjustly, while not bothering to find out how to pay for it. They wrecked the American economy with both wars and short-sighted tax cuts, while also being literal actual war criminals. They skipped over so many political norms that it just became accepted by plenty of people in this country that a government could do whatever it had to do: killing innocents, spying on its own citizens, etc.
The Trump types now look back on those days as when America was strong and protected itself, not the absolute embarrassment it should be seen as.
Let's be very real here: in a lot of ways, 9/11 really did ruin America. It set up distinct battle lines for many Americans, especially conservatives. Not that America didn't have a storied history of racism before that, but 9/11 ratcheted it up to a vastly higher level, and Bush and the GOP's reaction to those attacks has direct correlations to how we've gotten where we are today.
It's really easy to look at the chaos of Trump's 4 years and let recency bias whitewash the disaster that was the Bush presidency, but make no mistake, he was still one of the very worst presidents this country has ever seen, and I would argue that Cheney was far and away the worst VP.
Now mind you, a second Trump term - with the kind of power he would now feel entitled to, what the sycophants he'd surround himself with encourage him to do, with a compromised SCOTUS - could be far worse than the Bush era. But his first term (if only due to his own incompetence and the checks and balances of the adults in the room) wasn't what the Bush administration was.
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Well yes and no... while you bring up a number of valid points, I think it's a mistake to categorize what Trump is trying to do in terms of simply "better" or "worse" than what Bush did. Trump is doing something fundamentally different from what they did. Trump is trying to completely unravel the US system of government and replace it with a Putin-style or Orban-style dictatorship. Bush never attempted to do any such thing.
There is nothing worse anyone can do (aside from dropping nukes) than dismantling democracy. Because then it means the people no longer have any hope of determining their own destiny. They forever have no choice but to bow their heads and accept whatever fate the God-King has in store for them.
While it's true that Bush and Cheney are war criminals of the highest order, US foreign policy has been filled with psychopathic murderous decisions dating back to the dropping of nukes in WWII. So while Bush and Cheney are moral vacuums, I don't buy into the notion that they began the process of what Trump is trying to do to America with Project 2025. If anything, I'd lay more of the blame on right-wing think tanks (ie: Heritage Foundation) and their right-wing extremist funders.
Racism - still a serious problem, but I think things are far less problematic today than they were during slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, etc.
One other thing - Trump putting 3 extremists on the SC helped him lay the groundwork for the death of American democracy, if he were to get a 2nd term. The overturning of Roe and the delaying of Trump's trials is proof that they will not hesitate to do anything he wants them to do.