[syadasti]

A Republican from my office forwarded me this email he got on Tuesday...

The Unfeeling President
By E.L. Doctorow

September 9, 2003 - Easthampton Star

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, that 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 monarchaleconomics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.

 

[biggins]

he has yet, i think, to even visit a deceased soldiers family.

 

[jdcamb]

Most Americans do not mourn in my opinion. Most Americans only know the comforts they have. Death and mayhem are things you see and hear about on TV and read in the newspaper. Most Americans don't know the realities of Urban life (except those that are confronted daily by it) and the hardships of the poor. Most Americans can only selfishly concern themselves with themselves. There is no longer any sense of community. Faith is canned used as a tool to affirm themselves. The value of your home, the car you drive, the status you have, the country club you belong too, the places you bought your things at, the trends you succumb too, etc.. That is what we are about. Things. Freedom means the right to accrue things in the manner you deem fit. We are comsumptive, even when it comes to young Men and Womens lives. If they can help us prop up our way of life.....well then hell lets send them off overseas. Where do most of the recruits come form? Poor inner cities and rural areas. I don't read many of the soldiers dying in Iraq coming from Wellesly Mass or Greenwich CT or Santa Barbara. Where are you from syadasti? Who is EL Doctorow to say how G-Dub feels? Aren't those soldiers also dying for him too. Wow he wrote a letter to a rich mans newspaper. I bet he felt better after writing it. I am sure he has since stopped being comsumptive himself. I wonder how many papers they sold with a opine from the great EL Doctorow? Soon you'll be moving to Newark right? You know they sell his books at the mall. You could drive there in your car and maybe you could get a glimpse of one of those poor nieghborhoods on your way. You could buy a extra copy and get off that exit and give it to one of those kids and he could read it, that is if his school didn't fail him and he couldn't read. I expect this kind of stuff from N8, not you......jdcamb

 

[biggins]

he could read it, that is if his school didn't fail him and he couldn't read. I expect this kind of stuff from N8, not you......jdcamb

come on now, public school is what you make of it. no one makes someone fail at school, no one makes a person drop out. sure the education may be sub par compared to that of a public school near a big suburb but the opportunity to finish school, go to college and get a job is there thereby allowing people to get out of the slums and ghettos.

 

[BurlyShirley]

This guy is a nutsack. He doesnt seem to take into account that the soldiers themselves (the ones doing the dying remember) are by and large supportive of what's going on. They CARE because they and their friends are dying, and still feel its right. How can this guy think he knows how the president mourns? Do all people mourn the same way? Is this guy a psychologist?

 

[biggins]

i agree that the guy is a sack, his writing style is horrible and who is he to judge other people mourning tactics. i was just annoyed by jdcamb's statement.

 

[BurlyShirley]

i agree that the guy is a sack, his writing style is horrible and who is he to judge other people mourning tactics. i was just annoyed by jdcamb's statement.

I wasnt responding directly to you or anything, but yeah, a sack for sure that guy is.

 

[ohio]

As much as I'd like to agree with his assessment of Bush, not a word of it can be substantiated and it has no business being printed.

Edit: by the way, I didn't even know people had "tactics" for mourning.

 

[jdcamb]

come on now, public school is what you make of it. no one makes someone fail at school, no one makes a person drop out. sure the education may be sub par compared to that of a public school near a big suburb but the opportunity to finish school, go to college and get a job is there thereby allowing people to get out of the slums and ghettos.

I went to City of Buffalo public schools. Got great grades. Got accepted to great college. Found out when I got there how far behind I was to almost everyone. I had to take remedial courses to catch up to everyone else that went to suburban schools. The Urban schools for the most part are even worse now. I wasn't talking about dropping out. I am talking about the functioning illiterates that the schools produce now. They graduate and can't even find Afghanisatn on a map. That is until we send them there to serve. Then they know where it is. What other parts annoyed you? The truth hurts pal. Sorry.....jdcamb

 

[syadasti]

I wasnt responding directly to you or anything, but yeah, a sack for sure that guy is.

Jdcamb,
Yes I posted it cause it was controversial and people often want to see other people's reactions to such topics time to time and thats probably why my office coworker forwarded it to me. I didn't force you to read it and even partisan trash such as this or something N8 post usually has something you can take away from it...

Quite a few of my relatives have served or are currently in the military (not to mention many of them are poor - one Uncle lives on a 28' sailboat - he has no other home or most modern conveniences). My cousin from Elmira, NY enlisted in the AF right out high school and is currently stationed at Seymour Johnson AFB in NC. He hasn't had to go to the Middle East for the present conflict but has been there in the past. He lucked out cause is the only expert at his base for a vital logistical job. His family has been hardworking but, but Upstate NY as you probably know, doesn't have a much of a solid economic base. His father served in Vietnam and now has chronic life-threaten problems linked to improper chemical handling procedures while he served - he had to retire early at 50. The military has not been a positive influence on the quality of their lives - I spent many summers with them when I was young, visited when I went to Cornell about 30 mi. away, and have visited my cousin and his family on base in NC. So what is your story[ edit - you posted some of it, I was working on something else and didn't see your post until now ], why are you so bitter all the time?

 

[biggins]

I went to City of Buffalo public schools. Got great grades. Got accepted to great college. Found out when I got there how far behind I was to almost everyone. I had to take remedial courses to catch up to everyone else that went to suburban schools. The Urban schools for the most part are even worse now. I wasn't talking about dropping out. I am talking about the functioning illiterates that the schools produce now. They graduate and can't even find Afghanisatn on a map. That is until we send them there to serve. Then they know where it is. What other parts annoyed you? The truth hurts pal. Sorry.....jdcamb

none, i went to a school that was pretty damn poor myself, but you dont se me whining about it. i have had several friends that have moved away to go teach at inner city schools thinking they would make a difference within the system all but one of them came back after a year tired of breaking up fights, getting yelled and cussed at and spit on. now i dont think anyone can give a good education to those who are not willing to realize the benefits of a good education.