Tuesday, September 21, 2004

A President Who Does Not Know Death

In extraordinary times, extraordinary things get written, and now one of our great American writers, E.L. Doctorow, has published a little essay in the East Hampton Star which is getting passed around at the warp speed the internet allows us. (E.L. Doctorow is author of the novel "Ragtime" and a bunch of other stuff, including one of the tastiest Westerns ever penned, "Welcome to Hard Times.")

Doctorow helps explain the sick feeling so many of us have every time we see George W. Bush on TV: "...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."

But you read the whole thing. You'll see.

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