Call It Heartless:
Bush's
Emotional Incapacities
By Joshua Frank
18 August, 2005
Countercurrents.org
President
Bush isn't having all that great of a summer. Sure his team ushered
CAFTA through Congress and will most likely get a stamp of approval
for their rankled Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts. But as the dog
days of summer heat up, President Bush is sweating bullets as he lays
low out in Texas.
Why the evacuation
from Washington to Crawford? Well, his approval ratings are fast plummeting.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist turned his back on Bush
and came out in favor of stem cell research. Members of President's
cartel may be facing federal indictments over the leaking of a
CIA operative. Iraq isn't looking so good, either - soldiers are getting
blown up daily. A few of their bereaved parents are even camping outside
his plush ranch demanding an explanation for their children's deaths.
Indeed there isn't much news the Bush administration can feel good about.
Apparently the President
isn't taking ass this too well. According to Doug Thompson of Capital
Hill Blue, White House aides "describe a President whose public
persona masks an angry, obscenity-spouting man who berates staff, unleashes
tirades against those who disagree with him and ends meetings in the
Oval Office with 'get out of here!"
Bush's more than
frequent mood swings have been taking their toll on White House staff
who now release "weather reports" which warn of Bush's current
emotional state. "Calm seas' means Bush is calm," writes Thompson,
"while 'tornado alert' is a warning that he is pissed at the world."
Bush's emotional
instability is only part of his problem says celebrated novelist E.L.
Doctorow, who claims Bush's real issue has to do with his incapacity
to feel. That's why he doesn't care for the dead soldiers of the grieving
parents. That's why he throws tantrums like a beleaguered adolescent
male in Oval Office. Bush doesn't have the mind or the capability to
understand death.
"You see him
joking with the press," says Doctorow, "peering under the
table for the WMDs he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting
up to the stage ... 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."
He's too ethnocentric
and masculine to express grief for others. Hence why he has been the
ideal marionette to act out the callous neo-con agenda. The perfect
bobbing head to rally support for the most right wing of causes. Not
only can Bush not think for himself, he does not have the ability to
admit he's ever been wrong. These are not traits of a leader but of
a very troubled soul. So don't expect Bush to ever show empathy for
Cindy Sheehan, or the hundreds of other parents who have lost their
sons and daughters unjustly. Not to mention the tens of thousands of
Iraqis who have been killed in the name of democracy.
Maybe Bush needs
a cocktail. Looks like the baby Jesus isn't doing it him.
Joshua Frank is
the author of the brand new book, Left Out!: How Liberals Helped Reelect
George W. Bush, published by Common Courage Press. To order a discounted
copy and to contact Frank, visit www.brickburner.org.