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How Can You Laugh at a Time Like This?

Gypsy & Willy

No. 296

An Open Letter to George W. Bush

December 19, 2000

Our first Open Letter is aimed at our president-elect. Last week, we wrote of an Open Conspiracy. This is OUR first installment.

You have just gone through a grueling campaign and election. But, you haven't seen ANYTHING yet! The post-election whining by congressional Democrats about the election auger poorly for cooperation. They can not even bring themselves to use the word "legitimate" before the word "president" as applies to you. This suggests that your dreams of across-the-aisle unity in congress are pipe dreams. The comics, who have had a field day characterizing you as a dummy are bound to continue. This is the GOOD news!

The bad news begin with the fact that the economy is heading...at the very least...for a significant downturn. The Internet sector is in collapse, while the word from abroad suggests that exports are simply not going to take up the slack in the brick-and-mortar sector. Despite your significant efforts to convince minority groups that the Republican Party represents ALL the people, led by the NAACP and Jesse Jackson, they promise to protest your presidency at every turn. The Green Party, buoyed by the success of the Nader campaign...he got three percent of the vote with a lousy campaign and almost no help from the media...are going to continue the protests they began against the Democrat administration and escalate it significantly. The War on Drugs is being seen as a abject failure by more and more people every year. More and more people are disillusioned with the well intentioned, but failed, efforts of American imperialism to serve as the police force of the world. Taken together, these signs add up to turbulent and perhaps even desperate times ahead for you and your administration. We have only one piece of advice which might help:

Think like Mahatma Gandhi!

No, we are not suggesting that you should fast and pray. That solution is best suited to religious, not political, leaders. But Gandhi WAS also a political leader. When faced with political upheaval...and the problems he faced were surely as desperate as those facing you...he consistently applied two principles. First, he always suggested to try something different than what had already failed or only weakly succeeded. His use of non-violent principles against the Dutch in South Africa and the British in India were both new and startling. A somnolent liberal press sprang into almost instant awareness when those campaigns began, and, in the end were incredibly successful.

When the British finally walked out of India...as Gandhi had confidently predicted at the outset...a new, potentially worse problem arose. The Muslim minority, fearful of being oppressed and discriminated against by the Hindu majority began a series of uprisings that threatened the new nation...at the outset...with civil war and breakup. To avoid just that outcome, the other leaders backed the plan to split India in half...actually into three parts, since the majority Muslim areas bracketed the majority Hindu areas...with two nations...now three...India and Pakistan. At the time when things looked absolutely bleak, Gandhi proposed a breathtakingly simple solution. Instead of installing Pandit Nehru and the Congress Party as the new leaders of a UNITED India, elevate the Muslim leaders to that position instead. Stunned by this proposals, the other leaders, fearful that such a solution would start the civil war they all feared, they stuck with their original plan.

What they got for their efforts was at least as bad as civil war. Minorities in both new states were persecuted and, in defense, waged constant subversion and warfare. Pakistan itself experienced such severe internal problems it was forced eventually to split off Bangladesh. To this day, Pakistan and India are engaged in continual low level...and sometimes open...warfare. As the newest nuclear powers on earth, their conflict threatens to plunge all mankind into the catastrophe that the United States and former Soviet Union BARELY avoided. Who, after all was right, Gandhi or the other leaders?

Of course, the problems you face are not nearly as bad, so they do not require nearly so drastic remedies. You do not have to step aside and let the Democrats rule to avoid catastrophe. But here are some other, simpler, remedies that might change the whole climate of tension, protest and possible economic collapse that are coming.

First pardon Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier and Kathleen Soliah. This can be done entirely by YOU without any consent of Congress or anyone else. Why? All three of these individuals stand accused...and in two cases convicted...of crimes they may not have committed. In the case of Mumia and Peltier, they are currently serving life sentences for incidents that occurred during massive upheavals in the past...events which arguably included lethal police action against the people these people represented. All three of these individuals were involved in political, as opposed to strictly criminal activities. In the case of Mumia and Peltier, police officers were slain. In Soliah's case, she is accused of attempted murder against a police officer. This means there is massive solidarity in the law enforcement community against any show of mercy toward ANY of the three. Yet you are not just the leader of law enforcement in America. As you yourself have announced, you intend to be the leader of ALL Americans. So, pardon them on the first day of your administration. Show dramatically that you mean what you say. You will have to pay a price with conservatives and police. But, they two will eventually see the light. Revenge may be tempting, but it seldom solves anything.

If you want to send even a better message, you will need to call upon your ability to moderate and conciliate much more dramatically. You should nominate Jesse Jackson as Secretary of Education, Ralph Nader as Secretary of Commerce and Republican Governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson, as your next "Drug Czar." Balance these with conservative and moderate nominations in the rest of your cabinet.

Why? Think about it. Putting these activist men in charge of the very agencies they feel could do the most to "reform" various segments of American life, education, corporate responsibility and illegal drug use would:

Give each of them a taste of the reality of trying to carry out controversial public policy in the face of massive disagreement among the electorate and the existence of powerful special interests that oppose the changes these men think should be made.
Disarm liberal members of congress that do not believe that you are a leader, not just the caretaker of the status quo they want you to be. When you subsequently advance more "conventional" political programs...large tax cuts, slashing government waste, introducing school vouchers on an experimental basis...they will hard pressed...by their own constituents...from not cooperating with you.
Stimulate vigorous public debate about issues that were mostly suppressed during the last election by the need for both political parties to appear to be centrist. With what is coming in the early years of the new millennium, you can't AFFORD to be centrist. You have to reach out far into BOTH wings of the electorate, not just the conservative wing...we have faith that you will at least attempt the latter.
Give them, and hopefully their supporters as well, FIRST-HAND knowledge that the Republican Party is prepared to work with ALL Americans to solve some pressing problems of the next century.

Then call all the troops home from abroad, especially from places to which they haven't been invited. This will make an impression on ALL the supporters of third parties. If you think that this includes only those who actually voted for third party candidates, you are mistaken. A large percentage of liberals, conservatives and even those who do not bother to vote any more are in synch with the ideas of Buchanan, Nader, Ventura and Browne, not to mention the people of other countries. Through the Internet and our colossal economic machine we exert quite enough influence on the rest of the world without the threat of arms.

The point is, if you want to be a GREAT president at a GREAT moment in history, you have to sluff off the "S.O.B. (Son of a Bush)" and "President Shrub" labels that have already been pinned to your backside and get involved in getting this GREAT nation ready for the twenty-first century. What exactly do you have to lose? Your dignity?

Talk to you later...

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