The Unfeeling President

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-05-2004
The Unfeeling President
75
Wed, 09-22-2004 - 1:37am
Orginial link: http://www.easthamptonstar.com/20040916/news6.htm

GUESTWORDS: By E.L. Doctorow

The Unfeeling President

I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.

He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.

They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life . . . they come to his desk as a political liability, which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.

How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that, rather than controlling terrorism, his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice.

He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to.

Yet this president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much. This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing -- to take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their friends.

A war will do that as well as anything. You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and children. He is the president who does not feel. He does not feel for the families of the dead, he does not feel for the 35 million of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the 40 percent who cannot afford health insurance, he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills - it is amazing for how many people in this country this president does not feel.

But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he is relieving the wealthiest 1 percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing the quality of air in coal mines to save the coal miners' jobs, and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a-half benefits for overtime because this is actually a way to honor them by raising them into the professional class.

And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to our democracy is choking the life out of it.

But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I remember the millions of people here and around the world who marched against the war. It was extraordinary, this spontaneous aroused oversoul of alarm and protest that transcended national borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over he world most of the time.

But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war.

The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble.

Finally, the media amplify his character into our moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail. How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-12-2004
Wed, 09-22-2004 - 2:33am
Excellent post.

When I see that hard to control bounce in his walk and that hard to control smirk on his face, he reminds me of Steve Martin when he was playing 'that wild and crazy guy' on SNL. I cringe and think I shouldn't base my opinion on such superficial appearances. When words come out of his mouth like nucUlar I think, well, everyone makes mistakes, I should base my opinion on his policies. When I think of his policies I wonder why we are having this bad dream, and when will we wake up from it?
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-21-2004
Wed, 09-22-2004 - 2:35am
Excellent and true.
Donna

Patriotism means to stand by the Country. It does not mean to stand by the President. -- Theodore Roosevelt.

Donna
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-11-2004
Wed, 09-22-2004 - 3:10am
Where in the world are you getting these thoughts? Who has been feeding your brain? The president mourns all loss of life. Do you mourn for the 3,000 people that died on Sept. 11? The people that protest the war are playing right into the hands of the enemy. This is exactly what they want. And where in the heck have you looked into his eyes? Have you met him, have you been to the White House? This is one of the most caring presidents we have ever had. Be thankful you have someone who does what he says he will do. We have no other choice but to fight the terrorists on their soil not ours. They want to kill us and they will stop at nothing to acheive their goal. As for the military, they volunteered to fight for our freedom. Let us who have seen war do our job and stop whining.
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-12-2004
Wed, 09-22-2004 - 5:01am
L'est you forget, IT HAPPENED ON HIS WATCH, so why should we think it can't happen again, just because he may have a second term? (Don't confuse a President taking action with a President taking correct action). What has he done to protect our pourous border with Mexico, where 3 million people a year cross into our country? The fact is that whoever is elected may be in for more problems with terrorism because of the incompetence of this administration to regulate our borders in the years since 9/11. (Oh yes, let's not interfere with the importation of cheap labor, we can't let national security take priority over greed!)
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-20-2004
Wed, 09-22-2004 - 7:47am
You've sure got the Clinton Nazis pegged with your post. Unfortunately, it's about 4 years too late. The cows are gone. The barn door was pried off its hinges to scuttle America in the late '90's in the effort to save Clinton's "legacy". What we've got left are anti-Americans who refuse to accept Bush as president and who will do anything to demoralize America to pay us back for electing the "wrong" man.
Avatar for claddagh49
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-20-2004
Wed, 09-22-2004 - 8:41am
I'd like to give you 2 thunbs up!!!Terrific post! We will always have the Far Rightest to disagree. Let me tell you, I can't even stand to look at him on TV. He makes me nauseated. I think that these all for Bush posters hasn't lost anyone personally in Iraq to know what it's like to loose a loved one in an unjust war. You don't need to look directly into his eyes either,his smirks tell it all. Furthermore, how can he make this statement "I've been to War, I raised twin Daughters"? How can he possibly make a statement like that??? How do you think the Mothers who lost their sons over there feel when he makes a statement like that? ARRGH!
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-20-2004
Wed, 09-22-2004 - 8:58am


YES!

4 MORE YEARS!!!!!

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-05-2004
Wed, 09-22-2004 - 8:50pm
Just wondering: how does it make me anti-American just because I don't care for Bush as a President? I'm a born citizen and love living here in the south. I just don't agree with some of the things he has done. XOXO.
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
Wed, 09-22-2004 - 8:59pm
Rather presumptuous of Doctorow to keep repeating the claim the President Bush does not mourn. Perhaps he prefers to mourn in private, with dignity, rather than make a public and political spectacle of it. Perhaps he is not contrite about his decisions because he knows that even though the difficulties we are facing are greater than he anticipated, that his actions are justified and will eventually lead to a better and safer world. When I look into his eyes I do not see the same things Doctorow sees, but that's just my opinion. The reality is I think we all probably see what we want to see there.
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
Wed, 09-22-2004 - 9:03pm


Perhaps not, but the majority of our military and their families support the president, so maybe it is you who doesn't know what it feels like. Do you ever wonder what it must feel like to be over in Iraq fighting for democracy, trying to seek out and kill horrendous animals who saw off people's heads on camera, and have to read and hear about all the folks over here saying it's for nothing, that Saddam really wasn't such a bad guy after all, that what they're doing over there is worthless?

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