Link: http://ddjango.blogspot.com/2009/01/dear-mr-president-open-letter.html

ddjango

Dear President Obama:

I am a citizen of the United States. I am one of your constituents. Since you have billed yourself as a public servant, one who is honored and even grateful for the chance to be "Leader of the Free World", you owe me. Yes, that's exactly what I said - "You." "Owe." "Me." That might seem a bit, well, cheeky, I guess, but I stand by my demand.

First, I want you to know right up front that I did not vote for you. I did not vote for your opponent(s) either. I proudly withheld my vote because there was no presidential candidate on the ballot in my state whom I believed represented my best interests as a citizen of this country or the best interests of the nation as a whole. My vote is a valuable commodity. I wasn't about to waste it by casting it against someone or for a "lesser of two evils". Evil is evil. I won't vote for it.

I didn't vote for you, sir, because, with all due respect, I didn't buy the hype. I experienced your campaign as a finely-tuned, extremely well-run exercise in creative vagueness and media manipulation. You were too disingenuous for me: "hope" doesn't feed the bulldog; "change" happens, like it or not - try to stop it. In fact, did you not declare finally that the "change" was you? I find that insulting. In a democracy, sir, the change is the people. You represent us, you do not rule us. Governing and ruling are not the same thing.

So, here, Mr President, is what you owe me - owe all of us in America and the world: truth and justice. Simple.

Here is the truth . . .

• The United States of America and its "democratic" government have been stolen from us. We will not get it back. It will now be melded into a Western Bloc seeking a centralized "new world order";
• Capitalism as we have known it has entered its final phase and has neither the means nor the intention of benefiting humanity. It will be all you can do to keep order as millions become poor, desperate , and scared out of their wits;
• Militarism will increase, in spite of your stated intentions, abroad and at home; as unemployment soars, the military and the draft (billed as 'mandatory public service') will become the employer of first, not last, resort. The military-industrial-academic complex will burgeon, developing efficient and horrific weapons of societal control and international imperialism;
• The national debt will soar, as your administration borrows unconscionable amounts of money to hide the awful economic truth from the people;
• Techno-fascism will proceed at alarming speed, as science develops capabilities of changing the very essence of what it means to be a human being or even of life itself; subtle and increasingly mandatory "eugenic" technologies and policies will be put in place to limit populations and change humanity;
• The chasm between the super-rich and -powerful will continue to grow, as human rights and true freedoms decline. The rich and powerful will devise and develop more ingenious and desperate means to control dwindling resources, including the people of the earth;
• The rule of law, already tattered and torn, will continue to disintegrate into the rules of greed and fear;
• Global ecological (not just "environmental") balance will tremble and crumble, overwhelmed by the catastrophic weight of human selfishness, blindness, and desperation.

These are fearsome, terrifying, even loathsome truths, Mr President, but they must be told; delineated in such a way that the public cannot hide in consumerist denial and unsupported "hope" and "faith".

And you must stop saying that you and the "leaders" in Washington, the military, the Congress, and business are the answer to the situation. You have agendas and ideologies. You have your own creeks, canoes, and paddles. You're in your own world. You're on one page, the rest of us are on another. You live in the circles of the Feinsteins, Reids, and Pelosis; the Gateses, Geithners, and Clintons; the Brzezinskis and the Kissingers; the AIPACs and the acronyms. Your administration is made up of the problems, not the solutions.

So justice, sir, must start with truth. You must acknowledge the truth, out loud.

Then you must tell us what we did wrong and how we can make amends to ourselves and our country and the world.

Tell us that we let democracy slip out of our hands as we were taken in by Madison Avenue and their fantasy that if we bought enough "stuff" we'd be OK. Tell us that we diverted our attention from what really was going on and watched cartoons on TVs, movie screens, and DVD players in houses that we bought on credit we couldn't afford. Tell us how we screamed about "rights" and "freedoms" and forgot about "responsibilities" to community and country and the world. Show us that we just lost track of the first part of "give and take".

We've been robbed, Mr President, of more than money. It's true, we left a lot of that get into the wrong hands and they mugged us. They're off counting the proceeds, while we're left here with empty wallets, cupboards, and bank accounts. The uproarious part of it, though, is that our government let these thieves make the rules and laws so that what they did often wasn't illegal! Big joke.

As they say, though, "You ain't seen nuthin' yet!" In reality, the nation's high point occurred somewhere in late 1944. Since then we've allowed our greed and ignorance to erode our national character and international relations to a point considerably lower than it was when the Vietnamese drove us out of their country. The acts and policies of the US government and its financier and corporate cronies have painted every American with a brown and sticky mess. No one trusts us. Not even our "allies". We haven't just damaged ourselves, we've hurt the whole world through incalculable neglect at best, abuse at worst.

So I ask you, sir, how you could stand before the American public and the whole world on Inauguration Day and preach hope, and victory, and change, and national strength and character.

Personally, I've lost trust completely in the Presidency, the whole Executive Branch with its secrecy, its unreliability, its deal-making and corruption, its disregard for all but the richest and most powerful. And the same goes for the Senate and the leaders of the House of Representatives. Finally, the Supreme Court has fallen almost totally from enforcing the rule of law and has betrayed the Constitution and the American people.

So start with the truth. Believe it nor not, we can handle it. Most of us know it, because we live it. We're not as numb, dumb, and cowed as you might like to think or hope. The final truth - the bottom line - for you and your presidency is that if you try to protect the lies and liars, crimes and criminals, and cons, neo-cons, and con artists of the recent past, your presidency will have failed right out of the starting gate.

What will you do if the euphoric glow wears off and people realize we're in danger of four more years of the last eight years? Lock us all up in REX84s and shoot all the folks who won't go quietly? And don't give us that stuff about national security and national image. It's. Too. Late. It's gone. We blew it.

Here are a few musts:

1. Bring the military home, not just from Iraq and Afghanistan, but from everywhere; from all 800 some-odd bases around the globe. Most of the folks in all those countries hate us anyway. And put a total stop to arms sales and other military aid. Make our claims that we are a peaceful nation true through our actions. Oh, and just make sure that when the military gets home, they're fully taken care of and their guns point out against our enemies, not in toward our people. This includes our covert forces, too.
2. Repeal the USA Patriot Acts and their related mechanisms and start over from scratch. Period.
3. Work to overturn the laws that legally endow corporations with conceptual humanity. They're the most inhuman, rapacious entities on the planet. Regulate them, tax the hell out of them, or throw them out of the country. Give the means of production back to the producers and let us make a go of what they've ruined and robbed us of.
4. Reinforce our constitutional rights and freedoms, but remind us constantly of our civic responsibilities.
5. Make us once again the most well-educated people on earth. And the most artistically gifted. And the healthiest. And the most responsible and of the highest character. Give us the example to follow. Treat all of our children the way you treat your own children. Think about the country and world you want your daughters to grow up in.
6. Finally, let us know how to be true democrats. Tell us how each of us must act as if s/he is responsible for the whole country and its people. Give us back the power and show us how to use it. Then listen to us. Maybe we will have learned our lesson. Maybe its not too late.

As far as I'm concerned, Mr President, if you're willing to do even half of that, I'll buy you a carton of whatever you smoke.

Sincerely,

ddjango

Be about peace.