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  #1  
Unread 12-01-2018, 10:45 AM
Patrick Murtha Patrick Murtha is offline
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Default President George H. W. Bush, R. I. P.

Fellow Spherians,

This morning, when I opened my usual news channel, I read the news that one of our presidents, George H. W. Bush, has died. Please keep him and his family in your prayers. Requiescat in pace!

It put me in somber mood, and I began to listen to a few of the different music that is sung in a Latin Requiem Mass. Even if you are not Catholic, you may find them hauntingly beautiful and reflective.

The introit to the Requiem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg69IFWas4w

The Dies Irae (So Solemn! So haunting!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlr90NLDp-0

In Paradiso
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu7mM_zqapA

Sincerely,
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  #2  
Unread 12-01-2018, 11:39 AM
Aaron Novick Aaron Novick is offline
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My heart goes out to the families of all those who fell victim to President Bush's war crimes. I mourn especially the 408+ civilians who he burned and boiled alive.

Last edited by Aaron Novick; 12-01-2018 at 01:42 PM.
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  #3  
Unread 12-01-2018, 02:57 PM
Chris O'Carroll Chris O'Carroll is offline
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Mortality is one of those things we have in common with everybody we despise, as well as with everybody we love. So some measure of every-man’s-death-zings-me compassion is always in order.

On the other hand, speaking ill of the dead feels like a moral imperative when public discourse is overwhelmed by shallow conventional pieties born of willful moral blindness.

Bush family apologists these days like to point out that George and George were much less stupid, malicious, and incompetent than Donald. How much lower could we set the bar for presidential greatness?
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  #4  
Unread 12-01-2018, 03:21 PM
Orwn Acra Orwn Acra is offline
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Bye bitch.
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  #5  
Unread 12-01-2018, 04:06 PM
Patrick Murtha Patrick Murtha is offline
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Regardless of his virtues or his vices, he deserves the hope of mercy as all men. Prayers ought to go out for him and his family, as it is good to pray as well for those who suffered by. Heaven knows that he now sees what good or what evil he has caused.

...Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

I myself am not apologist for him. I will say the same for all and every president, and all and every human being. It is not sentimentalism, but, I hope, understanding human frailties; and hoping for the same mercy and prayers to myself when I shall "kick the bucket."

Sincerely,
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  #6  
Unread 12-01-2018, 04:11 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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[This comment is vile and bothers my conscience and I deeply regret that I wrote it. But I won't delete it to pretend that I didn't.]


Chris, I doubt that grave-pissers are motivated by public service rather than by pure spite.

Not that hagiography can't be as sickening as hatred, in its way.

An honest appraisal of a political figure's life without resorting to either extreme seems impossible these days.

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 12-05-2018 at 12:44 AM.
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  #7  
Unread 12-01-2018, 04:59 PM
David Rosenthal David Rosenthal is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris O'Carroll View Post
Mortality is one of those things we have in common with everybody we despise, as well as with everybody we love. So some measure of every-man’s-death-zings-me compassion is always in order.

On the other hand, speaking ill of the dead feels like a moral imperative when public discourse is overwhelmed by shallow conventional pieties born of willful moral blindness.

Bush family apologists these days like to point out that George and George were much less stupid, malicious, and incompetent than Donald. How much lower could we set the bar for presidential greatness?
This. Every word of it. Perfectly put. In many ways, "shallow conventional pieties born of willful moral blindness" mark, mar, and imperil the present era. Far, far more so than any so-called "incivility."

David R.
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  #8  
Unread 12-01-2018, 05:07 PM
Orwn Acra Orwn Acra is offline
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I would like to add how satisfying it is that he died on World AIDS Day.
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  #9  
Unread 12-01-2018, 07:02 PM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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He certainly had some good qualities, unlike the current successor to his presidency, but it's annoying that propriety requires us to overlook such things as the utterly racist Willie Horton campaign he ran to secure his place in the Oval Office. I continue to be grateful to him, however, for signing the ADA.
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  #10  
Unread 12-02-2018, 12:22 AM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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Propriety, like niceness, is a social strategy, and should not be confused with goodness.

Propriety limits the circumstances under which negative examples are deemed appropriate to bring up, to avoid causing more pain to those in mourning. Obviously, propriety has greater force the closer one is to the grieving family and friends--especially when their loss is fresh. It is highly unlikely that George H. W. Bush's family and friends will be overhearing this conversation, so propriety is nearly irrelevant in this thread, I think.

Goodness, in contrast, respects universal human dignity. It always applies, no matter who else is (or is not) around. Goodness is not deliberately cruel, but it values the truth. Goodness wants people to be able to learn from the deceased's negative example as well as their positive example.

I've always found the song "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead" from The Wizard of Oz disturbingly macabre and callous. When I hear people whistling something that sounds like that tune, and apparently expecting applause for it, I tell them they won't get any from me. I find it interesting that propriety seems to have no problem with that song, in the context of the movie--perhaps because the deceased had no family or friends to grieve her loss. But I think it violates goodness to rejoice over the death of anyone.

[BTW, I also mentioned that song in my comments in the 2011 General Talk thread about Osama Bin Laden's death, if anyone's interested in what Eratosphereans said about that at the time. Note that the Martin Luther King quote in post #12 had an important caveat at post #72.]

I have far more ill than good to say about George H. W. Bush's policies, although I do--rather grudgingly--admire some of his personal qualities. I struggle to understand how he could embrace certain of those policies, in light of those same admirable personal qualities; but I'm aware of inconsistencies between my own character and my own actions, too. (Then again, it would be silly and vain for me to think that my own moral strengths and shortcomings are really comparable with those of someone whose decisions affected billions of lives worldwide.)

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 12-02-2018 at 02:59 AM.
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