An Open Thankgiving Letter to President Obama.

Dear President Obama,

I wish we could have this discussion face to face, like your famous “beer summit,” over a plate of turkey and a glass of your choosing, to provide a hopeful, thankful atmosphere for a discussion in what is a time of despair for many Americans. But you are the president of the United States, and I am just a normal citizen, not a famous Harvard professor. So instead I am writing you. I know you are a busy man and the chances of this letter reaching you are slim—the chances of you responding even slimmer—but I feel the need to write you in the hope that this open communication may do some good for our country, or to use your phrase, this may be a good opportunity for a “teachable moment.”

This is not a short letter, but the issues it raises are complex, and I could find no simpler way to say them. All I ask is that you, and anyone else who reads this, takes a few minutes out of your busy day to fully read and contemplate the deep and important dilemmas this letter raises.

I am going to ask you some simple questions: Why should I now have hope? What is the role of leadership in a time of crisis? What does “peaceful transition of power” really mean?

For eight years I have looked up to you as the leader of the United States of America. I have believed in you as a champion of freedom, democracy, decency, and all the moral and ethical values that make America the leader of the free world. Yes, you were the first black person elected president, and that counted for something, but I’m a middle-aged, upper middle class, white male. I cheered for you not because you broke the race barrier, but because you stood for the same values I believe in: family, hard work, compassion, fairness and all the other principles that hold us together as a society and make us a great nation.

But I write this letter with a feeling of real physical pain. I literally have a pit in my stomach, an ache in my heart. I feel like someone who has just found out their spouse is cheating on them, or a family member has been stealing money. Because someone I trusted, respected and even loved has suddenly and unexpectedly broken that sacred trust. That someone is not just my country, but the president who had courageously and calmly stood up to the forces of bigotry, hate, racism, ignorance, and abuse of power not only here in America, but throughout the world. As much as I don't want this to happen, I fear my respect for you may have come to an end. It’s hard for me to accept that a man's words and actions of a few weeks may spoil the actions of eight years, but as the wise proverb says (and one sometimes quoted by Ben Franklin), one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel.

For months I watched you state bluntly and emphatically that ethical and moral failings make someone unfit to be president of our great nation. And then, only days later, you turned around and with a smile and a handshake, handed a man with those same failings the keys to our country and said, “here she is, America is all yours, do what you want with her.” I felt I’d been punched in the gut. The bond of trust I had with the president of our great country had been shattered.

Let me be clear. This is not about politics. I fully understand that politics can be a rough and tumble game, with mudslinging and dirty tricks and all the rest. Candidates I believed in and voted for have lost before. I am not a die-hard Republican or Democrat. In fact, I’ve voted for both Democrat and Republican candidates for president. And I fully respect that past administrations have had the decency to lay aside their differences and facilitate the peaceful transition from one administration to the next.

But this time is different. Let’s be honest with each other and not try to “normalize” what’s happening. There is a reason protestors have taken to the streets. This is not about “policy differences.” This is about values, ethics and morality, about what’s right and what’s wrong. This is about what goes to the very heart of what makes our nation great. People look up to America as the land of freedom from oppression, as a place of fairness, a place they can worship, speak, and live without fear. A place where they can enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A place where native Americans and foreigners can sit down together, break bread, and give thanks for their common shared humanity, struggles, hopes and successes.

I have many friends from minority groups who are feeling real fear right now for their personal safety, the safety of family and friends, the safety of their homes, their places of worship, and even their financial future. Women, hispanics, blacks, muslims, jews, gays, whites and others—many, many people are very, very afraid.

You President Obama are a constitutional law professor who taught at one of our greatest universities. So when you said that “peaceful transition of power is one of the hallmarks of our democracy,” I sat down and read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and nowhere did I find reference to the ““peaceful transition of power.” In fact, I discovered just the opposite. What I found is that the great leaders who founded our country believed in the principle of just power. Just, as in “power that is morally right.” They believed that if a leader or nation abuses their power, then the people have a right to say no.

We are even willing to shed blood and sacrice lives for just power. We didn’t peacefully accept England’s use of unjust power to govern us. We didn’t peacefully accept the abuse of power in keeping slaves. We didn’t peacefully accept abuses of power in World War I, or World War II, or Korea or Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan. America stands up for principles. We stand up justice for all. The very beginning of the declaration of Independence states: “Governments … [derive] their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

That is the very principle behind the #notmypresident movement. We did not give our consent to have a serial liar, thief and sexual predator have power over us. He lost the popular vote by nearly 2 million people. His election was helped by a powerful foreign government and by top law enforcement agents in our own country. America was founded on the very principles that foreign governments would not hold power over us and that free people should not live in a police state. And yet that is at least part of what just happened. I'm not a conspiricy theorist, and I know Russia and the FBI are not the total reason for his win, but as long as we're having a frank and honest discussion, let's admit it: we both know that's part of the story.

