Ignoring 8 Years of History: A Tribute to Joe Bryant

Introduction: I have a story to tell about a kid I grew up with, Joe Bryant (I changed the name, but hes a real guy). This kid was so skilled at playing Invisible-Gun Army Invasion that he never lost a battle or his imaginary life in our game. I always wondered what happened to Joe, but now I think I know. Hear me out, and ugh it gets political: I have a real backhanded compliment to pay Republicans. In the last four years, I believe that Republicans were very successful in keeping Democrats from mentioning George Bush in any argument, and if they did, there was a price to payyou became That Guy! In my journey creeping Facebook arguments around the globe, I saw many-a-liberal have their well constructed arguments cut-off instantly when his conservative opponent simply wrote the words, All you guys do is blame Bush. When Republicans would make the point that Obama was a failure because we were only ADDING 120,000 jobs a month, if a Democrat counter-argued that in the months leading up to Obamas presidency we were LOSING 800,000 jobs a monthall they had to say was, All you guys do is blame Bush.and that was enough! If Democrats made the point that Obama inherited the 2nd worst economic disaster in American History, they would respondAll you guys do is blame Bush.--and that was enough! If a Republican made the argument that Obama had the Intel to prevent four Americans deaths in Benghazi and should be tried for treason and a Democrat counter-argued with the fact that thousands died on 9-11 despite Bushs administration ignoring the CIA document a month before titled, Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S. and nobody called for Bush to be tried for treason, they would respondAll you guys do is blame Bush.and EVEN that was enough! A Democrat could try to make the point that the biggest contributing factors to the increasing debt, under Obama, were not policies that he put into place, rather because of two unfunded wars and tax cuts that rolled over from the Bush administration, even citing conservative economists to back their point, they would simply respondAll you guys do is blame Bush.and that was enough. A Republican could make the point that the number of welfare recipients increased under Obama, calling him the Welfare President. A Democrat could counter-argue that Obama had not touched welfare policy and that the increase in welfare was directly attributed to the 800,000 jobs

per month job loss mentioned earlier, and they would merely respondAll you guys do is blame Bush.and that was enough. A Democrat could make an argument that Ronald Reagan, in his 1984 debate against Walter Mondale, blamed his economic shortfalls on Carters recession several years earlier. Let it sink in for a minute; Reagan was retroactively blaming Carter for a RECESSION, after serving a full termcompare that to a MAJOR DEPRESSION that was happening at the moment Obama took office! But all the Republicans had to say was All you guys do is blame Bush.-- and that was enough! The real shitter about all of this, is that these same people who want us to ignore everything that happened in the first 8 years of the 21st century were the same guys that pose as historical scholars with irrefutable evidence that every great American president, scholar, founding father, economist was on their side. They gave credit to Clintons surplus to a Republican Congress, they were the same people who used the argument that Lincoln was a Republican, they were the same people that reminded us that racism had many of its roots in the Democratic party, they were the same people who use their interpretation of history to prove our founding fathers would be staunch Republicans if they were still alive today. If I had a nickel for every meme accompanied by a quote from past presidents proving that they would hate Obama too, I could retire tomorrow. All history was in playexcept 2001-2009. When watching the presidential debates, I almost laughed at how hard Obama tried not to mention Bush. He would say something like, My opponent (Mitt Romney) wants to reinstate the same failed policies that we saw enacted in the first part of this century. Democrats cant be the only ones that remember how scary the last year or so of Bushs administration was. They cant be the only ones that remember Senator McCain pleading to postpone the 2008 Presidential Elections because the emergency of the looming economic disaster something that has never been done by any candidate running for the President of the United States in our history. It was so bad that Bush invited Obama, after he was elected but before he took office, to meetings to help come up with solutions to this emergency- also unprecedented. To dismiss the most catastrophic economic collapse since the Great Depression as if it was some minor blip in history, and make George Bush into Voldemort (He who must not be named), and actually get away with it has to be applauded on some level. Nice job Joe Bryant! Conservatives need to be congratulated for using every possible historical, and more often than not, made-up or subjective examples to back up their points while, at the same time, making the George Bush years out of bounds.

Bravo! Im literally giving you a standing ovation right now because it actually worked. (Hold on a minute, I have to actually give you a standing O because I hate it when people use the word literally to mean figurativelyOk, Done!) You created the constraint in your game that both sides eventually played byall historical references are allowed with the exception of 20012009. Conclusion: When I was a kid, all of my friends would play army with our invisible guns in the field by my house. Joe Bryant was a regular part of that game. He could shoot you from 50 yards away with his invisible gun because he was an Expert Marksman trained by people in agencies that he was not allowed to mention. He was so good at Invisible-Gun Army Invasion that if you shot him from point-blank-range, he would have a force-field or duck-an-roll just in time at a speed that would evade any invisible bullet. It didnt matter how much the rest of us improved in our camouflaging technique, our flanking skills, or our bad-ass weapons adjustments, he somehow always won. Every boy who grew up in my generation played some version of Invisible-Gun Army Invasion, and we all had some version of Joe Bryant playing with us. Everyone who played with Joe, knew he was full of shit, but we still let him make up rules that the rest of us played by- and that is the beauty of Joe. Joe, I know that you probably dont play Invisible-Gun Army Invasion anymore, but I am convinced that you are one of these guys saying, All you guys do is blame Bush.and THAT, in the last four years, was enough. And for that, I salute you Joe!