Does anybody else see George Bush as a Philistine?

Question

Philistinism is used to describe a particular attitude or set of values. When a person is called a Philistine (in the relevant sense), he is said to despise or undervalue art, beauty, intellectual content, and/or spiritual values. Philistines are also said to be materialistic, to favor conventional social values unthinkingly, and to favor forms of art that have a cheap and easy appeal.

Philistinism affords a contrast to Bohemianism, as the character of a smugly conventional bourgeois social group perceived to lack all the desirably soulful 'bohemian' characteristics, especially an artistic temperament and a broad cultural horizon open to the avant-garde. To the chosen few, the 'Philistines' embodied a smug, anti-intellectual threatening majority, in the 'culture wars' of the 19th century.

Reference: www.wikipedia.org

Answer 1

This is the most radical and incourious president in American history. Incurious George fits this description to a T.

Answer 2

We first hear of the Philistines in the Bible. They seem to have lived by the sea, a thing not generally favorable to Philistinism. There is a spiritualizing influence in the expanse of waters, which carries the eye and the imagination at once to the clear horizon, and tempts the sailor and the merchant beyond it. Voyaging teaches us comparison, and, by revealing the many diversities of life which are possible in this circumnavigable world, breeds a certain noble humility founded upon self-knowledge, and a certain tender and pathetic patriotism, which is not so much a repulsion for the alien as a returning love for the peaceful, comfortable, and familiar. For there are two stages in patriotism as there are two in love. In the first we are proud of our country or our mistress for what we deem her superlative beauties and unrivalled virtues; in the second, we prefer her to all those who outshine her, simply because she is our own. This is the way Nature has of reconciling us to our necessary limitations, first by the blindness of passion, and afterwards by the power of habit.

But whether it was the unfavorable nearness of the sea, or the prowess of the heroes who judged Israel in those days, the ancient Philistines seem to have been less stubborn than the modern. The jawbone of an *** was then an efficient weapon against them, while now they can scarcely be mollified by all the honey that flows from the mouth of our young lions. It sufficed that a beautiful poet, a pastoral king, should defy their armies for the Philistines of those days to perish by the thousands and the ten thousands. How different it is now! Imagine the champion of our latter-day Philistia, Goliath become the spirit of some great corporation, to come forth with taunts before the army of the chosen people. And imagine some youthful saint, fresh from the unpolluted hills, and confident in the power of reason, to accept the challenge, and say, “Thou comest armed with the weight of five thousand shekels of brass, with a weaver’s beam for a spear, pointed with six hundred shekels of iron, and one bearing a volume of Political Economy goes before thee; but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of Beauty, of the God of true and inward Happiness, whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver thee into my hand, and I will smite thee and take the souls of men away from thee: and I will give the high chimneys of the factories of the Philistines to the fowls of the air, and their deep furnaces to the beasts of the earth, that all the world may know that there is a God in Israel.” Would our intrepid David, after all this bold language, find any smooth stones in the brook, or have any skill with the sling, to smite the forehead of that Goliath? I am afraid the assembly would have reason to laugh at him, and to remain convinced that, in our day at least, it is with the sword and the spear that the Lord saveth.

Answer 3

I don't think he is a Philistine, I think he is just stupid. However, I do feel that the people that are controlling the decisions that he makes are truly what you could categorize as Philistine.

Answer 4

I see George Walker Bush as the anti-Christ that Revelations warned us about.

George Walker Bush = 666

Answer 5

to call bush a philistine is to give the philistine's a bad name

Answer 6

Yes he is, but his lack of appreciation of culture is the least of his shortcomings as president.