Robert David

The Bush Controlled Demolition of Democracy

The George W. Bush years (2001–2009) were less a presidency and more a controlled demolition of freedom, liberty, trust, wealth, and global credibility. Bush shattered the economic backbone of the middle class (home ownership, trust in banks and financial corporations). Bush completely burned down America’s global reputation internationally.

Bush created an economic pipeline from Mainstreet to Wall Street, slashing taxes for the top 1% under the guise of relief for all. Bush caused ballooning national debt, a vanished surplus, and a turbine pumping wealth from workers to banksters.

Bush created a perfect financial storm: private bank failure from Clinton/Bush deregulation, a casino financial sector, corporate handouts with public money. The financial bubble burst, and millions lost homes, jobs, and savings – but Bankster CEOs earned billions in golden parachutes. Bush's response to the collapse was a weak stimulus, followed by a last-minute, trillion-dollar bailout (TARP) that saved the system but not the ordinary people crushed beneath it. Millions and millions lost homes, their life savings (in real estate) repossessed by predatory lenders.

Foreign Policy: Unending War as Public Relations Strategy

Bush and his administration used 9-11 as a financial and legal can opener to turn The Presidency into mass mind control and multi-generational dynasty building machine for elites. The Bush administration and the media normalized “ideological” unending wars. The true motivations were always obscured in media newspeak.

Iraq: The Trillion-Dollar Lie

No WMDs, no exit strategy, just thousands dead, a nation destabilized, and ISIS born from the ashes. All justified by faulty intel and flag-draped fear and control. More than 13 Oil Companies took over Iraq’s oil, 1/5ᵗʰ of all the oil in the world. To this day, private armies maintain oil field security for Shell, British Petroleum, Conoco, China Oil and more. We were told by Bush that this was “freedom and democracy.” Bush ennobled the theft of one of the Earth’s greatest natural resources, a theft still continuing today.

Afghanistan: The Forgotten War

Initial success gave way to neglect as Bush pivoted to Iraq. The Taliban regrouped. The war dragged on for 20 years. The CIA sold Afghan poppies as heroin for 20 years. US Troops guarded Taliban Poppy Fields. The war on terror was nothing more than CIA drug dealing, dark money for dark operations abroad.

The War on Terror: Civil Liberties Collateral

Guantanamo. Waterboarding. Warrantless surveillance. The Constitution bent under a banner of safety. Bush waterboarded the US Constitution, which has never recovered from Bush’s Republican onslaught against freedom and democracy. The Bill of Rights remains superseded by The Patriot Act and NDAA 1021 and 1022.

George Bush Domestic Policy: A Government That Couldn’t Shoot Straight

Hurricane Katrina

A slow-motion disaster compounded by slower federal response. “Heck of a job, Brownie” became a punchline for deadly incompetence. The levees remain dangerous and local communities remain broken by Hurricane Katrina.

Medicare Part D

A giveaway to Big Pharma, the public banned from negotiating drug prices. Seniors got pills, taxpayers got the bill. 

Science Gagged, Agencies Warped

Climate data buried. Scientists muzzled. The Justice Department politicized and weaponized. National Security the buzzword for a permanently suspended Constitution.

The Imperial Presidency

Bush embraced the “Unitary Executive” theory… signing statements and power grabs that chipped away at Congressional authority and rewrote the balance of hard and soft power.

The Bottom Line

Bush inherited a surplus and global goodwill. He left behind wreckage: economic, geopolitical, constitutional. A presidency defined by war, wealth transfer, and willful newspeak sold under the banner of freedom.

The Bush administration put the first really large, irreparable cracks into America. One could think of America as the Polar Icecaps of the Earth, and Bush and his Cabinet Secretaries as the first big spike of Global Warming. Pardon the clumsy analogy but try to picture a fatal puncture in The American Way, and each subsequent President after Bush, Vampire Administrations licking up America’s lifeblood.

Bush’s dissolution of the Bill of Rights, his transfer of wealth was justified as 19 Arabs with Boxcutters and Jet Fuel. Two good reasons to disbelieve Bush: In Plane Sight, The Director’s Cut. 

