A letter written to an acquaintance who worked in the Bush White House. I was unaccountably, irrationally, righteously angry. I think we all were.

Memo to the CEO of the USA re: State of the Nation
Sunday, September 4, 2005 4:48 AM
From: "Joseph Waldman"
To: "_" <[email protected]>

Y'know, D_, I've been giving your man George a pretty fair break for the past three years. I wanted him to do well after 9/11. I honestly hoped he could be another FDR -- rise past his gentrified upbringing and work some magic to raise the spirit of America. And for a while, it worked. For exactly one season, until the calendar switched to 2002. Then he pulled the wool over our eyes for the Iraq invasion, which I admit was a fait accompli, but come on, man: if you're going to stage-manage a war, at least stage-manage it a little bit better. The American people enjoy a certain amount of bluster and sham, but only when applied properly. Yet still -- STILL -- I was willing to back him, because those poor dumb cannon fodder, 500-on-the-SAT, regular-black-and-white-and-brown people that make up our fighting forces were putting their asses on the line so that the rest of us can sit here and bitch about things (the Second Amendment defends the First). But I can't anymore. Not after the past week. This is something of biblical proportions, and if your man reads the bible half as much as he says he does, he would understand it in his gut -- rather than pulling the strings of the camera media and dancing the hokey pokey and hugging a few token darkies ("ain't they cute, Laura? hi-de-ho! hi-de-ho!") and retreating to the Wonderbread sanctuary of the White House (which, as always, is in the midst of Chocolate City). D_, you're my _, and you're a fellow political junkie, but that also means you should know that politics is not neutral, and that it does play a role, a big role, when people in the streets are drowning like rats. As an American citizen, protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, I am free to voice my opinion to a duly designated representative of the President of the United States (whose salary I partly pay), without any fear of said opinion being dissected by some kind of black-booted special-ops national-security-intelligence force out in the mountains of Virginia; so just kindly, if you would, if you have the time, if he's not too busy, just slip into the Oval and put a Post-It on his desk from me, telling him to stop with the charades and start being a man and a leader.

JW

---
http://www.geocities.com/josephwaldman
Landslide!
Rocks are falling!
Falling down 'round our very heads!

We tried but you were yawning,
Look again --

Rock is dead,
Rock is dead,
Rock is dead...
--Peter Townshend