Oh, for a true champion of the People who, like Arthur, might draw the sword from the stone of our well-cultivated fears and hack through the thicket of institutional plague that bars our way to a better future for the nation! Is this Barack him, or just another would-be? We shall see as the next remaining years (of his presidency) unfold.
That concludes anything I have to say with respect to prospective government action in this letter. I'm not too proud to confide that it took me hundreds of hours of reworking, over the course of about two years, to distill into the form seen here from work I have done on these issues in the past.
That being the case, I have decided that it would be better to reserve inclusion of the specific formulae involved to those cases where people actually indicate an interest in looking them over and testing them. The reason isn't to be coy, it's that I would have to write them out in longhand and send them as an image because the form of computer keyboard I have access to doesn't have the characters needed to send them electronically.
Taking the time to formulate these ideas has come at some cost to other interests of mine (chiefly, songwriting) but I think it speaks to what the better working of this democracy really needs, right now - namely, cogent input from the electorate that is relevant, potentially usable and timely.
During the time the Obama team has been consumed by the day-to-day challenges of first running a political campaign (and doing an amazing job of it, I must add) and then performing damage control on the economy, the environment and the military situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, other innovative minds out there in the populace have been completely focused on finding solutions to problems in the deeper workings and dynamics of not just this society, but the whole world, east, west, north and south of us.
What they have to offer should not be lost under a mountain of pro forma government activity, overwhelmingly focused on a bewildering array of damage-control initiatives.
As a first order of business, those now in the White House would do well to gather from these conceptual pioneers the best of their thinking on the grand issues of our time. All great innovative action is preceded by great new ideas being given a decent platform for consideration and debate. One thing the administration might consider is hosting a competition with honorary prizes to find the most compelling progressive proposals, featuring an assembly of a thousand, or so, of the world's best conceptual thinkers, from all walks of life, in all pertinent fields whose ideas and aspirations speak most clearly to the needs of these challenging times, nationality notwithstanding. The magazine, Ode, has been doing something along those lines and prospered by it.
Were this to actually occur, it would be wise to let the process proceed at its own pace. Discussion should go on as long as it takes to derive a publishable - perhaps even revolutionary - collection of proposals for tackling the nation's and the world's great problems over the course of the next two presidential terms in a sustainable and affordable way that does not leave the rest of humankind feeling overlooked, eclipsed or subordinated. This would fuel a great deal of open debate - a necessary beginning point for social evolution in the context of an established democracy.
Seattle, having been the place where public complacency regarding the WTO was definitively ended, would be a great place to hold such a convention. Of course, I’m being a little partisan here. There are a other such communities with the right mix of intellect and social activism that might host an event like this just as well. Portland, Boston, Minneapolis, Austin and Madison (WI), as well as many other smaller municipalities like Asheville (N.C.), Ashland (OR), Davis and Berkeley (CA), Ann Arbor (MI), Rochester (NY). All are in counties with a broad mix of working people and sufficient connections with the global community to guarantee optimal levels of class inclusiveness and media interest.
To get the public involved and excited, the participants would have to be independent thinkers who haven't followed the crowd or been proven dead wrong. If track record has anything to do with being selected, few would have reputations as political loyalists. Right now, partisan politics and those who practice it are part of the problem we need to fix.
That concludes my missive. I'm well aware that the odds are against it being read as I think it would need to be read to be fully understood, but if such does indeed occur, I thank the reader for his/her patience.
P.S. In the interests of transparency, it should be known that I was a delegate for the Obama campaign. Since then, though I have returned to being a political independent, I maintain a keen interest in seeing what the current administration will do to promote social equity in America. There is an enormous amount of pent-up frustration among those of us in society's lowest ranks that the Obama administration will need to respond to in a dramatically substantive way for true upward change to come about. I think I speak for those folks when I say, nothing short of very bold, very creative and very astute action is going to leave us feeling confident about the future. Reversing the accrual of cost- and responsibility-shifting that has gone on for the past twenty-five years from the richer, older portion of our population to the poorer and younger must be undertaken, not clumsily or crudely, but with masterful finesse so that, over time, a great correction can quietly take place and a new nation emerge.
Conversely, given the build-up in expectations, if an Obama administration were to fail in that respect, their tenure in the White House, such as it might end up being, would be seen as a truly crushing disappointment by the many millions of Americans who, for reasons both personal and ideological, have waited decades for a breath of hope like this.
I trust they will not let that happen, but not to the extent of being willing to put money on it. The challenges are formidable and the protagonists, after all, only human.
Though the creative content of this letter remains the intellectual property of the writer, accreditation is not necessary in the discreet use of any thoughts or wording contained herein by parties exhibiting a sincere interest in advancing the cause of the Greater Good but, rather, optional as the user deems fit.
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