Letter to President Obama (10/23/2011)

[cenacle]

October 23, 2011
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Dear President Obama,

            This is the fifth in a series of letters I began writing to you back in 2008, when you were still running for your party's nomination for the presidency. This is my third annual letter to you since you took office as the President. Each of these letters is both mailed to you & published in the pages of my literary journal, The Cenacle.
            Tonight, I took myself down to Dewey Square in Boston, near the Financial District, where Occupy Boston is encamped. I witnessed a General Assembly in action, donated some of my press's volumes to the nice library there, & talked at length with some visitors from Occupy Wall Street.
            What I saw was a brave tent city of people, many young, some not, experimenting with a kind of ad hoc communal living, surrounded by great edifices where a very few keep accounts stockpiling a great deal of wealth.
            There were two things evident at Occupy Boston: the anger at the federal government for failing the many on behalf of the few, & the widespread hope that the Occupy Movement has returned to people's lives.
            Many of these people last felt that hope during the 2008 campaign when you won the presidency. Those too were exciting times, rife with the feeling that we were kicking a criminal administration to the curb & ushering in a new one, & hopeful about the many more good things you would do on our behalf.
            Three years after your election, your 2008 voters are angry, many jobless, & they are camped in Dewey Square, on Wall Street, & in dozens of cities around the country. A movement you gave energy & impetus has long tired of waiting for you, & passed on ahead to try and do for the 99% what you have all but failed to do.
            That you perhaps staved off a depression in 2009, signed into law modest healthcare reform, drew down troops in Iraq & Afghanistan, ended Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell in the military, & a few other acts—these sit as small islands of accomplishment in your great black sea of concessions & failures. Even now, there is fresh news that your administration is benefitting big banks while millions inherit the bill.
            Yet I have also noticed in recent months your more obvious frustration with & disdain for the partisan kneecapping of congressional business in Washington, D.C. Even with your somewhat bold American Jobs Act, you cannot get a simple floor vote in Congress because of partisan maneuvering.
            Maybe you have finally figured out that your best intentions are up against deeply entrenched bastards who will cede you the least social gains for the greatest cost, & are now already counting down the days to your second term's finish. Your opponent next year will be a suited clown, & the election important only in how strong a Congress you are given back & what you will lose by redistricting.
            If we re-elect you, it will only be to avoid a Republican gaining the office & resuming George W. Bush's destruction of the social safety net. It will not be like in 2008 when so many of us believed in you & what good you would do in office. No, it will be a return to the "lesser of two evils" voting strategy. Do you realize you're devolving from the candidate of hope & change, the "Yes We Can!" candidate, to the lesser of two evils? Some in Dewey Square would not even cede that you are so much lesser.
            One way to understand the message the Occupy Movement is sending you is by considering the word "occupy." A benign word, at least in some of its several definitions, it can imply simple space taking, passive dwelling. Not necessarily a word of fight or even resistance. More a word of right. Simple right. Each being on this planet, of any kind, even as it passes from one form to another, has a right to occupy—
            & in so saying, the purpose of Occupy is to realize fully that each of us here already does this, not at the discretion of a mortgage or a rental agreement, but as a truth. Each of us occupies this world. We belong to it, & it to each & every one of us. To all created entities. Those that would tend against this truth oppose their world itself. I can't deduce it any more simply.
            If you indeed have renewed stomach for the fight ahead, knowing now better than you did in 2008, your task hereon is to wrack in word & deed against those who would deny some their right to occupy. Your early missteps, your slow realization of the scale & scope & seriousness of those who oppose you, might be forgotten by at least some who come to feel that you are maturing & seeing what the rest of us see: that these entrenched bastards will simply wait you out unless you ally yourself, like King & Kennedy before you, with as many millions of every kind & place as you can. You did this in 2008. It's why you are in the White House.
            What faces you are the following questions: in a nation of laws, not a nation of men, whose laws shall we abide by? Those in the interest of some, most, or everyone? Laws are simply sentences with public authority backed by a combination of agreement & guns.
            Yet by laws—which exist, which do not, & how enforced, & on whom, & not on whom—, is nakedly revealed what a society (& especially its power-bearers) thinks of itself. They offer a moral temperature, & codify it for a time, till the temperature shifts, as it always does.
            The final question for you, to look to answer in your later years, is whether or not you settled for a small peace, a somewhat prosperity, or if you met the challenge to include all, as hard & dirty & stupid as this will seem to do at times, include all in gaining & asserting anew each's right to occupy?
            I cannot but hope that you will try with all of your might, act like people not elections matter, & still realize, this far along, the potential we all felt you possessed three years ago. We can & will Occupy despite the bastards in D.C. & elsewhere. We would much rather you yourself found a collaborative place in our ranks.
            The time is now, my friend. There's so much work to do.

Respectfully,

RS
Scriptor Press New England
Scriptorpress.com

[Stonehenge]

Nice letter, cen. A junior flunky will glance it over and perhaps if you are lucky you will get a form letter back. Mr hope and change and delivered no hope and little change. I too thought he would go easy on pot, perhaps encourage legalization. If he couldn't go that far because of politics i would understand as long as he kept his promise of keeping the feds out of state sanctioned medical mj. But he broke that promise too, in a big way. Shrub couldn't have done worse than he did. Obama put a virulently anti-pot bitch in charge of dea and gave her a free hand. He also sicked the irs, and a few other agencies on the caregivers and their suppliers. If that is going easy i'd hate to see a crackdown.

We will have the usual choice between bad and worse, between tweedledum and tweedledee. It will be the lesser of the evils version 14 or however many times they have done this. A hack who does not keep his word and is about as effective a leader as he is at protecting sick people. Or, the radical gop guy who will be demonized to no end. People will hold their noses and try to figure which one is worse.

Vote third party, its the only way to not waste your vote. The d and r are two hands of the same puppet master. Obama continued shrubs policies and the nextt guy will continue obama's no matter who it is. More wars, more raids on medical pot, more spying on the citizens and expansion of executive power. You forgot to ream him on that and were far too kind, imo. I will not vote for any of the leading repubs nor for that clown. You seem to say you will vote for him  as the lesser of the evils. Why then should he do anything for you or me if he can count on that? No matter how lousy a president he was, people will say "the gop wouldn't let him lead" or the old "he is not a monarch" A true leader would have been able to forge a compromise. They see him as weak and lacking in principles.