NEW YORK — President George Walker Bush comported himself in the exact opposite manner as the current American President, Donald John Trump, did on the campaign trail of 2016 and does as president. President Bush’s countenance and demeanor, from day one until he left office, always placed him up high on the high road, never a cross word, always respectful and decent in his approach to the office of the presidency, and to the media. He treated the fourth estate with dignity, even reverence, presumably out of a healthy respect for the 1st amendment, tempered with a non-confrontational style.

He was a class act, regardless of how anyone judged his policies – right or wrong, we know that he did not speak brashly and churlishly, ever, or anything resembling disdain. And what did that get him? The media painted him the fool at every turn. President George W Bush was so viciously attacked so regularly that it brought his father to tears, his father, a man who’d seen it all, welled up with tears at the treatment of the 43rd American President who happened to be his son.

The venomous and vitriolic ways in which leading Democrats and the media treated that Republican President should stand as a lesson for us all, now, with the most recent sitting Republican US President since his tenure ended.

The mean-spirited, dishonest and intellectually bankrupt way in which President Trump is being treated by media elites has very little to do with Mr. Trump himself, but has to do with the fact that he has an R after his name.

The mean-spirited, dishonest and intellectually bankrupt way in which President Trump is being treated by media elites has very little to do with Mr. Trump himself, but has to do with the fact that he has an R after his name.

It does not matter what he says, or does not say, does, or does not do, many media forces will attack him at every turn. So, then, it should come as no surprise that he has sometimes banned members of the media from the White House, not because he is someone who abuses 1st Amendment rights, but as someone who fights against those who do so with outright lies and trickery foisted on the American citizenry on a daily basis. President Trump fights with a decidedly confrontational style.

This president has been taking the media out to the woodshed, and it is high time someone did. Indeed, when something as powerful a force as our media outlets, collectively the most powerful force out here in terms of shaping how people see and consider things, wields that power with such horrid dishonesty and pretense, they must be addressed head on. Their screams of bloody murder for being taken out to that woodshed are irrelevant.

A great example of their deceit is how they handled major calamities in the state of Louisiana. The case in point is when Hurricane Katrina hit, and FEMA was there waiting. FEMA workers were there two days ahead of time, as standard operating procedure for decades. They were not late, they were right there waiting for the hurricane to pass, and everyone in the media knew it.

Governor Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana would not let the feds across the bridges into the affected areas, an absolute fact, and one that all media knew full well, too. They just also knew that it was up to the governor (that’s in the US Constitution) to say yea or nay in deploying federal aid.

So then, they knew that FEMA was there ahead of time, knew that Governor Blanco delayed for three full days and that it was her call as per the US Constitution, and knew that any immediate delays pertaining to aid for Hurricane Katrina victims had nothing to do with the Bush Administration, whatsoever. There was one person, and one person only, who was responsible for that immediate delay, Governor Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana, yet they pointed at Bush and Brown (head of FEMA) for watching the calamity unfurl. It was all a pack of lies.

We can compare and contrast that with the BP oil gush in that same state. The worst environmental disaster in US history and President Obama went out to the cameras and stated “well, I can’t go down there and sip it up with a straw”, then off to the golf course, even as people suffered greatly with James Carville screaming “We’re dying down here!”. Imagine if President Bush had made such a snide remark about the flood waters, then off to the links. He’d have been excoriated, as well as President Obama should have been for such a flippant attitude toward gushing oil, spilling out all over the place, killing off wildlife and causing such human suffering all along that coastline.

Katrina/Oil Gush in Louisiana are but two examples of hundreds showing you how the press lies about one political party and engages in cover ups for another.

This is the two-party system of the United States of America, and when such a powerful force engages in such obfuscation, deceit, lies and treachery, this becomes a dangerous thing. The power to shape public opinion on this scale can change outcomes of national elections, such as what would most certainly have been the case in the 2004 presidential cycle.

Surely, if what happened in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012 had happened instead on September 11, 2004, it’s all the corporate media would have been talking about, right up to Election Day. It is highly likely, probable even, that Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts would have been ushered right in. What a bungler this George Bush is, look at this outrage.

Hell, even if the Bush White House had saved Ambassador Stevens, they’d have been screaming from the rooftops in the media that one hair on that US Ambassador’s head had ever been touched.

Ambassador Stevens had begged for additional security almost as loudly as he begged for his life while he was being beaten to a bloody pulp, a beating that President Obama saw in real time just before he went back to bed, off to a Vegas fundraiser the next day.

This is a breathtakingly awful thing to have happened, with the first US Ambassador since 1979 brutally murdered, and with the Obama Administration visibly disinterested in it all (although it was enough for that Secretary of State to suffer a few fainting spells), and with them full of obvious lies about the occurrence.

The answer given as to why they took no action was that they simply didn’t have time to save the Ambassador. But wait, Ambassador Stevens was still alive when President Obama went back to bed. How on earth did they know how much time they had or did not have?

They didn’t, and that answer was as obvious a lie as the notion that some video caused the death of those four great American citizens in the first place. The media yawned, as surely as Obama did in those wee hours. It was ah, Benghazi Smenghazi, and this should outrage any political stripe of any decent person.

It does not matter from Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent, Green Party or Tea Party. What does matter is truth to power, truth in politics, veracity in our political process. What does matter is the future of the United States, a future that will always be in question so long as people are trained like sheep to stumble around in some media constructed matrix ignorant to real truth, tricked by subterfuge, with those examples as just for starters.

Good Democrats ought to stand up and make clear that they do not want such a powerful entity lying for them daily, that they are proud of their platform, and the planks in it. That with each passing lie and cover up for their political party, their very ideological stance, there is a horrible undermining of who they are. In the end it is as Plato said, “but above all things, truth beareth away the victory”. And in so, bearing away that victory in the November elections of 2016 the American people elected a brash, churlish, brass knuckled man like Donald Trump to the US Presidency.

It is not so sad or unfortunate that such a man resides in our White House, but sad and unfortunate that he became so necessary in the form of what must be the hardest and fastest political pendulum swing in our nation’s history, and as the manifestation of transparent lies and trickery having been realized en mass enough, and then all culminating in favor of a Republican nominee.

Donald Trump said several times on the campaign trail, “at least for a while”, and that while will be eight years with him as president, with VP Mike Pence likely to ride straight in on those long and wide coattails in 2024. Let us all hope that President Trump will continue to put a velvet glove on that iron fist at times that are appropriate, and do so a little more often, while continuing to always call those people who engage in horridly dishonest use of tremendous power, out to that woodshed.

~ Rob Arnold