Moral Vacancy?

Once again, sorry for the lack of posting. I'’m working from home now and having to fight the blahs.

I'’ve been checking out the Daou Report'’s daily stream as usual. Like quite a few, I''m not overly impressed with Mother Sheehan, but donÂ’t doubt her right to protest. I just think this is all rather tacky. She'’s become somewhat of a caricature of herself. I read the newspaper article often quoted by both sides and she did have some rather pleasant comments for Pres Bush which she now recants. But now sheÂ’s out to embarrass him. Tacky. . .

But what has left me aghast is an article on Leiter Reports from E.L. Doctorow. I'’m left almost speechless in its audacity. For Doctorow, profess to "‘know"’ what Bush thinks, feels and means in his actions (or inactions). I'’m not a big fan of Bush, but this is ridiculous . . .

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.

There's more but I just can't... Discourse is lost in America today.