‘This is called a ‘bunker mentality”

May 1, 2007

ThinkProgress highlights this disturbing item from yesterday’s Nelson Report:

[S]ome big money players up from Texas recently paid a visit to their friend in the White House. The story goes that they got out exactly one question, and the rest of the meeting consisted of The President in an extended whine, a rant, actually, about no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he’s doing things would be OK…etc., etc.

This is called a “bunker mentality” and it’s not attractive when a friend does it. When the friend is the President of the United States, it can be downright dangerous. Apparently the Texas friends were suitably appalled, hence the story now in circulation.

I obviously don’t know the president personally, but I’ve always perceived him in a state of blissful ignorance. He’s in his Bubble, with aides around to tell him what he wants to hear. He’ll soak the applause at sycophant-only rallies, assuming that these “real” Americans are representative of the electorate at large.

But if the insights from the Nelson Report are right, the president has reached full self-pity mode. Bush is more aware of current events than he lets on, and for all of his rhetoric about disinterest in the polls, he’s at least tacitly familiar with his stunning lack of public approval.

A mature, sensible leader might become introspective, wondering how best to get back on track. Bush has apparently taken to whining about how unappreciated he his. As I recall, Nixon started talking the same way, right before he was driven from office.

This isn’t encouraging. In fact, if Bush starts wondering what he can do to prove everyone wrong about his greatness, this kind of thinking could get scary.

May 1, 2007 at 11:26 am

I knew Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon was my psychotic, yet lucid president. Mr. Bush, you’re no Richard Nixon.

I’m no psychoanalyst, but it seems to me that Bush’s perception of the world and his place in it have been in jeopardy for some time. The more challenged his delusions become, the more likely he is to do something “scary” as CB notes.

Most of us would have had a family member or friend intervene on our behalf long before this, but Bush’s habit of surrounding himself with brown-nosed advisors precludes that from happening. Until someone does, this president will continue dragging the country through what should be his own personal crisis.

I keep thinking he’ll wig out over some reporter’s question and someone in the WH will be forced to get him help. But the truth is, this guy hasn’t been making sense from the beginning and he’s never been really called on it.

Typical behaviour from someone who has never had to take responsibility for anything. Generally, you see this kind of thing in 7 year olds, not 60 year olds. Look at the mans life, he has never earned anything on his own ever. Everything he has was a result of who his daddy was. If Shrub had been born into a normal family, he’d be pumping gas for a living.

Liam is certainly right. Combine that with the addict who always has the best reasons for fucking up as he does, and the grandiosity of the addict, and you have a very “dark brew.”

Let’s take the preznit up on his challenge: what good things is he doing that we aren’t seeing? Heck, I’ll accept any good things he’s done since 2001.

I’d even accept things which he did which any Republican president would’ve done. Like appointing Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court; apart from the Miers bungle, that’s an action completely separate from Bush’s incompetence & evil. Just plain Republican presidentin’. Thus, the recent abortion decision is, in a sense, the worst that could’ve been expected.

But I digress.

After hearing him, in speech after speech, tell us “what the American people need to understand” or similar lines, I’m convinced of his belief that he knows what’s right, and it’s the rest of us who are mistaken. It sounds like he’s getting cranky about the way ever-increasing numbers of us are failing to understand things the way we are supposed to.

And this despite the numbers of times he has petulantly lectured us about it! Will we never learn?!

Impeach. Now. That way we can let his supporters watch him do his “extended whine, a rant, actually” under oath.

Is this what Condi feeds off?

I am really starting to believe that he isn’t a “liar” in the true definition. He is delusional and really believes that he is right. He has insulated himself from the world with a bunch of equally delusional sycophants. The rest of his supporters were willing to go along with him as long as it put money in their pockets. Now his nice little bubble is starting to burst. Waahhh.

Someone needs to give him a nice, big helping of STFU. That will probably put him over the edge.

There was another fella who put himself in a bunker surrounded by sychophants and bootlickers while his world crumbled around him because of a war he started.

Seems to me that things didn’t turn out so good for him. What was his name, again? It’s on the tip of my tongue but I just can’t seem to remember…..

