Old Book, Thoughts Still Relevant

 

In 1943 Alexander Woollcott wrote a piece called “For Us, the Living,” which was subsequently republished in Clifton Fadiman’s Fireside Reader in 1961. Fadiman wrote a 272-word introduction in his reader to Woollcott’s piece. Woollcott’s essay follows, and after it appears Lincoln’s 272-word Gettysburg Address, the subject of Woollcott’s essay. 

Fadiman's reader includes, its flyleaf informs us, passages from “great novels, gripping suspense yarns, fascinating accounts of historical incidents, inspiring stories of human achievement, humorous essays,” and “light poetry.” It would have to be in the light of historical incident that “For Us, the Living” is included in the book. Woollcott quotes some of the scathing reviews of Lincoln’s speech that were published in days following November 19, 1863. The president remarks were called “silly” (by The Patriot and Union of Harrisburg, PA); “silly, flat and dish-watery” (by the Chicago Times); and “dull and commonplace” (by the American correspondent for the London Times). Woollcott agrees with history that the audience at Gettysburg was “quite unimpressed,” but he speculates that Lincoln was not really speaking to the 15,000 present that day (who had already stood through a seemingly interminable 2-hour-long oration by Edward Everett) when he gave his own two-minute speech.

Lincoln, Woollcott notes, was an experienced public speaker and knew very well how to engage an audience, and if he did not begin with the usual settling-in preliminaries but went immediately to his point, Woollcott says, that could not have been an accident. The writer in 1943 is certain of his interpretation of the historic event:

Have these words, for example, at any time since they were first spoken, ever had such painful immediacy as they have seemed to have in our own anxious era? Yes, he was talking to you and to me. Of this there is no real question in my mind. The only question—in an age when beggars on horseback the world around are challenging all that Lincoln had and was—the only question is whether we will listen . . . It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here. . . .

For whom was this speech meant? Why, the answer is in his own words. For us. For us, the living. For us to resolve and see to it—that the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Have those words not even more painful immediacy for Americans now, in 2025, than they had in the era of World War II, when freedom-loving countries of the world, included these United States, were united against fascist aggressors? 

Blame is no cure for pain.

There is so much pain in the world! Some of it is unavoidable, obviously. We are embodied and mortal, prey to sorrows and afflictions of the flesh, and nature can be disastrous, and if we don't die young, we get old, and that isn't easy. Life is a heart-breaker in so many ways at the same time that it is the gift that makes all other gifts possible. But must we make it harder on ourselves and each other?

Our nature as animals who speak and imagine and live in time is to personify the world. We see the sun and rain as benevolent, destructive storms as malicious. A forest may appear either as friendly or dangerous, depending on experience and knowledge. Ancient Greeks explicitly named gods of wind and sea and land, gods endowed with all the petty vanities and jealousies and angers of the human beings who invented them. 

The stimulus of pain—“I am hurt!”—triggers an almost automatic response in many people: “Who is to blame?” We want to identify a responsible other, then to inflict pain on that other, as if hurting someone else will ease our own pain, somehow “even out” the score and erase the hurt done to us. It doesn’t work, but when it comes to hurt and blame, the most modern, educated human beings revert to primitive feelings, the human brainstem remaining—necessarily—as active as it ever was. Sometimes we identify a specific human being as the one who hurt us, but often that isn’t possible, so we look for a group or people or agency and make them into villains. 

Ironically, one person’s villain is often another person’s angel, because each of us has only our own experiences, no one else’s. Each of us has only our own pain, our own losses, no one else’s. Designs to help can fail to meet everyone’s needs. Even people who love us may occasionally let us down, and a person with the best intentions cannot foresee all consequences.

All that is hard to accept because we want justice. People who don’t deserve to die — they die! It isn’t fair! It isn’t fair, but it’s life. 

The biggest problem with blaming and scapegoating is that it not only fails to erase hurt: it spreads it further. Blame and revenge are as contagious as plague. 

Now some would say—and one or two have said—that my identifying the current president of our country as the blamer-in-chief is blaming him, and isn’t that exactly what I’m saying we shouldn’t do? If I’m truly tolerant, they imply, I would tolerate intolerance. No. That is a road I refuse to go down. 

Harry Truman said, taking full responsibility for the high office he occupied, “The buck stops here.” People going into politics knows at the start that not everything they say or do will be popular and that their words and deeds will be criticized. Criticism goes with the job. Taking criticism is part of the job. Name-calling, vilifying your opposition, attempting to silence critics, blaming others for your failures, on the other hand — none of that is part of the job.

This president has tarnished the reputation of our country around the world. He is doing everything possible to destroy our “Fourth Estate,” the free press,  because honest journalists refuse to be his parrots. He is purging government of experts and career professionals and replacing them with parrots loyal only to him. He is “firing” judges whenever he can, if they hand down verdicts he doesn’t like (replacing them whenever possible with parrots). He is deporting people who are legally in our country and threatening to strip citizens of their citizenship. 

HE, the PRESIDENT, is doing all these things. Do you not think these offenses are a thousand times worse than King George III’s tax on tea?

THE BUCK STOPS IN THE OVAL OFFICE.