My Second Post

Barack, it is Time to Man Up

When I decided to do this blog, I laid out a plan to open with a strong Introduction, then follow up with a frightening Post about my fantasy to have Grant and Sherman finish the job they not only started but got pretty far along with before they eased off, in the final months of the Civil War, for the shock value and to hopefully get some people’s attention and create a little buzz. Then I was going to back off and, over a series of months with deliberately more clear and transparent appeals, I was going to lay out my case, with my bottom line not revealed until sometime next spring or summer. Well, needless to say, patience is not my strong suit. Actually, neither is tact or subtlety. (The best laid plans… sigh.) Anyway, Barack Obama is a smart guy and there is no reason for me to sugar coat this. I’ve heard that when you are President, it is hard to get people to tell you the truth. That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Except maybe yourself, who would it not be disastrous to not tell the truth to—especially if you had some potentially important or even critical perspective, insight, or piece of information—than the leader of the (still) most powerful nation on the planet.

If I could actually talk to you Barack, I mean in a room, face to face, for real, here is what I would tell you. (I’d be in awe and nervous, for sure, but I’d still get ‘er done.)

Mr. President, the Country is on Fire. Thirty million people are unemployed or under-employed. Like me, many have been so for years. The Chinese are quickly industrializing and modernizing their nation and locking up the worlds’ precious metals and other vital and finite resources, with shrewd, exploitative, and strategic international trade deals with countries all over the planet—most noticeably troublingly in South America and Africa.  Even after a brutal one-child per family policy, famines, environmental degradation, and natural and self-inflicted disasters, there are still over 1.3 billion Chinese today and their population is going by 13,350 people every day.

For the Chinese, the long view is generational—hundreds to thousands of years. While American corporations try to maximize profits in time- frames of minutes to hours to maybe months, or, if they are led by unprecedented visionaries like Steve Jobs, ones of years, American politicians focus on the next election in two (House), four (President) or six (Senate) years, and the brightest American seniors in High School AP courses cannot sit and listen to a teacher for more that five minutes before they become bored and have to secretly open their iPhones in their laps for a little texting or sexting with their 247 closest friends, the Chinese—with over 10,000 years of a sustained, functioning, civil service and rich recorded history, are making 10-year, 100-year, and 1000-year plans: Plans to invest in their people, infrastructure, manufacturing and technology base, American debt securities, and space exploration/commercial exploitation.

A fat, stupid, lazy, corrupt, morally bankrupt,  addled, , bored, Free Market Myth spouting, “We’re number 1, shouting” America— suffering from delusions of past grandeur and a terminal case of hubris—cannot compete against the Chinese. I am a critical student of American culture, but I am also a serious and dedicated student and practitioner of Eastern Philosophies (Zen Buddhism and Tai Chi) in general, and the history and culture of China in particular. Barack, I think I know you, I feel you, I get you. As a Black man, you had to learn how to mask your rage in the face of incompetence, injustice, stupidity, and ignorance. You had to suffer fools and keep smiling to get ahead and not get yourself killed by some cracker idiot. You are a master at appearing disinterested, dispassionate, and safe. I get it that if you start telling the truth—about your real feelings about the Republicans or the Corporations that are selling the Country out to the Chinese or the Banks that screwed you after you bailed them out at great political peril, or even the Filthy Rich, who wrongly assume that their money will protect them as the Chinese dominate the world and America declines to become a third world country—the powers that be will come after you and if they cannot stop you with first whispers and then shouts of “Socialist” or “Class Warfare”, they will then scream “Crazy Negro, run for your life, we’re all going to die” and if that too fails to stop you, they will take you out just like they took Abraham [Lincoln], Martin [Luther King], and John [F. Kennedy].  (I’m not being disrespectful or a smart ass here, Mr. President, just don’t know if you are familiar with the song. I think you were probably 5 years old then.)

I get your history and the compromises you have had to make to get to where you are, Mr. President. But I do not know if your courage and fearlessness are comparable to FDR’s or MLK Jr’s.  I do not know what your advisors are telling you about the peril of our current situation. I do not know if you apprehend the very real despair, rage, and tired resignation that people like me are feeling. I do not know what you or your advisors know about the history and culture of China—if you apprehend the clear and present danger that China represents to your children’s and my grandchildren’s future.

Forgive me for being a little over dramatic here, Barack. But if things are as bad as I believe they are, and if we are going to have even a slim chance of turning this around, you are going to have to Man Up, put aside your hard-earned ability to appear safe and White and rational and dispassionate. You are going to have to take the risks that Lincoln, King, and Kennedy took, not because they were suicidal or crazy, but because they apprehended the magnitude of the problem and were willing to put at risk and sacrifice everything just to give their Country, our Country, a chance to survive.

I’m not trying to get you killed, Mr. President. I wept when you were elected. I have watched as the powers that be have persistently reduced your stature and relentlessly acted in a deliberate and coordinated fashion to try to ensure your failure. Of course you cannot admit that you understand that what I am saying is true. The people really cannot handle the truth, that truth anyway. But you can at least act like you have some clue about the evil forces arrayed against you. You can at least begin to tell the Country the truth about the perils we face, about the motives of the forces of greed and unwarranted power and influence that are opposing you, about what America will look like, and what living in America will feel like and be like, if the Corporations and the Rich succeed in turning America into a third world power.

I’m guessing that  David Axelrod—the genius who helped you defeat the tired, old, angry, ‘could care less about the Country (that is, could pick a Sarah Palin, the Wasilla Hillbilly, as his running mate)’ John McCain—is not giving you the message I just tried to give you.

I realize the “you” I am addressing here is not the President. But if you, whomever you are, think that someone with Obama's ear needs to hear this, and knows how to bring this to their attention, please do so, and thank you, whomever you are, for your assistence.