Next Time Barak...

An open letter to Barak Obama

Next time you give a consolation speech promoting real change and condemning the Status Quo, Special Interests and Corporations controlling American politics, split up the three guys wearing Abercrombie and Fitch T-Shirts immediately behind your podium.  And if you have not accepted a colossal contribution from A&F for that branding moment, then someone on your staff is a fool and has further wounded your campaign.

Next time you endorse eliminating or raising the cap on taxable income to realistically fund Social Security so that I and millions of others aren't sitting in a cube in an office somewhere, pushing a broom, or glad-handing shoppers -- when we're 70 -- please visit a senior center and explain your position clearly and openly.  Explain that, in essentially every other First World country, the ultra-rich don't seem to mind contributing to a safety net for the old or assisting in the education of the children of the poor and even the middle class, and that the healthy majority helps insure the minority so that an illness or genetic weakness is not a guarantee of financial ruin or death.

Next time you want Americans to better understand that you opposed the Iraq War from the beginning, search hard for words that connect with mothers of future draft-age children.  Explain that demographically America is not the country it was in 1944; that Saddam Hussein was no Hitler or Tojo; that no amount of shock or awe will ever entitle the United States to a single drop of foreign oil; and that the hopeless end of War as a tool of foreign and economic policy is the death and mutilation of millions of mothers' children in one bloody ground war after another.

Explain to those you have not yet reached that America is in very deep and very real trouble economically and that your race, upbringing and ability to maximize educational opportunity have singularly led you to understand this better than the politics and politicians representing the disingenuous and the out of  touch. 

Try asking -- if Hillary Clinton or John McCain were going to make any real difference for this country, wouldn't they have done so by now? 

Ask what is so risky about change and level opportunity when every day so much -- in the form of jobs, resources, time, peace and peace-of-mind -- is being lost, spent and eroded in this country?  Use more facts and less rhetoric to convince more of us that, when Rome is burning, it is too late to elect yet another fiddler beholden to Wall Street.

Next time, show more of us how the future will be different and how, together, we will bring about that change.  In the end, campaigns are won and lost on details and personal connections.  Show underemployed workers less military spending and greater security through solar panels, windmills, plug-in hybrids and greener, higher paying jobs

Next time, prove to us that establishment and change are irreconcilable. 

Stop brushing off your jacket like an effete prince on the way to a coronation.  Unless your goal is to become the next John Kerry or Al Gore, take off that jacket, roll up your sleeves and fight harder to become the next President of the United States.

And please do it soon!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Well said.

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