So please, please explain to me why you are now so supportive of handing over the reigns of our country to someone who is the antithesis of everything America stands for? I am at a loss to understand, and I am hopeful you may teach, lead and enlighten me. Yes, I know about the crisis of the presidential election of 1800 between Jefferson, Adams and Burr, and how Jefferson had to be escorted to his inauguration by soldiers. I could not agree with you more that we do not want tanks rumbling down Pennsylvania Avenue in January.

I also know you are legally bound by law to do certain things, and that great societies are held together by the rule of law. But we all make value choices every day. In my own decision making process, when faced with a difficult choices, I have an informal checklist I run down in my mind, a hierarchal list of which values come first: family, honesty, humility, fairness, country, etc.

You are still the president of the United States, and you have many choices to make for the next two months, and even beyond. What is your hierarchy of values, and which values come first for our country? Those espoused in our constitution? Or more nebulous concepts like “peaceful transitions?”

How can you say, as you recently did, that you are “rooting for [Mr. Trump’s] success in uniting and leading the country?” For his entire life, Mr. Trump’s “leadership” has consistently been to use bigotry, hate, misogyny, and stealing from the less powerful to enrich himself. Maybe you are hoping that the office of the President is bigger than any one man, and it will change Mr. Trump. Maybe you believe you can have an influence on him in the next two months. I hope you are right. Nothing would please me more. I do believe that personal transformation is possible. But I also know it usually takes time.

I also understand the hubris that befalls many educated people (myself included), which leads them to believe they are so smart they can change people, instead of accepting them for who they really are.

You don’t need a psychologist to tell you that a 70-year-old man who “won” by using a certain world view is suddenly going to change that world view, as much as we would all like to believe otherwise. If you haven't read it, I point you to Senator John McCain's excellent book, Character is Destiny. Time to accept Mr. Trump's character, and what it means for the destiny of America.

By saying you want Mr. Trump to succeed, I guess that means that you want our new president to do everything he said he plans to do: gut my health care; cut taxes on the wealthy to put more of the burden on me and the rest of the middle and lower class; oppress minorities; give free reign to financial institutions to do the same thing that drove our economy into the great recession; use the courts, the FBI and the military, the CIA and the NSA to turn America into a police state; and lay waste to the environment we live in, leaving our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to live in a fouled nest.

That is not what I, and most Americans want and voted for (in case you need reminding once again, Mr. Trump did not win the popular vote). This is not what our founding fathers intended. So now I’m looking for leadership, someone with the guts to stand up to bigotry, injustice, and unjust power. I’m looking for someone like Harry Reid, who had the moral fortitude to tell the truth: “The election of Donald Trump has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America.” Or Elizabeth Warren, who said, in a letter to Mr. Trump, that if he continues his ways, “I will oppose you, every step of the way, for the next four years. I will champion the millions of Americans you will fail to protect. I will track your every move, and I will remind Americans, every day, of the actions you take that fail them.”

I was hoping my president would have similar spine and backbone. I was hoping the man who said, “when they go low, we go high” would continue to go high, and continue to fight for truth, justice and the American way, but instead he seems to be running for the exit when the going gets tough. Who knows, after eight grueling years as president, maybe you're just tired. Maybe you're just ready to retire and hand the fight to others.

ALthough the men and women I admire most in life are not the ones who have disappeared quiety to their ranches, estates or compounds in their later years. And this isn't all on your shoulders. I’m looking for leadership from others too, both Democrats and Republicans, such as Senator McCain. As you probably surmised from my mention of his book on character, I'm also a fan of the republican leader. I’ve also read his book Why Courage Matters and consider(ed?) him a moral and decent man. So I’m similarly dismayed by his silence and acceptance of bigotry, racism, abuse of power and the rest. I’m still waiting for Senator McCain to exhibit the moral courage he writes so forcefully about in his book. So Senator McCain, if this letter somehow finds its way into your hands, I’d welcome your response as well. If there is ever a time for bipartisan cooperation, the time is now.

