[PEN-L:32620] Re: Bush, moron? ref # 32618

[Doyle Saylor <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings Economists,
This is a good example of how an accusation of disability which calling
someone a moron is covers possibly altogether different issues.  This
article goes on to wallow in psychological explanation with assertions about
what Bush is.  For example, pathological (sociopathic) personality?

from the article,
"What's revealing about this is that Bush could not say, `Shame
on me' to save his life. That's a completely alien idea to him.
This is a guy who is absolutely proud of his own inflexibility
and rectitude."

Doyle
If I had direct contact with someone and experience with who they are I
might be able to surmise how they are, but what are we to make of this in
terms of national policy?  Governments are not individuals despite Bush's
general desire to be the 'boss'.  Nor are systems about individuals.

But with this sort of focus the issue of being disabled gets brought up in a
way that makes it seem that we have a solution.  Are we to say that if
someone gets elevated to power that we have an understanding of what we
would do if they become seriously depressed?  Perhaps medical care comes to
mind, but that is medicalizing social structure.

from the article,
"I know how hard it is to put food on your family," Bush was
quoted as saying.

"That wasn't because he's so stupid that he doesn't know how to
say, `Put food on your family's table' ? it's because he doesn't
care about people who can't put food on the table," Miller says.

Doyle
Is this disability or class?

from the article,
"He's a very angry guy, a hostile guy. He's much like Nixon. So
they're very, very careful to choreograph every move he makes.
They don't want him anywhere near protestors, because he would
lose his temper."

Miller, without question, is a man with a mission ? and laughter
isn't it.

"I call him the feel bad president, because he's all about
punishment and death," he said. "It would be a grave mistake to
just play him for laughs."

Doyle,
the key issue here is judgement of emotional structure ascribed to Bush that
presupposes a meaning that is in fact not present in emotional systems.
Without a comprehensive sense of what disability rights are every piece of
this judgment of Bush gives us little to understand what to do.   Perhaps
thinking about social issues of class would help here.  How can we measure
the anger in a man?  They are angry because of specific events and their
values they hold such as working class people angry with their lives and how
they must live.  These are contingent issues, not disability issues, and
disability issues point at inheritance rather than social system in this
context.

there is a kind of echo in what Jim Devine writes to my concern, but let me
be clear, it is not the individual, it is capitalism.

JD writes,
It's been pretty clear for awhile that it didn't matter if Dubya was an
idiot or not, since it's the administration that counts, not the individual.
(Cheney and Rove, two horrible people, would run the show if Dubya were an
idiot.) We already knew that the administration was sociopathic...

Jim 
thanks,
Doyle