A letter to President Obama.
Dear President Obama;
Well, you did it. Whether you actually thought you could win the office or not, you did it. (And you should have known you'd win. Didn't you watch The West Wing? There's a campaign slogan you missed -- 'Bartlett's Natural Successor.' You would've cleaned up. Oh, wait. You already did.) And now you're President of the entire country! All of it. Hawaii to Alaska, California to Alabama, you get the whole she-bang. Which is something a lot of people seem to forget, myself included, when they're busy worrying about whatever regional issues they have to worry about: you get the whole thing.
You get my happily married baby sister, the truck driver, and her wife, and their three kids.
You get my mother, who works odd jobs and cleans houses and hasn't had medical insurance in over a decade. She's fifty years old, and only gets medical care when something breaks so badly that she can't keep going, because she just can't afford to do maintenance.
You get Sooj, who was lucky enough to have friends ready to rally when there wasn't any money for floods...and you get all the people who weren't that lucky, the ones who smothered under crushing mountains of debt that were accrued through no actual fault of their own.
You get Betsy, who breeds Maine Coons, and Elise, who makes her own jewelry, and Ryan, who does network engineering. You get the high school dropouts and the college graduates, the physicists and the janitors, the people who are happy with the way their lives have gone and the people who aren't. You get the crazy and the sane, the rich and the poor, the people whose home addresses are mansions and the ones who live in cardboard boxes and everything in between. You get the poets and the musicians and the freelance authors. You get it all, and this country isn't Burger King -- you don't get it your way. You get it the way it is. Only once you've got it, you have the chance to change the menu. You get a chance that very few men or women will ever have.
You get the chance to make it better.
Please remember that not everyone needs what you need, and listen to the people who understand the issues on a micro level. When you're faced with a question about the Internet, listen to the people who understand the Internet, and when you're faced with a question about the environment, listen to the people who understand the environment, and when you're faced with a question about methane-breathing ice worms, listen to your local methane-breathing ice worm-ologist. If there's one piece of advice that I feel qualified to give you, it's that. Listen. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone is a subject matter expert on something, even if it's only their own lives. You may own a piano, polish your piano, and play it proudly every Friday night, but I bet you hired someone like my mother to carry it into the White House for you, because your knowledge of the piano doesn't necessarily extend to knowing how to pick it up without hurting yourself. Remember that. Call the piano-movers of the world, when you really need them.
Please also remember that you were chosen -- that you were elected -- to make the choices on the macro level, and sometimes, you're going to have to make calls that hurt. Sometimes, you may need to go 'look, the drought is hitting Central California and Arizona at the same time, but Central California grows all our food, so they get the water first.' The people in Arizona are going to call you a bastard. That's probably going to hurt. I won't tell you not to care, because caring is a part of your job, but I will tell you that after you've listened, it's still your job to make the choices. Even when they're painful.
Please, be good to us. Take care of us. Keep your promises, and make us keep ours. We have so much potential, every single one of us in this nation and in this world, and it's time that we stopped wasting it on fighting about things that don't make our lives better. We're living in the future now.
Please help us make it everything we dreamed it was going to be.
Yours, sincerely,
Seanan.
Well, you did it. Whether you actually thought you could win the office or not, you did it. (And you should have known you'd win. Didn't you watch The West Wing? There's a campaign slogan you missed -- 'Bartlett's Natural Successor.' You would've cleaned up. Oh, wait. You already did.) And now you're President of the entire country! All of it. Hawaii to Alaska, California to Alabama, you get the whole she-bang. Which is something a lot of people seem to forget, myself included, when they're busy worrying about whatever regional issues they have to worry about: you get the whole thing.
You get my happily married baby sister, the truck driver, and her wife, and their three kids.
You get my mother, who works odd jobs and cleans houses and hasn't had medical insurance in over a decade. She's fifty years old, and only gets medical care when something breaks so badly that she can't keep going, because she just can't afford to do maintenance.
You get Sooj, who was lucky enough to have friends ready to rally when there wasn't any money for floods...and you get all the people who weren't that lucky, the ones who smothered under crushing mountains of debt that were accrued through no actual fault of their own.
You get Betsy, who breeds Maine Coons, and Elise, who makes her own jewelry, and Ryan, who does network engineering. You get the high school dropouts and the college graduates, the physicists and the janitors, the people who are happy with the way their lives have gone and the people who aren't. You get the crazy and the sane, the rich and the poor, the people whose home addresses are mansions and the ones who live in cardboard boxes and everything in between. You get the poets and the musicians and the freelance authors. You get it all, and this country isn't Burger King -- you don't get it your way. You get it the way it is. Only once you've got it, you have the chance to change the menu. You get a chance that very few men or women will ever have.
You get the chance to make it better.
Please remember that not everyone needs what you need, and listen to the people who understand the issues on a micro level. When you're faced with a question about the Internet, listen to the people who understand the Internet, and when you're faced with a question about the environment, listen to the people who understand the environment, and when you're faced with a question about methane-breathing ice worms, listen to your local methane-breathing ice worm-ologist. If there's one piece of advice that I feel qualified to give you, it's that. Listen. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone is a subject matter expert on something, even if it's only their own lives. You may own a piano, polish your piano, and play it proudly every Friday night, but I bet you hired someone like my mother to carry it into the White House for you, because your knowledge of the piano doesn't necessarily extend to knowing how to pick it up without hurting yourself. Remember that. Call the piano-movers of the world, when you really need them.
Please also remember that you were chosen -- that you were elected -- to make the choices on the macro level, and sometimes, you're going to have to make calls that hurt. Sometimes, you may need to go 'look, the drought is hitting Central California and Arizona at the same time, but Central California grows all our food, so they get the water first.' The people in Arizona are going to call you a bastard. That's probably going to hurt. I won't tell you not to care, because caring is a part of your job, but I will tell you that after you've listened, it's still your job to make the choices. Even when they're painful.
Please, be good to us. Take care of us. Keep your promises, and make us keep ours. We have so much potential, every single one of us in this nation and in this world, and it's time that we stopped wasting it on fighting about things that don't make our lives better. We're living in the future now.
Please help us make it everything we dreamed it was going to be.
Yours, sincerely,
Seanan.