April 11, 2011
Dear President Obama,
I’m writing to let you know that your performance as president has left me confused and disappointed. Whereas I expected leadership and a strong call to our humanitarian democratic principles to thwart the unquenchable greed and misanthropy of conservatives, what I find in your words and deeds is an enabler who is loathe to confront what I see as a grave threat to our republic.
When conservatives claim to be serious about reducing government and deficit spending, yet every argument they offer is laden with lies, distortions, and cruel effects for children and the poor and elderly, you not only don’t counter their lies and criticize their cruelty, you make deals with them. In doing so you reinforce the entire specious load of baloney upon which conservative initiatives are based.
A serious discussion about reducing government would include the value of what government is now doing and a cost comparison of leaving current government activities undone. Like effective bank regulations (the lack of which just cost us a few trillion), or food and health inspections, like Medicare and Health Reform, there may be a good reason to drop all those, but let’s talk about what they actually deliver before we agree to the conservative claims of “wasteful government spending.”
When conservatives say they are serious about debt reduction, and yet their proposals actually increase debt, where are you? When Paul Ryan proposes that we dismantle Medicare and Medicaid, an idea that would bring suffering to millions of American elderly and financial ruin to millions more of their family members, where are you? When conservatives fail to make employment and economic recovery central to their policy considerations as millions suffer in the downturn, when their economic policies are entirely based on “tinkle-down economics,” an idea that has been discredited for 25 years, where are you to point out the foolishness of these ideas? Policies that accommodate these irrational fantasies are destructive and destined to make our problems worse in the near future.
And as crisp as the dividing lines should be between nonsense and reality, I still don’t know where you stand. Conservatives are serious about one thing only, gaining the power to force us to adopt their deluded notions about the world. They will say and do anything to accomplish that. They are spoiled children who have learned to hold (the government hostage) their breath to get what they want, who have never been told that the fairy tales they cling to are in fact not worthy of consideration in an adult conversation. I thought we we supposed to refuse to negotiate with hostage-takers.
That’s what I’m looking for in my president, an adult who can tell the difference between a meaningful discussion and a bully’s petulant demands, who counters lies and distortions, who insists on civility and reason, and who becomes willing to compromise only when the discussion reaches an adult level.
I worked hard for your election in 2008. As it stands now, I will not work for your reelection. I may not even vote for you. I have come to see you as not just part of the problem, I think you ARE the problem.
Sincerely,
Ted Bucklin
Santa Fe, NM