The Presidential Imagination

Dear Mr. President,

Got your letter yesterday. It’s so vague and general and full of imagined accomplishments, that I have no idea which of my letters you’re responding to. Comprehensive financial reforms? Putting Americans back to work? Level the playing field? Investing in clean energy? You really believe this stuff? You and I clearly live in two different realities, Mr. President. You live in the presidential bubble, a world of wealth and privilege where whole armies carry out your every command and your pronouncements are treated like holy writ; a world where every wish is granted and every act enshrined in law. My reality is a world where cops are armed and dangerous, shoot to kill, suppress dissent, stop and frisk, and carry out orders without question. I live in a world where wealthy corporate masters ship jobs overseas to the lowest bidder and the formerly employed lose their homes and live on reduced income from part time jobs or unemployment and savings and their kids graduate with a lifetime of debt and no job prospects. I live in what used to be a democracy but where inequality and injustice now rule and freedom no longer reigns, where my president signs laws that makes dissent illegal and gives himself the power to designate anyone he chooses a terrorist subject to indefinite detention or assassination. I live in a world of a disappearing middle class where the wealthy get the breaks and the rest go broke, where Social Security is no longer secure and Medicare’s future is a system of vouchers and good luck to us all. I live in a world of diminishing possibilities where lives are squeezed and constitutional guarantees disappear one by one. No, your accomplishments exist only in your mind, Mr. President, not mine. I wasn’t among the 70 million who watched the debates since no one was permitted on stage that I would vote for, but I heard and read that you didn’t do well, that you were listless, meandering and unfocused. All kinds of speculation about the cause for your poor performance. My own fantasy is that either the campaign managers wanted to make the race closer and more exciting or that you finally had an attack of conscience about what you’ve done the past 4 years. Or maybe, as David Gergen opined: “I don’t think anyone’s ever spoken to him like that over the last four years. I think he found that not only surprising, but offensive in some ways.” But if that’s true, then you obviously haven’t read any of my letters over the past 2 years.