Essey: This president does not
know what death is
Mon Oct 10, 2005 02:16
64.140.159.102
An essay by E. L Doctorow
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow occupies a central position in the history of
American literature. He is generally considered to be among the most talented,
ambitious, and admired novelists of the second half of the twentieth century.
Doctorow has received the National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle
Awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the
William Dean Howell Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the
residentially conferred National Humanities Medal.
Doctorow was born in New York City on January 6, 1931. After graduating with
honors from Kenyon College in 1952, he did graduate work at Columbia
University and served in the U.S. Army. Doctorow was senior editor for New American
Library from 1959 to 1964 and then served as editor in chief at Dial Press until
1969. Since then, he has devoted his time to writing and teaching. He holds
the Glucksman Chair in American Letters at New York University and over the
years has taught at several institutions, including Yale University Drama School,
Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of
California, Irvine.
I fault this president (George W. Bush) for not knowing what death is.
He does not suffer the death of our twenty-one 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 WMDs 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 thousand dead young men and
women who wanted 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.
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 thirty five million of us who live in
poverty; he does not feel for the forty 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 one 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 safety regulations for 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 spontaneously 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 the 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 war
making, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchial 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
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow occupies a central position in the history of
American literature. He is generally considered to be among the most talented,
ambitious, and admired novelists of the second half of the twentieth century.
Doctorow has received the National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle
Awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the
William Dean Howell Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the
residentially conferred National Humanities Medal.
Doctorow was born in New York City on January 6, 1931. After graduating with
honors from Kenyon College in 1952, he did graduate work at Columbia
University and served in the U.S. Army. Doctorow was senior editor for New American
Library from 1959 to 1964 and then served as editor in chief at Dial Press until
1969. Since then, he has devoted his time to writing and teaching. He holds
the Glucksman Chair in American Letters at New York University and over the
years has taught at several institutions, including Yale University Drama School,
Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of
California, Irvine.
I fault this president (George W. Bush) for not knowing what death is.
He does not suffer the death of our twenty-one 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 WMDs 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 thousand dead young men and
women who wanted 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.
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 thirty five million of us who live in
poverty; he does not feel for the forty 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 one 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 safety regulations for 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 spontaneously 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 the 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 war
making, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchial 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
