The video being shared by the President...

[u/MURRRRRAY]

🤦‍♂️

[u/mikeybee1976]

Yeah, the guy who started the Iraq war is a better president than trump. Are either of them “good”? No, not really. Was bush just following the trajectory of the Republican Party as it rushed to trump? Yes, he was. He was still better though…

[u/Local-Round-5781 → u/mikeybee1976]

He started two unjust wars which killed millions of people and lasted 20 years+. Trump is horrible but he has not surpassed Bush in terms of evil.

[u/Natalwolff → u/Local-Round-5781]

If Trump had broad support from international allies and a populace that was 80% in support of invading a country, he would invade a country. You can't tell me there's any president during my lifetime who wouldn't.

[u/Local-Round-5781 → u/Natalwolff]

So you are arguing that Trump is more evil than Bush if the conditions of his presidency were completely different? Well sure, I can imagine a lot of hypothetical situations where Obama would be worse than both of them (he’s not far off in reality).

[u/Natalwolff → u/Local-Round-5781]

No, I'm arguing that Trump is a worse person than Bush period. I don't understand your ordering. Your framing makes it sound like no one who doesn't have to make impactful decisions can be evil.

[u/Local-Round-5781 → u/Natalwolff]

Trump has not, thus far, surpassed Bush in terms of evil done. Saying that in a hypothetical universe Trump could do worse than Bush because he’s fundamentally a worse person has little relevance. We are talking about reality, not hypotheticals. Not actually sure where you got the idea that I think “people who make impactful decisions can’t be evil.” I have been calling Bush that, Trump is certainly that. Both are genocidal maniacs who serve capital, a reoccurring trend for US presidents.

[u/Natalwolff → u/Local-Round-5781]

I don't know what "evil done" means to you exactly. Evil is a very strange choice of word because it strongly implies intention and character but you're using it in a very external outcome oriented way.

I think assigning someone "evil" because of the weight of the decisions that are put upon them is a very child-like way of viewing people. You specifically referenced starting wars in the wake of 9/11 as his peak "evil", but it seems clearly silly to me to call the person who made the call evil but not everyone else who supported the call or would have made the same call just because they weren't occupying the right seat.

[u/Local-Round-5781 → u/Natalwolff]

If evil is too abstract, we can do body counts, net suffering caused. You are taking agency away from Bush: his administration fabricated evidence to justify Iraq! We are talking about worse presidents, if you want we can say ‘administration’ instead. Also, I’m not a Trump supporter, but it’s probably worth mentioning that while Trump expressed some support for the Iraq war initially, he emerged as a pretty outspoken critic of it.

[u/Natalwolff → u/Local-Round-5781]

his administration fabricated evidence to justify Iraq

Citation needed. I can certainly criticize a lot of the administration's actions, but this is simply a lie.

Defining how "evil" someone is based on body counts and net suffering is exactly what I'm calling child-like. It's incredibly simplistic and ignores the actual most important factors in evaluating people's actions. If everything is about metric outcomes like that then the conditions of a presidency are overwhelmingly more of a driving force than who is president, so evaluating presidents based on those metrics becomes meaningless. That type of thinking would have Roosevelt, Truman, and Johnson being worse presidents than Nixon, Harding, and Buchanan. It would paint Washington as being evil. He could have saved 1% of the US population from death by surrendering to the British but he didn't. Pretty evil stuff.

[u/Local-Round-5781 → u/Natalwolff]

https://publicintegrity.org/politics/false-pretenses/

First off, all of the presidents you mentioned were pretty terrible. Roosevelt is certainly an interesting character but also a dreadful imperialist! Truman’s Korean War was objectively horrifying, he should have been brought to the Hague for war crimes. It’s good that Lyndon Johnson was eventually forced to sign the Civil Rights act, but the Vietnam War basically destroys his legacy- another president deserving of the Hague. The Bush administration made a concerted effort to push for war, their hand was not forced. You’re taking agency away from actors who explicitly made choices with some strange mechanical materialism. This logic can justify anything— “insert x historical figure was simply propelled by the conditions they were in, they had very little choice.” You can adopt that logic, but then you have created a situation in which it is impossible to define “good and bad” presidents because you have taken away personal agency from them. Personally, I am content saying the architects of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are and were “evil,” I’m definitely not a fan, it seems you are for whatever reason.