We watched with mixed emotions, your speech (yet another speech!) at your town hall meeting last week. We saw you strident, perhaps angry. We saw you defiant. What we didn’t see was that you had learned anything from We the People.
The mixed emotions come because it kind of tugged at us when you said (paraphrasing) that some of the attacks on you stung. That’s perhaps the most human thing we’ve heard you say – ever. It’s using English in a way that Americans around the country understand and get. It’s not professorial. It’s not highbrow, looking over the glasses to talk down to us. It’s just connecting man to man or man to woman.
However, in the next moment, we remembered.
We remembered when you tried to walk it back from your condemnation of the Cambridge Police Department, when you said that you had “miscalibrated” your language. Who talks like that?
But more – we remember that you did condemn the Cambridge Police Department after saying that you didn’t have all the facts. Fast forward to when you tried to stump for Martha Coakley, and you said that you didn’t really know Scott Brown’s record as you then tried to condemn it.
You are very fast to demonize fellow Americans, Mr. President. We can’t think of a single time that George W. Bush did that, despite provocation that makes your hot seat look like an air conditioned cockpit. You are very quick to lash out at us, Mr. President – at anyone who stands in your way. This is why we call you a bully. And you do it with people who are ill equipped to fight back against the force of the Federal Government in general and the Office of the President in particular. This is why we call you a coward.
We strongly suggest that if you want to turn things around on your watch, Mr. President, that you stop with the demonization; stop with the villainizing of entire swaths of Americans. Show the same kind of respect and courtesy that you and your Wicked Witch of the West demand every so often from the rest of us. Start treating people who disagree with you with respect, Mr. President, and just maybe you’ll find it reciprocated.
If you can’t manage that, we happily imagine you feeling irritated, annoyed, ticked off, etc. We wish for you the same consternation that you cause us. We would rather that we could respect an American President, but as in all things, respect is something earned, and you, Sir, have not earned it; not yet; though you still can.
- Off-the-cliff.com
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.