Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Though this was published a while ago, I am going to re-publish it because I can't find a link to it:
Published on Thursday, September 9, 2004 by the
Easthampton Star / Long Island, New York
The Unfeeling President
by E.L. Doctorow
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 monarchal economics of this president? He
cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as
to make us mourn for ourselves.
E. L. Doctorow is an American novelist.
Published on Thursday, September 9, 2004 by the
Easthampton Star / Long Island, New York
The Unfeeling President
by E.L. Doctorow
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 monarchal economics of this president? He
cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as
to make us mourn for ourselves.
E. L. Doctorow is an American novelist.
