Dear Mr. President
WWH – You insult my intelligence! If we lived in a previous time in history, I would remove a
glove, if I were wearing any, and gently brush your face with it, and challenge you to a
duel. You may use the weapon of your choice. Well, with one exception. You may not use
a basketball.
I suck at basketball. I am old, short, and can’t jump. Actually even when I was
young, I was short and couldn’t jump and sucked at the game. Dodge ball would be
my preference as I am skinny and when I turn sideways you will find it nigh on to
impossible to strike me. As a compromise, I suggest tennis balls at 50 paces, if it’s OK
with you.
You have my head spinning. You have disappointed me so many times, abandoned
the progressive agenda that I believed you believed in, and which made me vote
for you. Since then, all you seem to have done is cave, cave, and cave some more to
Conservatives’ demands. Your bargaining skills seem to be deficient. You would not fare
well in any of the bazaars in India, that’s for sure. Stay away from the rugs!
It took you… or rather Harry Reid… years to finally end DADT. You exchanged one
year’s worth of unemployment extensions for two years of extending the Bush tax
cuts. You readily abandoned the public option as part of Health Care Reform Bill with
barely a fight. You never closed Gitmo or the “secret” prisons abroad. You keep Bradley
Manning, an American hero as far as I’m concerned, detained illegally, preventing
outside advocates to visit him to check on his treatment and well-being, and probably
subjecting him to torture, which seems to be defined in ways that are most convenient
to justifying such deplorable behavior. We are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, and still
maintain standing armies in various parts of the world, and in places where there is
absolutely no need to maintain military bases.
At every turn, you seem to have gone back on the words of your campaign… those words
which gave so much hope to the disenfranchised, the poor, the elderly and all those
whose goals are progressive. You have conceded so easily to Republican’s demands to
cut the spending of programs like NPR, safety net programs for children, the poor, and
the infirm, whose portion of the budget amounts to a fraction of a percent. You refuse to
pay for the therapy so needed by servicemen and women who have suffered traumatic
brain injuries, and to the dismay of many, many people, you have not insisted that we
generate revenues by ending the Bush tax cuts or increasing them for the most wealthy
of our citizens, some of whom have no problem with paying more taxes, because they
believe it is only fair. They prefer to pay a bit more rather than to know there are so
many others who are suffering around them.
You have given the impression you are amenable to cutting taxes on the rich, and
accepting the fact that the ten wealthiest corporations pay no taxes at all. May I ask
what ever became of common sense, the lack of which is probably the most frustrating
thing to anyone who believes in economic and social justice? It seems to me that you are
subscribing to the “trickle down” theory which has never worked since its inception 30
years ago. What are you thinking?
You seem willing to sacrifice our environment by dismantling the EPA. Yet you have
no problem asking for more money to carry out our imperialist policies. So many
disappointments are flooding my mind; I can barely list them all. But together they add
up to what I consider a personal attack upon my character, integrity and intelligence.
That is why I am insulted.
To add injury to the insult, I listened and watched in amazement at your weekly address
last week, outlining your deficit reduction plan. There was that energized glint in your
eyes. Your tongue spoke eloquently in a tone very reminiscent of your campaign stump
speeches. You spoke of many things you mentioned during your 2008 campaign. You
talked about compassion for the underprivileged and requiring the fabulously wealthy
to pay their fair share. You talked about “hands off” regarding Medicare, Medicaid and
Social Security. You talked about trimming, where possible, military spending, though
there was no mention at all of ending any of our wars and bringing our troops home.
You spoke of many things which normally would sound heartening, but to me sounded
hollow and empty.
Fortunately Pell grants and Planned Parenthood were spared. But Planned Parenthood
was so maligned in the process; it was a disgusting display of ignorance on the part of
Republicans. Is this your win? Conservatives concede a tiny, puny amount of money?
Don’t get me wrong. It is something and not nothing. Nevertheless, give me a break,
please. You relied so heavily on your progressive base to win the White House and then,
poof… all that high-falutin’, enlightened, rhetoric flew out the window.
The injury you cause me is to spin me like a top. Your words make me dizzy.
However they don’t make me so dizzy that I don’t know which way is up! I do know,
unfortunately, which way is down. And it is down, down, down we are heading into a
plutocratic abyss. Your address to the nation last week, raised my spirits and my hope…
briefly, very briefly. I thought back to 2008 and how many times I had heard you say the
same things. In fact, it sounded like a speech from someone announcing his campaign.
Is that what it was? Not an update to the citizens of this country, but the first of many
campaign speeches?
If I hadn’t heard all of this before, I would think, “What a guy! He’s our man!” Maybe,
just maybe, this was all part of the “grand scheme.” That is, to do whatever is necessary
to win a second term, at which time you would show your true colors, make possible
the enactment of all the things you promised. But I am a different man than I was in
2008. I have turned skeptical and cynical thanks to you. I regard your words as playing
on my emotions and not my intellect. If you think for a moment, you can win back
the progressive base that elected you, you are very mistaken. All of us are no longer
listening to your words, but observing your actions. By your actions you shall be known.
