Tribal Hatred

In a different bastion of liberal thought than the one I referred to yesterday I found a post titled “Dancing on Their Graves,” which was in reference to former president George H. W. Bush being hospitalized in intensive care, and looking forward to being able to perform the action specified in the title. There was a long parade of commentary to the effect that he was scum and a man who should not be accorded honor in death because he had earned none in his lifetime.

Liberal expression of this sort is becoming entirely too common and is entirely repugnant to me. George H. W. Bush was a Navy pilot in World War Two and flew 58 combat missions. When I mentioned that in the comment thread the response was entirely negative, and one commenter claimed that he had “bailed out of the plane he was piloting before his crew, leaving his crew to die,” adding that there was “VERY little honor in the Bush family, going back many generations.”

The true story of his bailout was that while attacking a Japanese island “his aircraft was hit by flak and his engine caught on fire. Despite his plane being on fire, Bush completed his attack and released bombs over his target, scoring several damaging hits. With his engine afire, Bush flew several miles from the island, where he and one other crew member on the TBM Avenger bailed out of the aircraft.”

Does that sound like a man who “without honor, bailed out of the plane before his crew” to you? I think not. To be so poisoned by tribal hatred as to speak of a man in such vile terms as these people do is a symptom of a nation descending into a political system that is no more reasoned or logical than the Hatfields and McCoys.

I wish the elder Mr. Bush peace, comfort and a speedy recovery.