- Unsupervised Learning
- Posts
- Stannis is George Bush
Stannis is George Bush
One of the best things about Game of Thrones is how well it captures real personal and political conflict, with people being intricate mixtures of good and evil simultaneously.
Stannis is one of those people, and so is George Bush.
Stannis is often seen as a power-hungry evil person who would do the worst things to get what he wants, which included sacrificing his own daughter, etc.
But careful observers of Stannis will notice that he takes little joy in any of it. He does what he does not for the glory, but because he honestly felt like it was his duty.
That’s a lot closer to George Bush than most will be comfortable with.
Bush goes into Iraq, hundreds of thousands are killed, including over 5,000 Americans, the entire region is destabilized, and he basically invents ISIS, which is a new threat that is infinitely worse than Saddam.
This is a lot like Stannis killing his daughter, assassinating his brother, getting his entire army killed, and then losing the war at Winterfell.
Both were misguided and trying to do the right thing. It blurs the line between good and evil in a way that complicates a legacy and makes it so much important to have good information and not be deceived.
This is why dangerous beliefs are dangerous. They have the ability to make good people to terrible things.
Oh, and by the way, the Lord of Light? That’s Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.
Kill your brother, they say. Sacrifice your daughter, they say. Remove the dictator, they say. And everything will be better.
Meanwhile, Halliburton is going well after the King’s blood sacrifices, but our troops are still dead and Iraq and Syria are in shambles.
Stannis and Bush are tragedies because they believed the wrong things. If they weren’t perverted by the false beliefs and poisonous council they could have possibly used their considerable powers for good.
America’s future is dark and full of terrors.