Beep52:

I keep thinking he’ll wig out over some reporter’s question…

He’s been close. He’s got a lot of bile churning inside.
Often you can see it oozing out of his maw.

This is the likelest scenario that might bring Bush down.

The Democrat party leaders: Obama and Hillary… won’t go near the “I” word.
Too radioactive.
They’re running for President on the “right” side of the road.
One can’t expect them to lead the left.

And so… our best bet is that freak boy loses his cool and shouts like the pissy aristocrat he is…

oh oh. what happens when the narcissistic “boy king” is confronted with the possibility that he has no clothes? nothing good, me thinks.

5 Stages of Grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance

Sounds like Bush is just entering stage 2.
i hope a koolaide drinking wingnut like Dobson isn’t his therapist or he’ll ebd up back at stage 1..

There are getting to be more and more stories about how Bush is disintegrating: the rumors of his newfound love for booze, that Laura Bush is liviing in a hotel in Washington to get away from W and now this. I’m not sure of the veractity of any/ all of them, but when anecdotes like this start coming out in droves, that has to be some fire behind the smoke.

I do believe we willl see a day before Bush gets out of office when some hugely embarassing behavior gets exposed for the world to see. This house of cards will not last eight full years unscathed.

What worries me is who is going to tell him?

If the big money boys from Texas can only sit and listen, failing to try and talk him down, find constructive alternatives, then who can really do it?

His aides (the bootlickers and sycophants)? Aren’t they the ones who draw straws to tell him the bad news and then throw up afterwards?

Congressional Republicans? Pleeeaaassse! He’s convinced their balls are in his suit pocket.

Cheney? My guess is he’s loving life. Look how much of his agenda is still in force.

Friends? Have you noticed Bush seems to have no close friends? None come to mind. Maybe the women around him, but only Hughes could fit the bill. Presidents don’t make new best friends, but Bush did not seem to have any going in. No one to vent to and help talk it through.

My guess is only Daddy and Baker can bring him back. There would be something truly operatic or Shakespearean about it. But I’m not willing to give odds.

The fear is they have noticed that the only times over six years Bush’s poll numbers have jumped are after 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, and the capture of Saddam. More than noticed, they know this for sure, and then decide something similar is in order to bail him out. Iran? Capture Osama Bin Laden? Something else?

Those are the only options. OBL’s capture would be just fine, but everything else I can think of resides in the abyss.

This is called a “bunker mentality” and it’s not attractive when a friend does it.

This is called being a practicing* addict and it is not attractive, period.

We used to joke about Reagan inadvertently starting a nuclear war. Now we’ve got a joker who might start one in a fit of pique. Here’s hoping the boys in the bunkers of North Dakota check with Dick if they get an order to vapourize North Korea.

tAiO

* Although professional stunt addict is more a more appropriate term.

To bring this story full circle, consider also the First Lady’s comments last week regarding what we’re seeing in Iraq…

“And believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this, and certainly the commander in chief, who has asked our military to go into harm’s way.” (link)

… and then this astonishing item …

Vietnam Veteran awards President Bush his Purple Heart
(from the Killeen Daily Herald , via Alternet & Crooks and Liars)

Thomas said he and his wife came up with the unprecedented idea to present the president with the Purple Heart over breakfast one morning a few months ago as they discussed the verbal attacks, both foreign and domestic, the commander in chief has withstood during his time in office.

“We feel like emotional wounds and scars are as hard to carry as physical wounds,” Thomas said.

The medal was awarded to Thomas on Dec. 18, 1965, following injuries he sustained while serving in heavy combat with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam.

Some might want to cut Pickles a measure of slack for having spoken off the cuff, but you can’t call a special White House invite and meeting with the President accidental. What a tremenously callous act, given those who’ve earned their Purple Hearts the hard way.

beep52 wrote: “I keep thinking he’ll wig out over some reporter’s question and someone in the WH will be forced to get him help.”

It’s funny you mentioned this. I went to lunch before reading your comment, and I saw the president’s live speech on CNN. I had to explain to my friends that I had to keep an eye on it, because I expect Bush to go bonkers on national TV any time now, and would love to see it live when it happens. It’s somewhat interesting that others have similar thoughts.