Loose Change, Final Cut 2007.

Obama: The Smart Bomb with a Crest Smile

Barack Obama strode into office on a wave of hope, history, and economic catastrophe. He promised change. What America got was a technocrat with a scalpel, cutting deals, not chains. Better than Bush? Somewhat. But a savior? Hardly. Obama emoted wisdom while drone killing hundreds of thousands beneath his Nobel medal.

Obama Widened and Chiseled Out the Cracks Bush Started

He hardened the fracture, less cowboy, more coder.

Economically, he hardened Bush's bailout-and-debt economy. Instead of shattering Wall Street's stranglehold, he blessed it. Quantitative easing became policy orthodoxy-trillions to banks, pennies to workers. The "recovery" inflated assets, not salaries. Silicon Valley's gig economy replaced stable jobs with sunny bondage, and the ACA codified healthcare as a subsidized monopoly.

Autocratically, Obama democratized Bush's demon police state. Invasions were replaced by drones, surveillance became mainstream, and the White House was converted into a control room. Whistleblowers were prosecuted; journalists were harassed and surveilled.

The 2009 Recovery Act pumped $800 billion into the economy, but economists begged for double. What passed was kneecapped by GOP obstruction and Obama's instinct for compromise over confrontation.

Barrack Obama spent 8 years bailing out Banks, Banking Criminals, pouring Treasury (public tax money) into every possible 1% he could. He saved a corrupt system; he betrayed the public. All of the criminal banksters were too big to jail. They are all, still, walking around with your cash in their pockets. Obama, his cabinet, and the banksters drank blood from America’s jugular, nicked open by Bush.

The wealth gap in America and globally becomes an insurmountable chasm. 

Obama perfected the art of remote warfare. Civilians died in shadow wars from Pakistan to Yemen. Kill lists. Secret memos. A Nobel Peace Prize winner with a death joystick.

Civil Liberties, Surveillance, and the National Security State

NSA Overreach Exposed

Thanks to Edward Snowden, we learned the Obama-era surveillance state was Hoover-era paranoia with digital reach. Mass metadata collection. Warrantless spying. All under the watch of a constitutional scholar. The NSA and the Mossad routinely bugged, drugged, surveilled and harassed Occupiers, Dissidents, Journalists or basically anyone unlucky under the guise of “fighting terrorism.” Public evidence of this injustice still exists in $25 per hour Surveillance Role Player “Positions” (Law Enforcement Intelligence Units, LEIU) on Glassdoor.com, Indeed.com and LinkedIn.com. For $25 per hour, goons violate the rights of anyone on the list and politicians label it “anti-terrorism.”

War on Whistleblowers

Obama prosecuted more leakers under the Espionage Act than all previous presidents combined. Transparency talk on the stump, secrecy in practice.

Guantanamo: Still Open

Promised to close it. Never did. The symbol of post-9/11 lawlessness lingered-a stain left untouched.

From Bill Clinton’s C.O.P.S. Program (Community Oriented Policing Services, the dawn of wide-spread secret police in America) to Bush and Obama’s enemies PowerPoints – America is a Democracy in name only. 

Trump, Autocratic America 101

By the time the Obamas left the White House, America was far more digital spreadsheet of journalists and dissidents wrapped in Bush/Obama Digital and Humint Shrink Wrap. The Internet was Operation CHAOS Flypaper, the circuits humming with Mossad/NSA sinister presence.

Then came Donald J. Trump-not a glitch in the system, but its logical next software update: plutocracy rendered as entertainment. He did not drain the swamp; he replaced it with Project 2025 Lite (the 2021 version):

The Great Tax Heist of 2017

A legislative smash-and-grab masquerading as reform.  Trillions funneled upward while the deficit metastasized.

The Deregulation Death March

Environmental, labor, and consumer protections vaporized under the illusion of “freedom.” Corporations breathed easier; asthma and emphysema cases grew like the rising cancer rates in America. Corporations had freedom, democracy and rights, there were and are none for citizens. What Bush and Obama did financially for Defense Contractors and Big Oil, Trump did for Health Insurers and Big Pharma. COVID-19 became COVID 1,900 Billion in relief for Wall Street. 

