Heard on Air America Radio tonight: The Unfeeling President

[jazzjunkysue]

The Unfeeling President

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.

Full Article

[ginnyinWI]

1. Yes

I also thought his recent statement on the tsunami disaster was equally "canned". Like an actor, he reads a statement and tries to give it the required amount of gravitas, but it is all on the surface. "What, Me Worry?" should be the motto on his desk.

It's one of the many many reasons I wanted to replace him with John Kerry, who would never make light of a death.

[NVMojo]

2. Kerry has looked death in the eye and got smeared for it by rich losers

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. He's a sociopath.

He can't speak convincingly about a tragedy like the tsunami because he doesn't care about other people. Mark Crispin Miller, author of "The Bush Dyslexicon," had a good analysis of the way he talks:

"He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he's speaking punitively, when he's talking about violence, when he's talking about revenge. When he struts and thumps his chest, his syntax and grammar are fine," Miller said. "It's only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these hilarious mistakes." http://wwww.torontostar.com

[mcscajun]

3. There's so much truth in there, it just makes you weep.

:cry:

[rodeodance]

4. moving!! Thanks

.......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. ....

[Big Kahuna]

6. I find myself emotionally numb after the events of the past few years.

I feel like, as an American, I have the blood of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children on my hands. We elect and re/elect these monsters as leaders. We let this happen. We live off the blood and misery of the rest of the world.

I have asked myself, as I witnessed the horror of the earthquake and tsunamis, "where are my feelings?" I just don't have a friggen heart anymore. I am absolutely disgusted with our country, the majority of our people, and our way of life.

[madison2000]

7. I sent this like to some Bushies I know before the election

but they had nothing to say in response. Its a great essay.

[illflem]

8. Most of his followers are no better than he is

It won't surprise me at all if the seig heil comes back into fashion at the coronation.

[indepat]

9. Powerful words by a master wordsmith, words that illuminate the essence

of one's being.

[keepthemhonest]

10. It is so

sad that they are dying. I was just hoping Kerry could get into office and then we could get all of them out of there as soon as possible.All bush cares about is him and anything that affects him,how does someone like that even get the opportunity to even run in an election ,where they may have to opportunity to steal it.

[politicasista]

12. I agree with what you are saying

So many of these young people are dying in Smirky's war for no reason, and many more are headed to Iraq as we speak. :cry:

[Pithy Cherub]

11. May the faux pResident reap what he has sown in

extroardinary measure. * has no capacity to reflect so there is no connection to remorse or regret. How can so may people be fraudulently persuaded that he has grace and the essence of humanity in his person. * is a fraud without compare!

[Straight Shooter]

13. Dorothy had the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion.

And then there's George W. Bush: no heart, no brain, no courage. And the man behind the curtain will never be able to change that, because that's the way he always has been, that's the way he always will be, a waste of good oxygen.

[Chimpanzee]

14. That should be required reading for all Americans

It is so powerful and so true. It should remind us all why we fight and what we fight.

[jazzjunkysue]

15. It was written before we knew about depleated uranium in our soldiers.

The sick thing is, we're just now getting the information from the few soldiers that have been released from Iraq, that the entire environment is littered with depleated uranium. They're all coming back glowing. No shit. And the people who live with them are going to become contaminated.

It makes me scream when I hear Rush say that liberals don't care about the troops. These military men knew they'd become contaminated, and it doesn't dissipate. Every time I hear the pathetic arguement "Well, they volunteered for service..." They sure as hell didn't volunteer for cancer.

Like Randi Rhodes says we pay our taxes and give up our kids for soldiers with the implicit understanding that the military won't do them intentional harm. None of the neocons give one rat's ass about these kids. Not one. They should all be fired. This is totally sick. I can't believe my country did this.