Thursday, November 28, 2013

Dear Mr. President

This is a Thanks Giving message.

Thanks to you and your Administration for "hanging in there." First, thanks for running for President, and then running for reelection. Thanks for devoting these last five years and the coming three years of yours and your family's life to working for the enduring presence of our  Nation as a symbol and model of freedom and liberty for all.

Nobody said it would be easy, and, as you know, probably better than anyone, it has been at times excruciatingly difficult. There are a lot of individual things that I could name for which I thank you and your Administration, and for which I think that most of our brothers and sisters thank you. However, just let me say that I loved your comments last Monday regarding shifting our efforts from bombs to diplomacy in order to bring rationality and sanity into the International conversation regarding how we all need to live together on this rather tiny planet.

“Tough talk and bluster may be the easy thing to do politically, but it’s not the right thing for our security." To me your "signal" re the Shift from might to Right was the light at the end of the tunnel of ego insanity through which humanity has been plodding for centuries. It is, as you undoubtedly realize, the only way out. Thanks to the tunnel vision of fear and greed which has been driving us over the last 100 years, we can currently, and rather easily, destroy the whole planet.

With this shift I am hopeful that we can as well, rather rapidly now, shift a significant amount of our resources, that is our tax dollars, from might to Right. I have in mind our Infrastructure by which I mean a lot more than our roads and bridges. These are, as we can easily see in videos of collapsing bridges and broken highways, in terrible condition, and putting resources into their reconstruction would greatly improve the circulation of energy; i.e., money through our national body. All good!

Not so easily seen is the 30 or 40 year decay of the basic infrastructure of our Democracy, our educational systems. All of them are in pretty bad shape, but primarily the elementary systems are near collapse. These infrastructure failures are not so easily seen, but very evident in many ways that cannot compete for attention with collapsing bridges, and many, many times more destructive.

This is a problem that can only be fixed by throwing resources, our tax dollars at it. Those dollars would employ vastly more people, thus circulate vastly more energy, money, than working on the dense physical infrastructure. The reconstruction of our dense physical infrastructure is very important. I am sure we can do both simultaneously. This would solve many problems re. unemployment and so forth.

I know that you and your administration know vastly more about this than I do. So, for me it's a matter of priorities. Health care for everyone was/is a huge priority. Educating the electorate is the most significant thing we can do to further the Dream. Healthy, uneducated people are great for totalitarian systems. Democracy only works if the electorate can think.  I am urging that you make the reconstruction of our educational systems priority One

Lots of love

-tom

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

I will be brief:

I just finished reading your "hand written" letter. Wonderful! This letter carries the energy that the people of our country need to feel and hear coming out of Washington, and especially from you and your spokespersons.

I heard Senator Warren talking with Rachael Maddow about Social Security. She carries and delivers the same energy. This energy is lighted. It carries compassion, caring, concern, respect and appreciation for our country and our people, all of our people. It speaks from the heart to other hearts.

Please, do a lot more of this. We all need it, including our Republican brothers and sisters who seem to sometimes forget about our roots. The way into a dark place is to lead with the light of the heart.

lots of love

-tom

Wednesday, November 06, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

I am writing because I am concerned about the overwhelming emphasis that your education policy is placing on vocating rather than educating our young.

I understand the need to vocate or train individuals in the new kinds of skills that our increasingly technologically driven society demands. And I support all of the efforts in that regard. What concerns me is that this effort is being made at the expense of the educational side of the equation.

By "education" I mean being deeply exposed to the great ethical, and moral Principles which underlie our Civilizations and Cultures. These Principles such as goodwill, honesty, courage, love, and compassion are responsible for the relative success of any of our past civilizations. Their presence in our DNA is responsible for the enduring efforts of Humanity to build evermore just and inclusive systems of government that foster liberty, freedom, happiness for everyone.

Democracy is not possible without an educated people. Fascism, totalitarianism is not possible with an educated people.

Those not interested in the democratic principles have always resisted any effort to educate the general population. Their assault on our educational system has been non-stop. One of the more insidious aspects of this assault is the notion that some of our people are too stupid to learn anything other than some vocational skill, so why waste their time on history, literature, art music, or learning how to write. This notion is only a bit less ignorant than the attitude that very smart people who can operate in the technological world do not need to waste their time on such fluff.

Any educational program needs to be anchored in the Humanities. The reason for this is that these fields carry the Wisdom of what Humanity has managed to learn through our enormous struggle over many centuries. They are the archives of all that makes humanity human. To fail to equip our children with these treasures is a crime.

You spent two years at Oxy, and I know you know how important that experience was to who you are now. My view is that if we could have a nation of individuals who had the education that you had, this would be a very much different and a very much better, more inclusive, loving compassionate, intelligent, heart driven nation and model for our brothers and sisters in the rest of our world.

Can you do something about this?

lots of love

-tom