Bush 41: The Reeessst of the Story 2nd draft

In a previous generation, Paul Harvey, a newscaster was famous for his segment entitled, The Reeesst of the Story in which he gave the background to news stories which people never heard.  This is my version of The Reeesst of the Story for George Herbert Walker Bush.

By American standards, by rich white male standards, Bush 41 was a family man, a good and gracious person and president.  His acolades were well deserved.

By biblical standards Bush 41 is found severely wanting; he was a neglector of justice and the love of God.  He was a practitioner of ethnocentrism and oppression as most American rich white males are.
Recommended scriptures are: Nehemiah 5; Isaiah 10:1-2; Isaiah 58; Luke 4:18; Luke 4:25-30;
James 5:1-6 and James 2.

On December 4, 2018, on IPTV, I watched a two hour documentary on Bush 41.  Some of my following comments are based on this documentary, but some are my own interpretations.  From this documentary I discovered some new [to me] information about Bush 41.

Around 1960, the Republican party in Texas was a small, insignificant minority.  The joke was you could hold a Republican state convention in a phone booth.  At that time Texas was a part of the solid south.  Meaning it was racist and segregationist.  As a young man, Bush 41 took over as chair of the Republican party determined to grow the party which he did.  In an unbelievably short period of time Texas moved from majority racist Democrat to majority racist Republican--a political miracle.

To do so, Bush 41 had to abandon a sense of moral and ethical principle.  Bush 41 willingly did so which was probably not hard to do since most rich, white males have little social ethic anyway.

Bush was greatly aided unintentionally by President Johnson, who himself, was a Texas Democrat.  Somehow, L.B.J. developed a sense of social justice; by the mid 60s, he was signing civil rights legislation.  Medicare and medicaid, which aided undeserving black poor according to racist, southern Democrats.   This enraged racist Democrats.  What were they to do?

Bush saw a great opportunity.  He recruited and welcomed the racist refuse of the Democratic party, the segregationist southerners into the Republican party.  Soon racist Democrats were almost entirely in the Republican party.  From racist Democrat to racist Republican.

Again since racist, white males have little sense of social ethics, it was easy to compromise on race in both the 60s and later in the 80s.  When Bush 41 was running for president in the late 80s, he ran what was probably the most racist ad ever, the infamous Willy Horton ad, designed to stoke fear in white Americans.

White Americans in general and rich, white males in particular are skilled at sanitizing our long American history of white ethnocentrism and oppression.  Thereby enabling Americans to enjoy the fruits of social evil without guilt and to avoid the necessity of repentance and restitution.

Secondly, this documentary reinforced what I already knew was that the Bush clan was rich.  So Bush was a rich, white, male.  I doubt if a person can be rich and white and male in America and be Christian.  For me, being rich alone is a disqualifier.  Jesus, himself, said, "Woe to the rich."  The only rich person that is not suspect in my eyes is one that has renounced his riches.  Remember the rich, young ruler?  Jesus told him, "Go sell what you have and give it to the poor. Then come and follow me."  A pretty strong hint you can't be both rich and Christian at the same time.

The same with whites in America.  White in America goes along with privilege, white superiority, black inferiority.  So unless whites have repented, engaged in restitution, they can't be Christian in America.  Recently, we had a public demonstration about being male in America.  We had a candidate for the Supreme Court who was publicly and convincingly exposed as a would-be rapist.  But his fellow rich, white males, on the judiciary committee, voted him to become the newest member of the Supreme Court.

I noticed almost all of the eulogies given to Bush 41 were by white males, many of them rich, white males.  I noticed at the funeral service in the National Cathedral, the congregation was made up of the "rich and the famous".  Mostly rich, white males; not many of the least of these were in the service and none gave eulogies.