The Unfeeling President
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| Wed, 09-22-2004 - 1:37am |
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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Double standards, hypocrisy and intolerance are the bastions of the left. Great to see it so evident so close to the election. Bush's polls are picking up momentum and there are going to be some very disappointed Democrats again in 39 days.
Sorry, Donna, simply repeating a lie until it becomes true doesn't work. Goebbels tried it. No one has been able to prove Bush stole the election and never will.
The National Guard issue gets tossed around every time Bush runs and still the hapless Democrats can't make anything of it.
Folks, it's still going to get nastier before November 2. Let's not let the rabid hate-filled leftists get to us.
Bev
No. To honour those who laid down their lives for him and show respect for those family members who scrificed their loved ones in support of his war.
I can say that I agree with you but I will expand your statment to also include:
I understand, because one of the things I dislike about this board is how anyone who favors Kerry over Bush is automatically branded as a rabid hate-filled leftist, when in fact many of us are moderate or independent.
What I am finding more and more, is that there is no balance.
What about those who look at the two candidates and based upon their own conscience or priorities, make a list of pros and cons for each of the leaders. Many can see some good points as well as some bad points about each of the candidates and base their decisions accordingly.
Why is it that so many here wish to jump to conclusions and label so many others as evil and filled with hate because of how they see the issues?
It's already been done, as I posted.
I'm sure in the future, every year or otherwise significant anniversary, it will be done again.
Your original suggestion was more to put Bush on the spot. While ostensibly honoring the 9/11 victims and their families, you wanted Bush to also hold some sort of press conference on Iraq at the same time. Clever suggestion, because then Bush would be accused by 40% of the country and the Associated Press of politicizing the moment. He's way too smart to get suckered in like that.
Nice try, though.
You're right. There is no balance. "Balance" for leftists seems to mean "too close to call" so there can be plenty of arguing over who's right. America has been busy waking up to reality since the disgraceful Clinton years and Kerry makes it easier by the day to judge the facts and circumstances and to find him lacking in every quality necessary for President.
No "balance" because the race isn't even close anymore.
Clinton and Gore polarized America with our tacit support because we allowed them to.
To suggest that I'm extreme simply because I support Bush and not Kerry is unfathomable but of course you're entitled to your opinion.
You flatter me in suggesting that I polarize this left-leaning board. I haven't changed anyone's opinion and you and I both know that.
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Polarizing doesn't mean that you change anyone's position. It means you push people further towards whichever side they're already on.
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