“Honest Abe” Rolling in Grave
May 14, 2003. In the days since George W's zany, fun-filled, campaign video landing on the carrier thirty miles off the coast of San Diego, White House workers and visitors alike have had their peace increasingly disturbed by the appearance of a strange yet familiar apparition. This tall apparition, with its long lean limbs, rugged and strongly marked facial features, meticulous Victorian evening garb, and familiar stovepipe hat sports a face that Americans young and old recognize from the U.S. one-cent piece. The presence of this visiting wraith would be friendly and comforting in the extreme—except that part of its head has been blown off by what witnesses can only imagine to be John Wilkes Booth's bullet.
A typical manifestation of the apparition runs like this: observers first feel as though there is someone behind them, watching them. When they turn around, they see what they describe as the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. At first, they are delighted, honored to be in the presence of the great man. They are awed by the sense of honesty, integrity, and greatness of the gentle being before them. Then, as they bask in the warmth of his overwhelming goodness—his “down-to-earth nobility,” as one observer puts it—they perceive the ghastly, grievous wound that killed America's sixteenth President and are horrified. Dumbstruck with pity and grief, as if the assassination had taken place just yesterday, observers are held in thrall long enough to hear President Lincoln speak to them before his comforting but grim specter vanishes from sight.
“I am here with a message for America. I have come from the grave because I love her so,” President Lincoln is reported as saying. “I have watched from the great beyond and have witnessed much injustice. As I watched, I prayed that the injustice would be eradicated and replaced with justice and peace. I was content to watch and pray, but the time has come to act.
“My fellow Americans, I did not live by the gun, but, as surely as you stand there, I did die by the gun. I was a man of peace in my day, yet the war America waged upon herself seemed unavoidable. With the Emancipation Proclamation, I sought to complete what our founding fathers had started. While many of the South claimed to have fought the war to preserve states' rights, many more fought merely to preserve an unjust lifestyle—lavish incomes made possible only by the obscene, abhorrent institution of enslaving their dark-skinned brethren. This is the essence of my life by which I am remembered. Yet, I have perceived that slavery is staging a comeback in America; only, in your day, the richest Americans enslave their less wealthy brethren at home and abroad. Every day, this woeful exploitation worsens.
“I see that my ardor for peace and justice is no longer honored in my beloved homeland. I was sad, grieved by the naming of a warship after me; still, I let it pass in the hopes that the crew of such a fine, noble vessel would be called only to fight in wars of just defense. Sadly, this has not been the case. I tried to content myself with watching and praying, but America's current peril has roused me irresistibly from Thanatos's dream.
“I watched in horror as the presidential elections of 2000 were manipulated—bought and sold for a price. My own words came back to haunt me as I helplessly watched a government of the people, by the people, for the people perish, if not from the earth, then certainly from America. From that moment on, my repose became restless, and I watched America more intently. Since my Presidency, America has indeed fought many wars, many of them unjust: wars for money, wars to preserve the tawdry lifestyle of the idle rich, some wars with the result that a just and fair democracy is overthrown so that a dictatorship—a dictatorship!—may be installed in its place. While the regime America has just deposed was decidedly unholy and unwholesome, I fear that this war on Persia—or perhaps, these days, you call it “Mesopotamia”?—qualifies indeed as an unjust war.
“Yet, I watched and continued to pray as helpless women, children, elderly, and infirm fell victim to America's bombs. Innocents, not warriors, they fell prey to the greed that drove the invasion. And I grieved for the brave and the cowards who died fighting on both sides, for, even when war is necessary, it is still a depraved, evil waste.
“But I could sit idly by no longer when that jackanapes, that pretender to the American Presidency, swung down like the simian ourang-outang that he is to land on the warship that bore my name. What intolerable irony that a man who shirked his duty to fight for his homeland in one unjust war should regale himself as warrior at his convenience for an unjust war of his own manufacture! Worse, in his farcical striving to play the part of noble emancipator—of whom, America's vain rich? Certainly not the Persians!—he has besmirched my good name and reputation by seeking to associate his vile self with me. I have never been so insulted! And so, here I am, begging you, my fellow Americans, please to stop. The remembrance of me can brook no further disrespect than this. I am a peaceful man, but, honestly, this is the last straw!
“It is your turn to fight, fight for America. With peaceful means, you shall restore America's fallen democracy. Read, read everything you can. Entertain yourselves not with fanciful stories but with the truth of what your great nation has done, the wounds inflicted upon yourselves and your brethren across the waters. Learn your own history. Learn of all the world that you may become worthy citizens of that great overarching nation of all peoples. Do not wait for rescue, for, as surely as America has deposed better governments than she imposed in her invasions' wakes, will she reap what she has sewn. My friends, band together and save America from herself while you can. I fear there is not much time.”
With that, the ghost of Abraham Lincoln vanished.
