The Unfeeling President

[Quixote1818]

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.

Continued at:


http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0920-13.htm

[DoYouEverWonder]

1. Bush makes the Tin Man and the Lion look human

Bush has neither a heart nor a brain.

[TahitiNut]

8. The Lion, Tin Man, and Scarecrow WERE human ... they aspired

... to greater courage, compassion, and wisdom -- as any of us might. C-czar Disgustsus aspires to nothing but more power and wealth. He's a sociopath and narcissist. He retreats to the pig farm to be surrounded by courtiers whose sole vocation is providing a narcissistic supply to an insatiable hollow shell of a zombie without even the remaining capacity to comprehend his own spritual vacuousness.

[Son of California]

2. THE UNFEELING PRESIDENT

I like the ring of that.
I think it could stick.
let's throw that one in the echo chamber and see how far it goes....
particularly pertinent to the Sheehan story.

[Quixote1818]

7. Thats kind of why I posted it. It seems to fit right in with the Sheehan

situation. If I were President I would have invited her in immediately and really listened to her and given her my condolences. Bush is so arrogant and "Unfeeling".

[TahitiNut]

9. Where there's no sense, there's no feeling.

:shrug:

[terrya]

3. This is such a great essay.

E. L. Doctorow is one of my favorite writers. He has such a talent for...making words beautiful...if that makes sense. His writing is lyrical.

And this essay...which I've read before and I hope others do, also...is brilliant. He captures perfectly what is so, so wrong with this President and his war.

Thank you for posting this.

[baby_bear]

11. Doctorow is a national treasure

...unlike the subject of his essay.

Bush is a humiliation, an embarrassment, a horrid mistake, an abomination.

He is a scourge on our country, and on our planet.

b_b

[BrklynLiberal]

4. The was jaw-dropping when it was first published,and is even more so today

[ClintonTyree]

5. Remember........

he told his pal, Pat Robertson, that there WOULDN'T BE any casualties. It was going to be a cake walk. Even the narrow minded, cretin Robertson KNEW he'd better prepare the Nation for the inevitable deaths to come. But not pretzelnit bush! You see, he'd been chattin' to GOD about this very thing, and GOD told him it was going to be a day at the beach!
bush is a textbook psychopath. He feels no remorse, no sense of responsibility and no compassion for those he's killed. This was quite evident since his days as Texas' Governor and the absolute glee and joy he took in executing prisoners.
bush is a very sick individual and should be heavily medicated and incarcerated to keep him from doing harm to others. He's mad with power and he's a ticking time-bomb, his handlers are the only ones keeping him in check. I truly fear for the people of this country and the world should he completely come unglued.

[Seabiscuit]

10. "his handlers are the only ones keeping him in check"? We're in deep doo

doo then.

His handlers are KKKarl Rove, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, KKKarl Rove, Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, KKKarl Rove, Dick Cheney, John Bolton, etc., etc., ad nauseum.

Who's going to keep THEM in check???

[omega minimo]

6. He makes Reagan look good!

Dubya appears to have no awareness beyond his evident Look-Ma-No-Hands pride on delivering a line or pronouncing a word correctly.

The phonetic chimp. He'd lose to Koko in a debate.

[fooj]

12. Here's the audio. Very powerful!

And the mp3 file is here:
http://evilqueen.demesnes.net/mp3/e_l_doctorow.mp3 Audio Version

Peace.:patriot:

[Disturbed]

13. Look up the defintion of Sociopath.

I am sure that you will be convinced the GW Bush is a Sociopath.

[PinkyisBlue]

14. Unfeeling

This article says it all. However, there are still people out there who don't get it.

I was talking to a couple today about the state of politics in our country. I didn't realize they were rabid (I mean avid) Repubs. The wife said how Bush was a good human being; it was unfortunate that Iraq has become a quagmire, but the media is not reporting all the positive things that are happening over there. I was able to make some good points about what is going on in the USA, but people like this are unable to comprehend what is happening.

Unless Bush and Co come right out and say "We cheated to get elected, we lied to start this war, and we are stealing as much of the tax-payer's money as we can get our hands on and giving it to ourselves and other wealthy, powerful people because we can never have enough money or power. And by the way, if you aren't one of us, we don't care about any of you." Maybe then some of these people will wake up.

I left these people feeling very shaken and quite upset.