Politics
Our Final Open Letter to President Barack Obama
Article #43: Politics
“Dear President Obama,
When we made you President of the Neighborhood Watch, we were oh-so happy. We’d been having SO many problems with that one guy’s house named Washington D. Columbia for years.
He and all of his people were always over there doing whatever they wanted, regardless of the repercussions it had on the rest of the neighborhood.
Because of him, our property values dropped so much to where people who were 65 years of age couldn’t retire.
Fellow neighbors were getting sick from stress, but medical care was too expensive for so many of them that they died…literally…tens of thousands of them…in the supposed richest neighborhood in the world.
So when you took over, we were so hopeful that finally positive change was coming to Washington D.C.’s house.
At first, things looked like they were on the right path and seemed to be getting a little better. You were proposing and passing some pretty big neighborhood plans, like:
• The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which provides a means of health insurance and subsequent financial relief to so many healthy and serious medical needs residents.
• Your Stimulus Package, which helped tremendously in jump-starting the neighborhood’s economy and pulling us out of the greatest recession since the Great Depression.
• Your poor, middle-class, and small business tax cuts, much of which were given to people through their paychecks; a move that is less visible but much more fiscally responsible. You’ve always tried to be fiscally responsible.
• Helping gays and lesbians to be allowed to serve openly in the military by ending former Neighborhood Watch President Bill Clinton’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy.
• Stopping that Keystone XL Pipeline from coming through our neighborhood and both tainting our water supply and ravaging our environment.
• Freeing a record number of non-violent drug offenders; giving them a second chance at life when they shouldn’t have even been locked up in the first place.
• Oh, and the two historic deals you did with those two other neighborhoods to the east and southeast of us where you halted one’s weapons program and, after 50 years of useless arguing, finally made it Ok for us to start visiting, mingling, and trading with the other again.
All of those were absolutely amazing.
And, although all of them weren’t necessarily the best proposals, they were at least bold and going in the right direction.
So there was some seeming, periodic peace and positivity now where there wasn’t the 8 years of the Neighborhood Watch President before you, you know?
In fact, that is what got you voted back into the Neighborhood Watch President position the second time, although almost 10% of the people who voted for you the first time didn’t the second time because something just didn’t seem right.
Although they were repeatedly hearing your soaring words about big changes to fix the problems at Washington’s house and thereby the entire neighborhood, not as many of us were convinced that you would actually fix the problems.
We weren’t seeing enough changes over there proportionately that would substantively and permanently change the area for the better, but, nonetheless, you won again.
However, over time, little by little we started noticing that a lot of those big proposals were getting stalled.
Then we noticed that they were not just getting stalled any longer, but they were getting altered for the worse.
And, in the meantime, Washington and his cronies over there were starting to do that ‘disturbing the neighborhood’ thing again.
So, as President of the Neighborhood Watch, we would periodically try and come over your house to ask you to ask them to stop keeping up all this noise partying all day and night and doing repeated and increasing property damage, and you would tell us that you ‘feel our pain,’ and would deal with them.
And after we went back to our homes, we’d hear the music being turned down for a moment and we would think, ‘Great! Our new President is making changes. Gettin’ it done.’
Then, the moment they thought we weren’t paying attention anymore, Washington and them would crank back up the drums of warmongering, the music of corruption, and the legendary songs from that one Diamond-selling album ‘Gimme Dat Corporate Welfare’ by that one group called Corporate America.
And, now that we think about it, we thought we saw a copy of that album under some papers on your table when we came to your house, but we couldn’t tell exactly.
Gosh we HATE that group and that album to this day. “Gimme Dat Corporate Welfare.” We don’t know how that album went Diamond. That album is trash. Anyway…
…unfortunately, over time, Washington went from disturbing the neighborhood back to destroying the neighborhood like it’d been doing before you became Neighborhood Watch President.
It was just too much for the neighborhood to bear again.
So one day one of our elder neighbors, who was one of the most passionate voices about fixing the neighborhood and had been paying much closer attention than most of the rest of us, had enough.
He decided to gather the majority of the neighborhood up and confront Washington at his own house.
So we all gathered together and marched over there and, to our slight surprise, when Washington opened the door, that “Gimme Dat Corporate Welfare” group Corporate America was in the house drinking and partying with them!
But that wasn’t even the worst part. To our complete surprise and utter disbelief , there you were in that house sitting on their couch drinking with them, too!
We mean, we know you had to do some fellowshipping with them, at least to get in the door and be able to get your message across to try and make them change their destructive behavior, but you got too comfortable in that house and forgot that they were the actual problem. No wonder their behavior got worse during your watch!
So time after time, we were virtually forced to have to stand there looking from the cover of our windows, as you all partied hard, got more and more drunk with more and more money and power, and completely disregarded what your actions were doing to the rest of the neighborhood, all at the residents’ expense.
We tried to bypass you and call the neighborhood security to help, but sadly there was no one on whom we could call to stop you all because, just like every other time we called them, they would have come to our house to harass and abuse us instead of going to Washington D.C.’s house to put a hurting on you all.
This has been our life under your presidency.
We made you President of the Neighborhood Watch. We hoped that you would change Washington’s destructive actions, but instead we stood virtually powerless, as you went over there and that house not only slowly and deceptively changed you, but it both drained from us that hope we had in you and got you to do damage of your own to your own community. Like:
• You didn’t get any of those people who did all of that financial damage to our neighborhood arrested and prosecuted.
• You proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicare (which would hurt the poor, middle class, and the elderly in our neighborhood) instead of simply raising the monetary cap so that the people who made the most would pay their fair share into those much needed, pivotal programs.
Yes, you changed your mind on those cuts later, but we remember that you did propose them.
• The insanity you did with Sections 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act, effectively gutting Habeus Corpus.
• Backing trade agreements that would gut even more neighborhood jobs, including those trade deals with Panama, South Korea, and Columbia.
• And then leaving office with the neighborhood engulfed in more conflicts than the previous Neighborhood Watch President, yet you won the Nobel Peace Prize?
President Obama, you said that the one thing you failed to do was change Washington D.C.’s house the way you wanted.
Mr. President, that was because you were trying to cure political alcoholism with political alcoholics, but, instead, you ended up going over there, getting yourself drunk with Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism, becoming a political alcoholic yourself, and then partying with them until you all, together, did trillions of dollars in damage to our neighborhood and the entire planet.
Now you’re leaving the Neighborhood Watch leadership and, because you failed to change the behavior over there in that house, someone who was already a political and corporate drunk is now the new leader of the Neighborhood Watch.
You are a scholar with an air of regal dignity, and they managed to turn you into one of them, and, in turn, you and all of the people in Washington’s house did untold amounts of damage to our and the world’s neighborhood.
What do you think they’ll be able to do with a belligerent, intellectually-incurious, narcissistic frat boy like this incoming President?
We hate to have to tell you this, but you might have temporarily steered the car away from the cliff, but we fear that you may have also fulfilled Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s prophetic words and ‘led your people into a burning house.’
President Obama, you are a great husband, a great father, and a great man. We know you wish you could have fixed things from the inside out, and yes, we know you tried, we truly do. However…
…we didn’t make you President to try. We made you President to succeed, and, since you have not succeeded in fixing the primary problems that ail almost all of the people in the neighborhood over which you were charged to watch and improve for 8 years, We The People will take it into our own hands.
Thank you for your efforts, President Barack Obama, truly, but we’ve got if from here. It’s our time to F.I.T.E.
Respectfully,
It’s Time to FITE™
ItsTimeToFITE.com
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