No compassion at all

It's a story that's been told before many times on progressive websites and it's turned up again in an article entitled, "Our modern-day 'Grapes of Wrath'". I'm referring to Bush's remarks about the poor he made in an economic class at Harvard:

President George W. Bush was introduced to the film "The Grapes of Wrath" as a student at the Harvard Business School, where he got admitted on his family's name. "I wanted to give the class a visual reference for poverty and a sense of historical empathy," macroeconomics professor Yoshi Tsurumi told a researcher for Kitty Kelley's book, "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty."

"George Bush came up to me and said, 'Why are you going to show us that commie movie?'" Tsurumi recalled. "I laughed because I thought he was kidding, but he wasn't. After we viewed the film, I called on him to discuss the Depression and how he thought it affected people. [Bush] said, 'Look, people are poor because they are lazy.' A number of students pounced on him and demanded that he support his statement with facts and statistics. He quickly backed down because he could not sustain his broadside."

The incident and a semester of exposure burned into Tsurumi's memory a disturbing view of the future president. "His strong prejudices soon set him apart.... Most business students are conservative, but they are not inhumane or unprincipled. George Bush came across as totally lacking compassion, with no sense of history, completely devoid of social responsibility and unconcerned with the welfare of others."

The Harvard professor's recollection of his "abysmal" student is not inconsistent with what we have since learned about Bush as president. How else could a sitting president remain deafeningly silent on vacation for four days as a major city was destroyed by the greatest natural disaster ever to hit the continental United States?

I honestly think the man is a sociopath. He has no capacity for empathy whatsoever.