I was one of these people during Bush Jr. Now, I'm pretty sure Dubya was a disaster and always has been and continues to be a pretty big piece of shit. But man, I hated that guy during his Presidency, and even more after he got re-elected.

The reason I recognize this in myself, is due to an incident that happened in a meeting of Toastmasters during that time. Now, I was kind of a hotshot and de-facto leader in the grad program that had this TM club. Well-liked, and considered a super smart fellow--tutoring compatriots in several subjects. One day we had a guest from the greater TM organization who sat in. We were getting ready, shooting the shit, and some of it (as it always was) was griping about Dubya. The TM guy was giving back some resistance (which was considered weird), but mostly kept out of it.

We get to extemporaneous speaking, and I'm up at the podium, and the TM guy gives me my topic (with a smirk): "90 seconds about the positive aspects of the Bush Presidency." And it fucking destroyed me. I had never before whiffed this exercise, in fact heretofore crushed it, and I was reduced. I sputtered. I couldn't keep my face from looking panicked. The best I could come up with was some nonsense about how, uh, I guess, uh, they say the stock market uh, prefers the stability, uh, of like a Republican administration, probably." Even the TM guy looks uncomfortable, and my classmates look like they're wondering if they should call an ambulance. It reminds me of the beginning of Infinite Jest.

Even then I knew that couldn't possibly be right. No subject you're really educated about is like that. There's always something that even ironically, that you could point to even though you don't really agree with it, that you could fake. I had nothing. When I tried, it was like that big X with the "ERN" sound from Family Feud came up behind my eyelids. I couldn't even properly frame any issue well enough to invert it to make it sound sort of good. Only bad, bad, bad.

I wasn't even political, and certainly not a Democrat. Considered myself a Libertarian. All I can say is that I was watching literally every episode of The Daily Show. Probably my only source of political "news." I knew Condolezza Rice, and John Ashcroft, and Dick Cheney, all by heart, and I knew they were bad. I had heard over and over how they were bad. But when pressed, I couldn't explain why. Something about the Kyoto Accords?