MY TALK WITH PRESIDENT OBAMA

IT IS NOT LIKELY TO HAPPEN, BUT THIS IS WHAT I WOULD SAY TO HIM

Mr. President; I want to express my appreciation for taking the time and trouble to listen to a gay senior citizen who wasn’t even born in this country but loves it more than many born here. I have been a supporter of yours and the first time I heard you speak was when you delivered the Keynote Speech at the Democratic Convention. To say I was impressed is ridiculous…I was totally swept away and I thought at that very moment you were speaking that you would someday be our President.

I worked for you and the Democrats in the Presidential Campaign; I even voted early so I could dedicate time to carry signs in your support election day and put in many hours as a volunteer. I even made sure everyone in our household got to vote…even my 95 year old mother who is an anomaly: an elderly Cuban-American Democrat.

So that you know where I am coming from; I lost my job in 2006 to outsourcing…it is now partially computerized, partially done in Pakistan. Then my Cobra ran out and I had no health insurance…my 401K and my pension both disappeared during the 08 Market Crash and the value of my house went from $700,000 to $350,000. In a few days I will be eligible for Medicare so that all this insecurity I had, holding my breath, hoping I didn’t get sick because that meant losing everything I had and living out of a cardboard box under a bridge is now behind me…but there are still millions of people out there in that situation.

I have been a Democrat since the Reagan years when I became aware that his ideology was diametrically opposed to everything I believed in. I detested his TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS and I thought he was a demagogue. I had even met him when as a youngster I was working at the tailor shop in Beverly Hills where he got his suits made…he didn’t impress me much then and he didn’t impress me much as President. A lot of people in America think of him in superlative terms…I don’t because I think he and President Bush were two of the worse Presidents we ever had.

Having said that; I also had first hand information of who you were and your qualifications for the job you now hold; my daughter was studying law at The University of Chicago and took a course taught by you…she has nothing but praise for you.

I understand very well that you can’t fix everything that took decades in the making and became a lot worse during the administration of your predecessor. I know you can’t walk on water or multiply the bread and that you are doing the best you can without any help from the Republicans who are obstructing any remedies to the very mess they left.

So that if I offer some advise, some criticism at the same time; please understand that it is coming from your supporter, a loyal and enthusiastic supporter.

Having lived on this earth for 65 years have imparted upon me some limited wisdom. Having lived through a civil war and a revolution where the very fiber of society was destroyed, all wealth disappeared and the middle class decimated; I can tell you that I am doubly suspicious of radicals who offer little or not one single solution except to destroy what is already in place whether they come from the left or the right.

I see a parallel between the Tea Bag movement and the Fidelista mob that supported terrorism, made us fight a bloody civil war and took over the government and has to this day; fifty years later, enslaved and repressed our people committing some of the most hideous atrocities any government could possibly perpetrate against its own people.

I can speak from the heart and tell you that there is good and there is evil and that those who are opposing you will stop at nothing to discredit you, to dehumanize you and eventually defeat you…their hunger for power is larger than, more important even than their love of their country.

If I have any criticism is that you are too nice, too decent and too civil a man to stoop to their level. You have tried to be inclusive and bipartisan knowing full well they are not going to play ball with you and will oppose you every step of the way. Perhaps you are too good, too nice for them and they don’t deserve a President like you…but we do…people who are open minded, intelligent and well informed would like to have a President that is smarter than themselves and one who does what is best for the country not what is best for politics.

But make no mistake about it…if you are too nice, too accommodating the opposition will take advantage of you. If you don’t fight back vigorously they will succeed. We have seen how their lies, misinformation and exaggerations have taken root. We have seen how they are now poised to put in place some real scary ultra-right wing radicals in power. This can’t be good for our country and the divisiveness and vitriol they have injected in our political system is going to destroy America.

For all these reasons I am asking you to do the following: Take off your gloves, put aside your scruples and your sense of civility and fight them. No, I am not asking you to give up your principles…I am asking you to call them on the carpet whenever they try to spread a lie or carry out an attack that is untrue and outrageous.

There are some ways you can do it, still observing a respect for the freedom of speech; as we all know you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater nor can you slander anyone without facts. Opinions are fluid but facts are not and if you bring law suits against those defaming you and slandering you they will see that you mean business.

I also think that you should abandon this effort to be bipartisan, at least for a while because they will never work with you on anything.

I thank you for having listened to my ideas…it is very important to some of us liberal-progressives that we fight back, that we become indignant enough to offer some resistance to this madness and this effort to turn our country into a theocratic, right wing oligarchy.