I know most people had the luxury of tuning it out in ways that they probably can't do as easily now. It's the phones. It's social media. Only people who wanted to pay attention to the nightmarish minutiae of the Bush administration did so. Sure there was that Iraq thing, but crazy hippies like me back then were... crazy hippies. The post-9/11 fever didn't just hit conservatives, it hit centrists or liberals or whatever we're calling them these days, too. Lots of Democrats - elected and voters - supported the war, and many who opposed it were a bit more annoyed by Quaker grannies at candlelight protests than they were by the war itself.
It wasn't just that we went to war, it was all of the horrors and incompetence that surrounded that. Also, the lies, the manipulation, the impugning of patriotism (anti-war protesters are on the other side, you see?), Ari Fucking Fleischer. There are a lot of things people forget about that era. Well, they don't forget, so much as they never really knew. Whatever the flaws of the press right now, Trump administration outrages actually get some coverage. Back then, the equivalent tended to land on page 8 and then disappear.
Do you remember that before the war the FBI had a program to interview all Americans of Iraqi descent? I mean American citizens. Bet you don't remember that one. Because the war on terror. Which Iraq, and Iraqi-Americans, had nothing to do with.
The Bush administration was bad.
