How does he walk through the world? 'The Editors' at Esquire Magazine want to know. Interesting that the 'Editors' declined to identify themselves editorially. Oh, never mind. Not particularly interesting. Move along. Nothing to see here.
His two wars drag on, as does his vandal's contempt for the rule of law. His economic intemperance and neglect live still as a consuming dry rot. New Orleans remains a shadowed, haunted place. One of the most poignant sights in the world is in the lower Ninth Ward, where, block after block, there's nothing left of the houses except the front steps. Little stairways to nowhere. That is the country he left behind.
How does he walk through the world?
Does he see the foreclosure signs or the grass only now growing on the new graves? Is he aware, even fleetingly, of everything else that disappeared into his black prisons, the loss of moral authority that has rendered the country's ideals into the functional equivalent of those lonely brick steps in New Orleans, empty vestiges leading only to loss and abandonment? Does he see what's around him — the foreclosure signs, the lines of jobless people, the abject ongoing refusal to behave like a political commonwealth? Does he even see the country he did so much to create?
How does he walk through the world?
Silly question.
Finish the article now!
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