***…this kind of thinking could get scary. ***

Yes—multi-pronged scary. The Deciderer comes to the conclusion that he needs to “get tough” with all those “un-American anti-Bushylvanians” who refuse to acknowledge his messianic greatness, and “while the Army and Marines are getting chewed up in the Middle east meatgrinder, he pulls a martial-law stunt with his private, 20,000-man “SchwartzenWasser* SS Brigades.” Another “long-knives moment” brought into your living rooms by the good volksturmen at Foxnoise, the Madman of Pennsylvania Avenue, and their ‘Murican version of Muqtada’s Mehdi.

The second prong is Cheney, who automatically assumes the mantle of power, once Bu$h is cast into a straightjacket….

*(Blackwater)

this can’t be a big surprise to anybody. you could hear it in his tone of voice back in the ’04 campaign whenever he faced any unscripted questions, that whiny, how-can-you-not-see-what-i-see inflection that i bet his mother was hearing right up til his fortieth birthday. between that and the used-car-salesman smirk he’d use when he was trying to put one over on everybody, i want to be surprised that even the lcd folks couldn’t see through him, but i guess they were all too busy signing up for subprime mortgages and smearing the queers to notice. my girlfriend’s son uses the same tone of voice when he doesn’t get his way, but it’s forgiveable, because he’s eight.

I’m seriously beginning to think some IDIOT wingnut evangelical dispensionalist told Boy George II that he’d be the President when the Rapture came.

Now times running out and BGII is wondering what’s taking the Lord so long.

Oh Laud! When will it end! Must I forever guard my musk, enduring drunken mooing from various nankers, eschewing non-synapse firing nougat-brains, plucking principle amidst dis-operational 16 piece chicken Mcnuggetheads, bitch-slapping the occasional weenie-wrappers and odd turbo-numbnuts, cleaning cultural clocks amongst low-viscosity art bobos, ridiculing reprobate poot-butts of every shoe size and hair-style, ditching clueless dingleberries, confounding fish-eyed cud-knoshers, dry-gulching booger-nose funksters, fish slapping hog-faced clod cuddlers, hair-lipping freestyle pud tweekers, blind siding dank spankers, thumb jamming clam slammers, delousing big-hair nancy boys, head-butting star-eyed slack jawed mouth breathers, greasing pendejo DJs, and gagging bone chokers.

this behavior was outlined in “Bush On The Couch” years ago. Check it out…

Naw. He’s far too well stage-managed that we could ever get a peek at him completely out of control. Assuming things continue to get worse, though, I would definitely look for fewer and fewer press conferences that he participates in, and possibly signs of valium usage immediately before the ones that he does grace with his presence.

-fred

There is a simple question before us:

When he finally gets convicted for treason, hanging or firing squad?

Yeah, have to agree with Fred’s comment in #24. Dubyah’s handlers have had years of practice at making sure the real asshole behind the mask doesn’t completely emerge. That won’t happen until he’s out of office and the massive infrastructure that’s been keeping the boy in line and image intact shrinks to just a few goons and gofers. I’d say, maybe, two years after he’s no longer our Preznit we’ll hear stories that he’s beating on Laura or see photos of him slugging a cheeky disabled vet while leaving a steakhouse in Houston.

Bush is sicker than Seung-Hui Cho & has access to more than 2 guns.
THIS IS VERY SCARY. Look back in History & see the country leaders who “cracked up.”

comment #3 by LiamJ above: If Shrub had been born into a normal family, he’d be pumping gas for a living.

I don’t think so. Not if the owner didn’t want the station blown up. Nor would anyone with any sense give him a job that involved sharp objects, glass, or scissors (except the plastic kind).

He obviously can’t work with people. So asking “You want fries with that?” is out.

What’s left? No idea.

I couldn’t help but notice that the Think Progress article that led me to the Carpetbagger Report’s article also included a link back to the same article on Think Progress… And there were NO links to the original article on “The Nelson Report”. And I can’t even get the “The Nelson Report” to load in my browser, I get a “Internet Explorer cannot display the Webpage” error.

Echo chamber much?

Who are these anonymous “big money Texans”?

Sorry, but I have a hard time getting worked up over what unnamed sources have to say anymore.

