Florence and George W. Bush

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Location: Florence, Italy

We found a bar in downtown Florence that looked fun. It had about forty Vespas parked alongside it.

We ordered Peronis and sat down at a table. Eventually I went back to the bar to order another beer, which I did in English. The Italian at the bar next to me, maybe in his early 30s, asked me where I was from. He was pretty drunk and did not speak English well. I said I was from Seattle. He asked if I was from America. Well, yes.

He yelled at me in broken English about how America is evil, how George W. Bush is evil, and how the Iraq War was evil. He told me Americans were not welcome in Italy, said I should go back to America, and physically backed me up against a wall, next to the dart board. I did not want to be in a bar fight while traveling in a foreign country but it seemed like he was about to hit me. I was watching his shoulders, trying to anticipate the punch, when a few other patrons grabbed him and pulled him back to the bar.

People today forget how bad Bush was, but it was top-of-mind around the world in 2007. The guy started a war under false pretenses that resulted in the violent deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Something to think about when you hear people complain about e.g. Trump or Biden.

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