[Mb-hair] FW: Essay by E. L. Doctorow

[Charles Preston]

Hi Jules,

Been A long time, think of you quite often.
Have come up with great new Electronic Jackets and other thing, they just 
sit on the self but there great all kinds of colors and all.

Peace, Love, & Blessings ~~Charles~~


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jules Fisher" <jules at thirdeyestudio.com>
To: "Michael Butler (E-mail)" <michael at michaelbutler.com>
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2005 2:04 PM
Subject: [Mb-hair] FW: Essay by E. L. Doctorow


> Thought you might appreciate this from a wonderful writer.
> Love, Jules
>
> Subject: Essay by E. L. Doctorow
>
>
> Friends --
>
>
>
> Essay by E. L. Doctorow
>
> 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 it 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 preemptive 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.
>
> * * * *
>
> 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.
>
>
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