Call me strange, but I would think that the experience of the past seven years concerning circular sourcing would give us pause when reading gossip, no matter how reputable the gossip artist may be…

What else was said in the meeting?

Why would big money texans want to expose Bush now? Are you trying to tell me that they are just NOW starting to get scared of the mentality of the man in the Oval Office?

WTF?!?!

…………

Hopefully, when he completely loses it, we’ll see it on live TV. Remember in the movie The Howling when the journalist transforms into a werewolf during her news report? It’ll be something like that.

comment #3 by LiamJ above: If Shrub had been born into a normal family, he’d be pumping gas for a living.

I say he’d be mowing lawns. Possible working in a carwash.

If Bush is starting to crack it, impeachment is too slow, even if it was politically possible. Which it ain’t, unless things get SOOOOO bad that even Repigs would vote to impeach. And if the situation in the U.S. was that FUBAR, impeachment would be like shooting the captain of the Titanic in the head minutes before the bow was going to slip under the waves. You’d have the pleasure of seeing his lifeless body bobbing amid the ice chunks, but you’d still be leaping for the lifeboats momentarily.

No, what needs to happen is the Repubes like these “big-money Texans” have to force President Cheney and his monkey puppet to RESIGN! Because it’s their only chance as a political party.

If those rat bastards are still in office come November 2008, they will be like the dead chicken a farmer ties around the neck of a dog that raids the henhouse. The dog (potential Rethuglican voters) is so disgusted by the rotting chicken that it never wants to kill another one (vote for a Rethug) again. And while I don’t credit potential Reoublican voters with as much sense as I’d expect from an egg-sucking dog, I think it would put them off for at least one or two election cycles.

That would leave the Rapeublicon Party as a rump political faction confined to the unreconstructed South. As much as I’d like to see that happen, I’d like even more to see a winding-down of the slaughter in Iraq, and to avoid a genocidal nuclear first strike on Iran prior to January 2009. It would be so good for the Repigs if Nancy Pelosi was interim president, because they would have someone to whinge about, and that’s what they do best: Cry how it’s all the fault of the awful Democrats. When the Middle East explodes and the U.S. economy finally implodes (coming soon) there will be a lot to cry about.

So put the idea out there: Republicans get Bush and Cheney to resign, for the good of the party. (I realise there aren’t many R’s who take advice from this blog, but it’s good to spread the word.) Do it soon, before the end of summer, or it will be too late. The shit will be dried onto them and stinking too badly to avoid electoral death. And possibly millions of human deaths.

If Bush does lose it on TV, I hope he loses it in the Connecticut accent the rest of his family uses.

Here’s the easiest way possible to prove Bush and Company’s insanity:

Go to Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

and type “Narcissistic personality disorder” into the search box.

Play close attention to the diagnostic criteria. Connecting the dots should be appallingly simple.

This is a note to Bukko. Like you, I left the US because I could see the handwriting on the wall. I have been living in Italy since 2002. If the course were to be corrected, ie. impeachment, a national awakening, a return to sanity, would you go back to the US? I have wanted to ask you this at the WaPo, but it hardly seems the right forum.

To PJWhite530:

My wife and I left the United States in 1981 and have not been back since. Two of our children (one born here in Cancun) are now living there. We would like to visit them for a while, but we are deterred by the police state mentality. I’m not sure that the Democrats will bring a “return to sanity.” Meanwhile, our kids come here to see us from time to time. The stories they tell about getting through airport security are chilling.

To Jules:

I have very much difficulty, not so much in going to the US, but in getting out of it again. Every time I try to leave, I have every bit of my luggage searched. I am a photographer, and travel with a lot of electronic equipment. I have had every lens inspected, have had to explain every hard drive, every tiny piece of hardware. I have even been strip searched. I believe it is because I am a life-long political dissident. I dread going to the US. It grows more horrifying every year.

Not only is it bunker mentality, but it is the mentality of a rich boy who has never been challenged in his entire freakin’ life. He has been bailed out of everything, never been accountable for his action, and assumed that this would continue though his presidency. Surprise, surprise daddy’s friends can’t help him out this time. Can you hear the violins?

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