Pandemic Crony Capitalism

COVID relief turned into a feeding frenzy for insiders. PPP billions flowed to hedge funds, lobbying firms, and private equity-while small businesses folded by hundreds of thousands. There were no Greek-style Austerity announcements, millions of Americans losing savings, livelihoods, businesses, spending power and bargaining power. Trump 101 is Greek Austerity inflation 4.0.

Surveillance Federalized: The Digital Panopticon Expands

Trump extended Bush-Obama surveillance architecture into a private-sector fusion with Palantir, Amazon, and Google-profiling citizens, not criminals. Peter Thiel became the High Priest of your data and metadata. Thanks to Thiel and Palentir, Israel knows you better than your spouse does – literally. Trump redefined Citizens into Perps and Suspects via Predictive Analytics – PreCrime. Bush built the framework, Obama refined it, but Trump combined it with private capital and data monopolies. Trump's presidency destroyed the last membrane between state intelligence and business analytics. The Palantir-Amazon-Google troika under Trump transformed surveillance from a security apparatus to a business proposition-an algorithmic marketplace of fear, loathing and precrime profiling.

Corporate Judiciary, Permanent Oligarchy

Lifetime judges installed to guarantee deregulation, union erosion, and corporate sovereignty for decades beyond Trump’s term. A stacked deck Supreme Court opening up established law and legal precedence with all the wisdom of a housefly. ^ to 3, 6 to 3, 6 to 3. Your former rights lost, 6-3. The newest “Justice.” Amy Coney Barrett, can wordsmith any legal precedence into rubbish, and any rubbish into “law.” The rule of law is now the 6 to 3 rule of law. The “Six” believe in All known rights for Corporations and none for PreCrime “Perps and Suspects.”

Trump gave us Corporations with Extrajudicial Power. Although these Corporations are Guilty Until Proven Innocent, that is precisely the legal predicament they have placed on to all of our heads. We are considered suspect at all times by Criminal Cabal Corporations. A presidency as performance art: part crime spree, part cult rally, part slow-motion constitutional crisis.

Joseph R. Biden: Oligarchs Thrive While Middle-Class Dreams Crumble

Ignoring Domestic Suffering While Funding Endless Wars

President Joe Biden signed a $95 billion foreign aid package into law on April 24, 2024, allocating substantial funds to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. $26 Billion of the aid went to Benjamin Netanyahu for Gaza Genocide.

Through his first four years, President Biden directed some $1.9 trillion in federal defense appropriations, Pentagon budget, and weapons programs. Add another $95 billion in military/humanitarian aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Gaza, and tens of billions more in corporate subsidies, bailouts, and pharmaceutical favoritism -- far surpassing total transfers to war and corporate interests $1.9 trillion plus.

If you divide the poorest 134 million Americans into Biden’s $1.9 Trillion Dollars in Corporate Aid, each person could have received $14,179+ per person in proper health care, a healthy diet, education and proper dental care.

Enriching Big Pharma and Big Tech at Public Expense

·  Total Estimated Spending on Big Pharma and Big Tech: Approximately $200 billion over four years.

·  Potential Allocation to Lower-Middle-Class and Poor (134 million people): If this amount were distributed equally, each individual would receive (additionally) about $1,493 per person.

Affordable Housing and Decent Healthcare Left to Collapse – So that 66,000+ Palestinians could die from JDAMs, White Phosphorus Bombs, 155mm Howitzer Shells.

Biden promised to heal America. What he delivered was hospice care: calm, professional, but with no plan for actual recovery. The oligarchs got richer, the poor got squeezed, and war-eternal, bipartisan, profitable-marched on.

A presidency of soft words and hard truths: the empire doesn’t care who’s steering, as long as the machine keeps running.