My father, like Senator McCain, was in the Navy in the 1950s. One of my father’s favorite military sayings he always quoted to me growing up was the title of a book written by an Air Force fighter pilot of that era, No Guts, No Glory. I think my father was right. The great and glorious leaders we remember from history are those who had the guts to fight for what they believed in: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln; Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela. (My own biggest heros are the ones who fought peaceable fights, but were still warriors who stood up for what they believed.)

I understand, as you told your daughters, that democracy can be "messy." But in a time of great messiness, what should our reaction be? To acquiesce? To enable the transition of power to unjust forces, which seems to be your belief? Or to stand up and fight for just democracy?

What will your legacy be, President Barack Obama? Certainly, you will go down in history as the first black president, but after that? Nobel Peace Prize: already forgotten. Better, healthy lives for all Americans: Trump wants to dismantle it. Getting us out of two wars: maybe. Righting a financially sinking country: maybe. But Mr. Trump wants to dismantle those safeguards too.

Right now, your legacy appears to be shaping up like that of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, best known for appeasing Hitler with his ”Peace for our time" speech when he signed the Munich Agreement. Will you be a warrior or an appeaser? (Interesting that Germany’s current leader, Angela Merkel, who knows better than most about the dangers of unchecked, unjust nationalist power, issued this forceful statement to Mr. Trump after his “win”: “Germany and America are connected by values of democracy, freedom and respect for the law and the dignity of man, independent of origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political views.”

Funny, “peace for our time” and “peaceful transition of power” sound awfully similar, don’t you think, Mr. President? Do you remember what happened after Chamberlain tried appeasement of a leader with a personality similar to Mr. Trump? (I’m not going to demean Mr. Trump by suggesting that he is even close to a man as evil as Hitler. that would be unfair. On a scale of 1-10 of dangerous demagogues, Hitler was an 11, and Mr. Trump is maybe a 2 or 3, but Mr. Trump is also certainly no George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, or Lyndon Johnson, who were leaders who believed in creating a great society for all citizens. He's more closely aligned to the legacy of Senator Joseph McCarthy: with McCarthy the enemy was communists. the press, sexual deviants, the entertainment industry, and even the common man (people forget that McCarthy's witchhunt forced more than 3,000 longshoreman to lose their jobs). With a Trump it's Muslims, the press, the entertainment industry…who knows who will be next?

In Europe, eventually real leaders, men with guts and spine and backbone, had to step in to clean up the mess, men like Churchill and Roosevelt and Eisenhower. In America, it took people like Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Maine Republican, and Edward R. Murrow, the CBS broadcaster, and many others who took a stand to bring an end to McCarthey's demagogory.

In the U.S., we were luckly, and the change was effected peacefully. Unfortunately in Germany it took a bloody fight, not a peaceful one to get the country back on course. Perhaps an earlier, more forceful but peaceful response would have prevented bloodshed. Who knows. That is all hindsight and conjecture.

But we have just elected a new President who has said he will build walls, ignore peaceful treaties and alliances, ignore international conventions on torture and conducting warfare, and allow the proliferation of nuclear weapons. What should our leaders' response be? What should your response be? What should our citizen's (and my) response be?

I know the “great man” (and woman) theory of history has fallen out of favor in most academic circles, but I still believe that leadership counts for something, leadership that has the guts and moral fortitude to fight the good fight, especially in a peaceful, even civil disobedient manner. I guess what I want to know from you, Mr. President, is this: what will you do now? will your legacy be that you were a great leader in this time of moral crisis? Did you have the guts to stand up for what’s right? Or will you go down in history as the man who turned away from his, and his country’s, core values when the going got tough? The man who opted for appeasement instead of action?

And what do I do? Do I abandon the hope you told me to have for eight years? Do I run for the exits and go live in exile like James Baldwin in France during McCarthyism? Do I accquiece, accept and legitimize our new president? All in the interest of a "peaceful transition" of political power? Or do I stand and fight, forcefully and peacefully, against injustice and Trumpism, like the brave politicians, citizens and press who eventually changed public opinion against Mcarthyism, and steered our country back on the right moral and ethical course?

Please Mr. President, lead me, teach me, help me to understand. I know I must make my own decisions, but a little guidance from our leader(s) would help that decision-making process for me and millions of other Americans. Give us something to be thankful—and hopeful—for during this extraordinary and even frightening thanksgiving. Give me hope that our our government will protect me and my family and my millions of fellow Americans from the unjust powers that seem to have taken the reigns of our great country. Perhaps even more important, give me hope that our leaders—men and women like you—will keep fighting to ensure that America will continue to be a place of justice, fairness, morality and freedom: The same great America it's always been.

Sincerely, Lee Carlson

 

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