And if you think you can win us over with your silver-tongued glibness, you are in for a
surprise.
Maybe when more of your “promises” come to be fact, I will have a different perspective.
But you have a long way to go to regain my trust or my votes. Remember the old
saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Well, you have
fooled me over and over again. And since I do not want to shame myself anymore or be
subject to any more insults, I strongly suggest you put your personal political goals aside
and do some serious soul searching.
I would recommend studying the bravery of FDR, a very rich man who had no problem
in telling the rich where to get off and Eisenhower who warned us in no uncertain terms,
the potential dangers of the military-industrial-corporate media establishment.
This is not a time for timidity. I can recall no other time in my life when there was a
chance we could fall even further into the boiling oils of greed and power and corporate
fascism. Perhaps it is like being an addict. He or she must reach the very slimy, decrepit
bottom before they can start to pull themselves towards recovery, towards the light. We
have too many people in government, corporations, and the military who are addicted to
power, addicted to greed, addicted to war. We need a massive intervention by someone
who truly understands the role of an enlightened government.
The persons who get my votes in the next elections will be those who are fearless in
confronting the “crazies” who are populating our Congress. The person who will get my
vote for President will be the person who believes war is indeed obsolete, and that the
healthiest capitalism exists where there is a modicum of socialism that provides for the
common good. It’s your choice. Be that person, or be gone!
Respectfully yours,
Phil Polizatto
To contact Phil or find out more: check out his website and blog
For a copy of HUNGA DUNGA
Phil Polizatto – Worldwide Hippies Bureau Chief – West Coast USA, is a graduate of The School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. He was a feature writer for the overseas division of UPI, a copywriter for CBS, and an award-winning corporate film producer. Mr. Polizatto is a published poet and a regular contributor to Worldwide Hippies as well as a variety of other arts and literary journals. Hunga Dunga is his first published novel. He resides in the Pacific Northwest.
My sentiments exactly.
“Write” on, Phil!!
I moved to DC two months after Obama was sworn in. The energy here was amazing, literally like a newly liberated city, mostly because it was. Hope was peaking. That level of intensity was probably unsustainable, so it didn’t surprise me when the actual machinery of government hit soft dirt.
He’d scared the pants off of the Republicans. Scared them half to death. Their response? The opposite of activism, dead weight. They simply refused to do anything. While Obama called for bi-partisan action, one whole political hemisphere simply refused to engage. They’d block vote “no!”, refuse to negotiate, and then complain about how Obama wasn’t collaborating. Sure, it was an eight year-old’s negotiating strategy, and, like when a passive-aggressive eight year-old is engaged, the maturity of the whole system gravitated toward that level.
Obama took his responsibilities as President more seriously that we’d grown used to under Bush. He seemed to really care about everyone, even those who didn’t want anything to do with his care. He seemed to me to be playing a really different game than the one usually engaged in here, one distinctly less interested in short-term dominion and more interested in long-term cooperation. Even if the other side refused, out of some sort of curiously guided ‘principle’, to ever cooperate on anything.
He was not free to simply bull his way to satisfying his agenda because his agenda was not his own. He’d seen the corrosive effects of administration after administration forcing the minority party to swallow. This never works for long, though it garners great headlines in the short run.
I’m not sure I understand Obama’s strategy, though I’m confident it’s subtle and far too inclusive for most to sense it, let alone appreciate it. I’m pretty sure it’s a more infinite game than the usual finite engagements common here. He pisses off his opponents about as well as he pisses off his supporters. Some of this is him learning how to play his game in this context, which has turned out to be in much worse shape than he could have possibly imagined. Not only was the car he inherited run into a ditch, it had been thoroughly looted, missing wheels and most of the engine.
Oh, then Congress refused to approve mechanics.
For me, two things encourage my faith in Obama’s leadership. First, he has done a lot to repair what was a looted and sacked, severely broken, administration. Sure, he’s over-relied upon best and brightest eggheads, a mistake Kennedy also fell into, AND he’s replaced wing nuts and Christian-credentialled politicals with generally competent administrators. Second, there’s nobody else. Not now. I am grateful that he and not any, ANY Republican is in the White House. I cringe to imagine any of the progressives in Congress living there. I cringe even harder imagining any Republican let loose there.
It’s a tougher job than any of us can imagine. I read somewhere recently that Americans believe their President to be Moses. Of course none of them ever are. When the expected deliverance doesn’t happen (as promised), we go funky, complaining about how now that he’s in office, he doesn’t seem capable of even parting a piddly Red Sea, and that God seems to be giving him the cold shoulder.
