::::::::
With all due respect to my Democrat friends and my good friends of color, I do not and cannot respect President Obama simply because of -- however reprehensible -- his challenges from the "birthers," the "teabaggers," the party of "no," and some "unreasonable" Progressives. Nor does he merit respect as a president simply by virtue of the fact that he is a Democrat, nor because as a person of color he has surmounted the grievous history and indeed present vile circumstance of racism in our country.
.
The fact that President Obama succeeded what I viewed as America's most treacherous regime and inherited the historical disgrace of the War of Lies in which over a million people of all colors have been killed, also merits him no respect.
.
Indeed, succeeding President Bush was a great opportunity to do much good, the good that many had "Hope" for in Obama's promise for "Change." This opportunity now lies yet fallow going into the second year.
.
The opportunity was in fact all the grander by virtue of the treachery that preceded it. No one of any intelligence and virtue could have denied the most powerful person in the world -- the President of the United States, he who sleeps by the red phone that could summon the destruction of the world -- no, no one could have denied him the initiative to stop this historically treacherous war from proceeding through it's eighth year, into its ninth, and only God knows where from here!
.
Obama has not stopped the war but has further endorsed it. He has escalated the treachery in Afghanistan, continued the suppression of the Iraqi people, has in fact attacked Pakistan with the complicity of that country's own poisonous government, has continued to authorize assassinations, has increased the use of the indiscriminately murderous drone weapons, has quietly endorsed and extended -- perhaps forever -- the Bush regime's exemptions to our Bill of Rights, has played the people's welfare off against the interests of big-money in the never-ending dance for a national healthcare program competitive with any of the industrialized nations of the West -- etc, etc, ad nauseam.
.
So, what's to support? A Democrat? An appeal for unity? A person of color? A more intelligent, nicer man than his predecessor? Is that what America voted for?
.
Aside from partisan apparatchiks and racial protagonists, most who supported Obama wanted PEACE and RESTORATION OF OUR BILL OF RIGHTS.
.
What we got was the seductive rhetoric of political evasion. What we got is Bush in another suit. And it sickens us.
.
No more nonsense -- we need Obama to pick up that phone and order Peace. We know the bad guys are tough; that's why we need a tough president, a tough president who's a good person, and who puts the interests of the American people and Humanity above all the allure of big money, personal emolument, lust for power, and -- may God preserve us -- even able to surmount madness.
.
Our message to President Obama is very plain and simple: We will not support or respect you because you are a Democrat, because you are a person of color, or simply because you succeeded a moral derelict. We require Peace. We require restoration of our Bill of Rights. We require both Now. Get with it or we'll pack you back to the ward politics of Chicago.
.
This message has no partisan intention. This message is from a once proud, now citizen sickened by the behavior of my country's leaders --- Rafe Pilgrim