Trump's Second Term: The Last Breakdown

Trump did not return to govern. Trump returned to finish the job-incinerate what's left of the bridges, silence critics, strangle what remains of the American experiment. What began as a circus of rage in 2016 has hardened into something tougher, cold-blooded, sinister. A rotting, vengeance-fueled, grievance-addled regime.

Cronies were used in place of civil servants. Decimated agencies. Defunded watchdogs. Legal firewalls brought down. Institutions were reprogrammed to obey. The government became a machine of loyalty, not law.

The Trump Administration is hammering the last cracks into a failed America. The “mandate” is a mandate to wreck, to destroy, to watch a little-boy President break all of “his toys.”

Wars are stage props. Bombs are election strategy. Civilians are victims of the war of ratings. Ukraine bled silently; Gaza blackened under American genocide-guns, diplomatic havens, blank moral drafts. Every missile a quid pro quo, every shipment a tally against conscience.

The economy is torn asunder. Middle class whittled down to museum exhibits. Corporate tax breaks, environmental protections torn to pieces. Wages flatlined. Healthcare and housing are mafia fixer fixed. CEOs pop champagne corks on profits while entire zip codes come undone. The poor pay for the show abroad and the loot and rot at home.

Immigration was performance cruelty. Mass deportations, family separation, militarized borders-not safety, but spectacle. Power by subtraction: the less you have in rights, the more they have over you.

Culture is enforced. Education is obedience. Books banned. Teachers watched or fired. Critical thinking erased. Soft fascism consolidates through curriculum, silence, the methodical amputation of questioning.

We the People Shunned. Drilling boomed. Pollutant emissions skyrocketed. Paris junked. The earth burns while billionaires peddle boat rides to Space.

Trump's second term cemented the unholy marriage between state spying and corporate profit. Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Alphabet supplied the digital veins of his "precrime" state, and Peter Thiel's Palantir was the brainstem—mining, sorting, and profiting off the citizenry as though democracy was just another data set. Publicly Trump fumed against "Big Tech censorship," but in practice he weaponized their analytics, cloud transactions, and shipping to deploy against immigration crackdowns, protester targeting, and post-pandemic price gouging. What Bush built and Obama and Biden built upon, Trump rebuilt as a private algorithmic police state, an oligarchic feedback loop wherein billionaires wrote the code, and the Constitution was the beta test ping of death.

Trump's second performative term is fascist culmination: bipartisan rot, corporate capture, cowardly compromise, media complicity. An addicted, entertained nation confused collapse with power. This is not partisan-this is power vs. everyone else. Collapse does not come in a bang, but paperwork. Executive orders. Silence. And applause, cult rallies. Bombs. Dollars. Death.

When I was about 25, I had a friend named Armand. Armand sold guns, privately, a small but solvent business. He had a Hungarian wife, a Caterer and a very sweet woman and two kids.

Armand's heart quit on him when he was only in his early 30s.

His guns were Mother of Pearl, Rosewood, Cherry Wood, pieces most people would never actually shoot.

The hospital ate his guns and gun business alive. He was told he needed a heart transplant. The Federal Government and VA got tapped to pay for a transplant.

They stalled and stalled and eventually, they paid for a transplant.

He died while they argued over anti-rejection meds cost. They sent his widow $255.

Two good reasons to disbelieve George Bush and his Three Successors: 

In Plane Sight, The Director’s Cut.            Loose Change, Final Cut 2007.

Sources:

1. Bush Tax Cuts and Wealth Inequality

2. Iraq War and Oil Industry

3. Afghanistan's Opium Production

4. Obama's Drone Strikes and Civilian Casualties

5. Obama's NSA Surveillance Programs

6. Trump's Tax Cuts and Wealth Transfer

7. COVID-19 Relief and PPP Fraud

8. Surveillance and Private Sector Fusion

9. Biden's Military Aid and Foreign Policy 

10. Biden's Pharmaceutical Subsidies

11. Trump Fusion Centers Grow Exponentially

12. Bush TARP Woes

13. TARP Hindsight

14. Palentir Big Brother

###

Wrecking America: Bush, Obama, Biden and Trump

Robert David