I’d hate to have to break in another new one. I’m grateful that I don’t fully understand the man, and appreciative that his agenda confuses me. If it confuses me, imagine, just imagine, how it disorients those opposed to him. Maybe I’m just identifying with him. After all, I know what it feels like to be ‘misunderstood.’ I also know what it feels like to be seen as supposed to be a lot more powerful than I am, than I ever could be.
He surprises me more than he delights me, but he delights me plenty still. If I could imagine anyone better suited to the thankless job, I might have a different opinion. Since I can’t, I don’t.
Thanks for putting it out there again, Phil. david
David,
A wonderful, thoughtful comment. Thanks. I admire your ability to give so many benefits of the doubt. You are a very generous man. Yes, I agree, I’d rather have Obama in the White House than any Republican at all. And I really do try to keep everything in context and remember what he inherited and the bad luck which has come his way in the interim.
I am disappointed in his behavior regarding things over which he does have control, and there are many examples. I do try to give him a break when he is between a rock and a hard place, but that has not always been the case.
We could start with him keeping Wall Street insiders as part of his administration as Bush did. First disappointment: Not sweeping the place clean of anything Bush! Bernacke… out! Geitner… out! He could have gotten rid of DADT by executive order the day after he took office. He could have closed Gitmo the day after that! Where was the behavior to back up his campaign promises? Where was the leadership to rid his administration from top to bottom of anyone with conflicts of interest, corporate ties, lobbyists? I do not hold him accountable for the oil spill, the recession, the unrest in the middle east. I am only holding him responsible for things he could have accomplished had he shown a bit more spunk.
True… I do not know what goes on behind closed doors or inside his head. I certainly do not regard him as Moses! But I do expect him to fight for what is fair and for the common good. It seems as if it really will take an economic of social disaster of epic proportions before people will hit the streets and demand their rights back!
I want to live in an America where everyone has their basic needs met and where class-ism is kept to a minimal disparity. That can only be done by strengthening unions, collective bargaining, removing all tax loopholes, letting the Bush tax cuts expire, and the wealthiest 1 tenth of a percent pay a piddly amount more as an act of patriotism. For goodness sake, this is the time to decide who we want to be as a country, not how much money corporations may squeeze out of us in profits by getting rid of regulations and decreasing their tax burdens!
On the other hand, seeing you gently defend him does bring me some comfort. But comfort must not make us complacent. We need to remind him always of what we want. If he can’t do it, so be it. But at least demand that he fight for an America to become a country of which we can all be proud because of its compassion and standard of living for all its citizens.
Phil: Thanks for the appreciation. Some days it’s a struggle to open the newspaper. Some days I don’t even try to win that struggle. It seems that we can disagree and still speak with respect. I wish more held this capacity.
I have a personal rule which might help keep me sane, or at least feeling sane. I accept the responsibility to try to make the most generous interpretation of stuff I don’t understand. I’m not always able to get very far up on my generosity scale, like a wimp trying to ring the bell with the strongman mallet. Still, I just have to believe his judgment, which I trust, is working within constraints I can’t see. I don’t believe in micro-mamaging, and I don’t believe, as the pollsters would have me believe, that Obama works for me. I am not his boss. No more than he’s mine.
I’m more sanguine about having insiders around. I agree with FDR, who preferred to have them in his employ rather than out there out of his control. I do think Obama’s made some of the classic first term mistakes, his choice of advisors sometimes highest on that list. I cannot understand how David Axelrod has kept his job. Or Energy Secretary Chu, who is a classic highly-praised idiot PhD.
The military has not trusted his judgment, though it’s proven pretty good. He’s had to work around that deeply imbedded bureaucracy, but he has some strong allies helping there.
If one thing disturbs me about the current political environment, it just has to be the over-reliance on poll numbers. Our leaders seem to have turned into wind socks, seeking popular approval on way too many issues. This becomes a tyranny, not of the majority or the minority, but of statistics. We too quickly mistake correlation for causation and fleeting opinion for belief. I’d rather have someone who seemed tone deaf than someone who insisted upon retuning in the middle of every movement.
david
As always, I have some outside validation that I’m not crazy and what was said by our president and then the actions he takes are yet again, opposing dichotomies. That last speech he gave, lumping in SS and Medicare with the rest of the federal budget, as if it IS a federal taxpayer expenditure, blew my lid off. Bad enough that our media and the right perpetuate this lie, but now our own president seems to be part of the “repeat the lie often enough and people accept it as truth” crowd. They are separate trust funds, always have been. Cutting those programs really wouldn’t do anything much to reduce the deficit, so by not cutting what wouldn’t be a cut anyway, he can look like a hero. Ah well, I should have known that having a lawyer in charge is never a good idea. They will always find a loophole that excuses their actions or lack of action.
Maderi,
You in turn validate that I am not crazy! Isn’t it great! Now only if we can convince another few million to express the same sentiments, maybe he’d perk up his ears and listen!