Letter 2 America for July 11, 2014

Dear America,

We're back from our brief sojourn on Cape Cod, and though we feel somewhat refreshed--we'll be going back soon for a bit longer break from the tedium of daily life--the tedium of American politics has gone on unabated.  John Boehner, speaker of the Republican House of Representatives and leader of the Republican Party in that body, spoke to the press yesterday about President Obama's request for $3.7 billion intended to augment the due processing of the child immigrants in custody on our southern borders and said, "If we look at The President's request, it's all about continuing to deal with the problem."  That would be a good thing I would think, and I venture to guess that if President Obama were a Republican, Boehner would have said so with a praising tone in his voice.  But as usual, if President Obama does it, it's wrong by definition in the Republican political lexicon, and so it was this time.  Of course, when President Obama wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary about the gathering of child-émigrés in California and Texas--mostly refugees from Honduras and Guatemala mostly, where a child either joins or dies in a feudalism-like, gang culture that has supplanted government--Republicans criticized him for inaction.  And now, when he tries to expedite the morally dubious due legal process of  sending them home, which one might think the Republicans would applaud, they balk at giving him the money to hire the immigration judges and attorneys needed to do so.  Conservatives do want The President to do more to close the border, but they are the ones who pass the appropriations and the legislation in congress, and they haven't done anything about immigration yet...even though The Senate already sent them a bill that could serve as the framework for a law that President Obama could sign.  There is a scene in an old movie in which a man on a horse comes to a railroad crossing while a train is going through it.  As the train passes, he spurs his horse all along, which is essentially a direction to the horse to commit suicide, and the horse's instincts prevent him from obeying the command until the train has passed, at which time he careens on with the sadistic, irrational rider on his back.  That is what this president's one and a half terms as president have been like; the Republicans blame him and then obstruct his efforts to address every problem.  And then when he does what he can through executive order, thus going around the intractable congress, they sue him for bypassing them.  And all the while, the American people continue to vote Republican, in ever increasing numbers if the "experts" are correct.  It makes me want to go back to The Cape and bury my head in the sand, which is what the voters seem to be doing.

With all that in mind, and considering the response that President Obama is making, I feel closer every day to concluding that the current administration is doomed to going down in history as a failed attempt to do the right thing.  Healthcare reform, which should have been in the form of a single-payer system, took the form of health-insurance reform instead thanks to the Republican Party's obstruction for political purposes and the Blue Dog Democrats perfidious cooperation couched in their questionable, self-serving motives.  And while it is a step forward, it is tainted by a conservative Supreme Court's paring and a disingenuous political opposition inspired by the authorship of the idea rather than its merits.  Meanwhile, immigration reform, which might well address the very plaints that the Republicans and conservatives in general level at President Obama, languishes in congress as Speaker Boehner plays politics in the full knowledge that allowing a congressional vote on the subject will either result in passage of a bill that will galvanize the Tea Party against the main stream or will result in its defeat and ignominy among the mostly Latino immigrant population.  So, the more these impasses occur, the more obvious it becomes that our problem as a nation is rampant conservatism beyond what is reasonable rather than progressive errancy and inertia, which is what the conservatives want to call it.  Wage growth is suppressed in consequence of conservative Republican policy and the rich get richer at a faster pace than ever, yet the American voter seems dispirited without animus toward those who have caused the great American debacle of the past seven years since the financial crisis became the crisis in millions of home in this country and around the world.  What is frustrating about all this is the malaise of the voters, and the unwillingness of President Obama to confront the problem head on.  I have said this so many times that even I don't want to hear it anymore, but until President Obama begins having press conferences after dinner that everyone who watches television will have to watch...press conferences in which he takes questions from a largely hostile press and points the finger at the real culprits...the progressive movement will continue to be mired in a kind of political bog born of their own effete response to the assault of a merciless, meretricious and unscrupulous opposition.  I hesitate to counsel more of the same in response, but without leadership in the form of a president who stands at the fore and challenges his foes, what can we do but fight back with strategies of the same kind.  Of course, the problem there is that no one on this side of the political aisle is either so inclined or so well endowed as to pull it off.  We're stuck, and we are becoming our own victims.  So in reality, there's no one else to blame.

Your friend,

Mike