Dear Mr. President

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

Watched your presentation to the press the other day. It was a powerful and moving message. The low key straight forward truth of it carried compassion and understanding. It was the kind of message to which people can relate. It probably did not go over that well with the politicians and gamesters, and from the responses I saw and heard, many of them did  not even register what  you were saying but rather heard a political attempt to make points.

The usual kind of talks that I hear coming from you and your White House co-workers do not speak to the people. They seem "crafted" for other politicians, lobbyists, press operatives, billionaire funders, and random apparatchiks. The speeches/talks resemble data processing roll outs of the unending 5 or 15 point plans that accountants and bankers like to see for fixing or doing stuff that nobody who is not in that group even knows about.

The people, if by some accident they were even listening to begin with, tune out of those presentations in seconds.

These kinds of presentations carry a frequency that is deadly to the people. The numbers and details of policy say nothing to them. They cannot relate to this stuff which, basically, is heartless, and being heartless, it has no attractive power. It speaks to those who are clawing their way up the ladder of income or success and are very minimally concerned with the Common Good, if at all. These folks listen to see if they are going to benefit or not.

I think that it is actually amazing that 57% of the eligible voters bothered to vote in the last election. It says a lot about the effort that was made to get out the vote. The numbers of people voting for "change that matters" in the general election were encouraging, and the ongoing effort is also encouraging.

But, the 57% figure begs the question. Where were the 91,000,000 people who did not "bother" to vote? There lots of nuances to the answer to that question, but one obvious fact is that we are not reaching them.

Your talk to the Press regarding the Trayvon Martin tragedy carried the kind of energy that will, that does speak to people regardless of where they are on the ladder of income. It addressed the people at the level of their heart. You were speaking to the content of their character rather than the content of their wallets.

It, of course, takes character to understand the content of another's character. It is not by policy presentations, but by speaking from the heart to the hearts of the people, those 91,000,000 especially, that you and all those from the White House that speak for you can ignite the little flames of character that are slowly growing cold in those 91,000,000 chests.

I am hoping that you and you co-workers will make many more opportunities to speak directly to us, the people, about the things that matter, like character, compassion, and appreciation for the beautiful diversity that is the United States of America.

lots of love

-tom