Boom to Robust (Redux)

Well, no one can argue that he isn't consistent.

This morning during a White House news conference, President Bush once again unleashed a hefty load of his special brand of deluded gibberish -- the kind of charmingly pathetic saber-rattling which would seem to indicate that he truly believes anyone still gives a shit what he has to say about anything.

I'll avoid getting into the pro-war, congress-hectoring, anti-Constitutional, spying-on-everyone-to-protect-America, September-the-11th-changed-things rhetoric because, really, why bother at this point? What I will mention though is that he managed find an excuse to throw out one of his favorite adjectives; it's a word he's slipped into conversation so many times over the past few years that, well, read the quote below from this morning, and then read the full post I wrote back in August of last year.

February 28th, 2008

From the AP: "President Bush said Thursday that the country is not headed into a recession and, despite expressing concern about slowing economic growth, rejected for now any additional stimulus efforts. 'We've acted robustly,' he said."

August 3rd, 2007

"As a nation, we've become so used to the dangerous, blithering idiocy of George W. Bush that his monumental offenses barely even faze us anymore. Lies, corruption, fear-mongering, war-mongering, general sociopathy, blatant disregard for the Constitution and the rule of law -- we're inundated with these crimes so regularly that they no longer hold any power to provoke outrage.

I imagine it's because of this that the tiniest, seemingly most innocuous of Bush's offenses -- like, say, his butchery of the English language -- now ironically manage to work their way deep under the skin of the otherwise anesthetized.

Originally, his insistence on mispronouncing "nuclear" was little more than a decent punchline, but these days -- after all the havoc he's wreaked around the world -- the knowledge that he's not even bright enough to get a simple word right is the equivalent of a pebble in a one-legged man's shoe. It's just fucking infuriating.

Or how about this one: his almost autistically-induced repetition of the word "robust."

If you're lucky enough to have not been paying attention, that particular adjective is one of our president's favorite words; over the past few years, he's used it to describe everything from his tax relief proposal and the economy in general (5/03), to his administration's brand of worldwide diplomacy (5/06) -- and in much the same way that the emperor's lackeys once stripped off all vocabulist clothing to hide their leader's nudity by purposely saying "NOO-KYU-LAR" as often as possible in mixed company, those close to the president have recently adopted the rather unusual word (I mean seriously, how often do you use "robust" in everyday conversation?) as part of their lexicon (10/06) just to make it seem, well, normal.

Now though, one of the most noticeable "Bushisms" has reared its head yet again.

This time, the president is using "robust" to describe the kind of federal response that Minneapolis can expect in the wake of Wednesday's catastrophic bridge collapse.

For the record, Webster's Dictionary defines "robust" as "having or showing strength or vigor."

In other words, it technically isn't being used incorrectly by Bush, which is in no way meant to imply that it's being used correctly. In fact, you have to wonder if the president has any idea what the word actually means or if he just ripped it off a Word-a-Day calendar four years ago and has since forced us all to suffer through his various -- dare I say liberal -- uses of it.

The point is, there are words that would fit infinitely better in any of the contexts in which our Commander-in-Chimp insists on using "robust" -- a word that's likely only popular with Bush because he enjoys the way it sounds when it aptly describes the flavor of his favorite steak sauce.

Regardless, the good people of Minneapolis had now better prepare themselves -- something robust this way comes."

Now before the bullshit flamewar even begins to light up my e-mail inbox, let me get something off my chest. I realize that more than a few people read my castigation of George Bush as proof that I'm some whiny liberal who's been driven mad by Bush's seemingly supernatural political survival skills. That's crap -- although you're certainly welcome to believe it if it somehow makes it easier to dismiss a contradictory opinion and hang on to whatever lie you're telling yourself about the Bush Administration's tenure in office. I'm not a liberal, just like I'm not a conservative. These days especially, doing anything other than evaluating each issue on its own merits isn't just intellectually dishonest, it's dangerous. You can't approach an argument with the end result already in mind -- put there by whichever side of the aisle you happen to align yourself with -- then work your way back to make the facts fit that intransigent belief. That's the kind of non-thinking that got us into this mess to begin with.

Over the course of the past year-and-a-half, this site has taken aim at both Republicans and Democrats -- from Bush to Ted Kennedy -- and has done so with equal fury and disregard of status or sanctimony. I've bashed the 109th GOP-led Congress -- the filthiest in American history -- while also tearing apart spineless bullshit-artists like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. I've advocated environmental issues while also advocating ethnic profiling at airports. I think Al Sharpton is a worthless attention-whore who needs to lighten the hell up. A friend of mine recently said about this site: "Your best quality and your worst is that nobody's safe with you."

Oddly, that's kind of a compliment.

As far as George Bush goes, I don't believe that disliking or distrusting him and his ilk has anything to do with being a liberal or conservative anymore -- it just has to do with having a pair of working eyes, a brain, and a healthy amount of common sense.