So, George H.W. Bush passed, and that was… a thing.

Like most progressives, I put him on my shit list for a number of reasons – war, policy, the usual.  But then again, on a personal level Bush seemed to be a decent guy; Bill Clinton’s 2004 autobiography offered a couple of interesting insights into that “decent human being” that his fans and even some of his detractors talk about.  In one passage, Clinton talked about visiting DC for a gathering of the nation’s governors and their families, and Bush having no pretensions about showing then-child Chelsea Clinton where the bathroom at the White House was.  Bush 41 didn’t shuffle it off to a staff member, or point Bill and Chelsea in the right direction.  Nope, like a grandfather and basically kind and humble person, he dealt with it himself.

Bill also wrote about how gracious and helpful George and Barbara were when the Clintons were figuring out how to set up their term in the White House to accommodate raising a child.  And he noted something I’ve read elsewhere:  Bush 41 had a habit of sending hand-written thank you notes, very old school.

I wish Bush could have extended this kind of courtesy to some areas of policy, but that is behind us now.  Specifically, it’s not current; I’m sure the 41 presidency has left its own legacy of violence and a certain amount of deceit (Maddow’s “Bagman” podcast has shed new light on that).  But this post isn’t about all that; I just note it in passing to lay out my own complicated views of the man.

It’s not restricted to Bush 41; generally I’m able to hate what a person in power implements in policy and action, and still admire them in other ways.  As much as I hated Reagan, I could admire his ability to stir crowds, to have a bigger vision of what the U.S. was and could be; after he died I learned enough to understand he and I were more aligned on anti-nuke policies than I’d thought.  As much as I despised Nixon, I could see in the video of his resignation speech to his staff, that he deeply cared about those who worked for him and the ways in which he betrayed them.  And with Bush 43, who up until our current WH occupant, was my least favorite president, I could still admire the way he urged us not to fall into Islamophobia after 9/11, his support for world health issues, and there was something about his goofiness I’ve always found strangely appealing; it was there even today with his candy-handoff to Michelle Obama.

It says something that I cannot find anything to admire, not one thing, when I think of Trump.

So.  The funeral.

The former presidents and their spouses were seated in the front row, and it’s been noted by a whole lotta folks before me that when our current pretender-to-the-throne and his wife were seated, the greetings were tepid at best (the Obamas, the Carters) and conspicuous cold-shouldering at, well, other best.  The clip that’s been going around social media illustrates the stone-faced Hillary not acknowledging the dufus she warned us about, and who’s ruining everything:

That cold look, that resolve to not acknowledge someone beyond the pale, took me to the words of an old friend from college, a woman with a discerning sense of decorum and symbolism, and the ability to remember behavior from past eras that can be quite useful in the present day.  She wrote this initially in response to the social shunning of cabinet members and Senators who were supporting Trump’s crueler policies, but I think we’re well advised to practice this more broadly.  Hillary certainly seems to have it down.