Dear President Obama:
An open letter to the main guy
Needs Testing.
It’s an interesting combination of words. Immediately one thinks of experiments- like democracy, and how when some things evolve, and others don’t catch up, there needs to be some testing- and then some tweaking, or, if the problem is too entrenched, some reformation. If it’s way far behind there needs to be a revolution, the wheel needs to keep on turning to move along this experiment we call democracy. It’s of course more complicated than one wheel spinning. We need gyros, we need many wheels, and cogs, gears, switches, levers, people maintaining the whole works- you get the picture.
So when a couple of the wheels are out of sync and the main guy who is supposed to grease up and maintain the whole thing is distracted, and the day crew is on an extended coffee break all the while fretting that South America might raise the price of its commodity, and how that will effect all their other friends (or something along those lines) the fall back is the casual observer, the non-wonk, the citizen to shout out- Yo! Pay attention to that gyro over there! You don’t want to involve the night crew in this- they only do one thing well, and that’s “take it out”.
Set it straight and all is OK. Let it slip and eventually it will need testing. That isn’t to say if you are totally vigilant and maintaining as you go there won’t be a need to test. Oh, no, it doesn’t work that way. This thing is constant, and things are added all the time, and some aren’t taken away fast enough and either replaced or perfected. But, you get the picture. What I’m saying as a citizen is: Our Justice Department isn’t spinning properly. There have been egregious oversights, and it’s been allowed to run itself into a strange orbit. Now, there are plenty of wonks out there that can quote you line and verse of every freaking problem, but here are a few that strike me as peculiar: Banks. The PATRIOT ACT and it’s evil shadows. War criminals. British Petroleum (BP, or whatever it wants to call itself this time). People who aren’t treasonous, but only whistle blowers, who get Hell handed to them. For that matter, foreign sovereign nationals who got caught up in the maelstrom and pay Hell too. These situations have become untenable, and that’s just Justice. Justice Needs Testing!
There’s another form of Needs Testing that I’d like to mention while I’ve got your attention, and that’s this: The Department of Education. It’s been off for a while, it’s the reason many haven’t been able to serve our communities as Teachers and support staff. Arne Duncan’s idea of a “Race to the Top” was my final break with attempting my Master’s of Arts in Teaching. (So, yeah, it’s only a little personal... I’ve moved on.) What about introducing the Department of Education to the idea, a revolutionary idea, a democratic idea: Needs Testing. What would happen if we gave the schools and the students what they need? Wouldn’t that be the way democracy is supposed to function at it’s best? All boats rising with the tide? Instead what we have is a few high points and everyone else under water. Which sounds remarkably like Wall Street and the banking industries compared to the rest of our economy, now that I mention it.
So, Needs Testing. How about we try to maintain our machine based on these simple words for a while and see what kinds of good things come out?
Signed,
MeToo, Citizen in 14006