In Praise Of E.L. Doctorow, The Man Who Looked Into GWB's Eyes And Saw Nothing.

I heard the sad news yesterday that E.L. Doctorow has died.   I've read and loved several of his books, so of course I feel as if I know him personally.  I loved Ragtime and The Book of Daniel and Billy Bathgate.  I couldn't get into Loon Lake, but I'll accept that as my problem and not his.  World's Fair  and Homer and Langley are both sitting on my shelf waiting to be read.

His writing is what I would call "luscious with an edge".  It's stylistic and mesmerizing but you know there is something dark lurking nearby.  There is no relaxing with a Doctorow novel, even in the midst of the quiet, beautiful parts.  He will grab you and hold you and take you to places unexpected and thrilling.  He will force you by sheer wordsmithing to accompany him.  He will make you stop and read over and over again the same brilliant, awesomely brilliant, passage.

He was, as everybody knows, quite a writer.

But, of everything I've read of his, one essay stands out from the rest.  It is the piece he wrote in 2004 called "The Unfeeling President".  It references George W. Bush but never mentions him by name.  In it he says:

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.

This was near the beginning of the Iraq war, when, as noted, the death toll was still around a thousand--less than a quarter of the final toll.  When I read this essay, right around the time it was first published, I was new to fighting online for passionate causes.  I was feeling emotionally battered, never before having experienced the kind of ruthless, hateful vitriol that comes of arguments where attackers can hide behind a safe cloak of anonymity.

I was against that war and I was at a loss: How could so many people back a war that had been built on lies, a war that had put America in a position where, for the first time, we had invaded a country that had done nothing to us, a war that was bankrupting us, both morally and monetarily?

And then I read Doctorow's assessment of George W. Bush and I knew when I woke up in the morning I would put on my battle gear (no nametags, of course) and go at it again.  And again.  and again.

It wasn't the first time he had managed to annoy the Republican establishment by outing the real George Bush.  Earlier that year Peggy Noonan went after him in the Wall Street Journal after Doctorow railed against Bush and the Iraq war at his May commencement address to the graduates at Hofstra.

Fast Eddy Doctorow told a story at the commencement all right, and it is a story about the boorishness of the aging liberal. An old '60s radical who feels he is entitled to impose his views on this audience on this day because he's so gifted, so smart, so insightful, so very above the normal rules, agreements and traditions. And for this he will get to call himself besieged and heroic--a hero about whom stories are told!--when in fact all he did was guarantee positive personal press in the elite media, at the cost of the long suffering patience of normal people who wanted to move the tassel and throw the hat in the air.

Okay, she's no Doctorow but the gal does have a way with words, right?

I'm only guessing, of course, but I'll bet E.L. Doctorow got a huge kick out of her piece.  Probably even used it as a jumping-off point for another go at trying to stop that dishonest, unnecessary, murderous war.  We know now that it couldn't be stopped.  We didn't have the power.  But writers like Doctorow used words to energize us and gave us reason to keep trying.  We understood from them that in the right hands words can be formidable weapons.

Doctorow may no longer be with us but he left a legacy that can't be ignored.  To some of us that's more than just comforting.

Rest in peace, Edgar Lawrence Doctorow.  You are a true American.

(Cross-posted at Liberaland and Dagblog.  Featured at Crooks and Liars MBRU)

"Onward, Christian Soldiers". Not just a hymn anymore.

I guess you've heard that the Rightward so-called Christians have a flag, yes, a flag, and some of them think it would be cool to fly it above the American flag on the same pole, even though flag etiquette has said forever that no flag should fly above Old Glory.  Their reasoning?  Something about God coming first, which they assume any good American should obviously recognize.

As a citizen of these United States of America, were you as floored as I was by this?  Oddly, or maybe strangely, I didn't even know Christians had a flag.  (Apparently, it's been around since 1897.  I must have missed that part. I know for a fact, though, that it has never before been used as a protest flag to be flown, Heaven forfend, above the American flag.)

Something is happening. These people who claim to be operating as Christians are scaring the hell out of me.  Somehow our inexorable move into the 21st Century changed everything and the Christian Right is not satisfied with being nice and kind and following the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule or following the words of their Lord Jesus Christ, who said, and I quote:

But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 

 Or, as the King James version sayeth it:

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

No, these new "Christians" see the quest for their version of morality as the war to end all wars.  My idea of morality may differ from theirs, but theirs is Right and mine is wrong.  If it were only a difference of interpretation, that would be one thing, but because I don't go along with their version of Playing Well Together (Or Else) I am now the enemy.

I admit I've never thought of myself as the enemy of a Christian.  This is new for me.  Some of my best friends are Christians and I love them madly. For that reason, I've underplayed my anger at those who operate as haters under the guise of Christian love.

No more. So here goes:

The people who proudly call themselves "the Christian Right" may say they're Christians but I've known Christians and they're no Christians.  They are the worst kind of hypocrites.  The bible is a book of stories, some inspiring, some fascinating, some downright ugly.  The Christian Right uses the ugly parts as proof that God wants them to discriminate.  They argue that women have no rights, that minorities are inferior, that different kinds of love are sins worse than murder, and that liberal education is the work of the devil.  They claim religious persecution while they themselves revel in their roles as righteous persecutors.

They've scared our political leaders into kowtowing to their sick and sorry excuses for societal morality to the point now that bills must pass the Christian test before they can move on.  Their greatest triumph is that no matter what they offer up, if they offer it up as an edict from God, thy will be done.

Their proudest achievement is the almost total allegiance of the entire American political body to an idea that in order to govern one must be religious--preferably to the Right, but any claim to religion will do.

They will tell you with great confidence that atheists will never win a public office.  They have finally eradicated secularism from government.

In their minds, it's a done deal.  I would hate to think they're right.

_______________________

Breaking News!  OMG, didn't I tell you? This just in:

Many ministers do their best to stay away from politics when they preach, but hundreds of conservative pastors around the country are so upset about what they see as a moral crisis in government that they are preparing to run for public office themselves, with the goal of bringing "biblical values" to the political arena.

The initiative is led by David Lane, a born-again Christian and self-described "political operative" who has organized four large-scale training sessions in which evangelical pastors are tutored in the practical aspects of running a political campaign.

All righty, then.  Break time is over.  Back to work.


(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Liberaland. Featured at Crooks and Liars MBRU)