Day 68
Dear Mr. President,
Every now and then I receive feedback on one of my ‘LTTP’s’ (letters to the President), I enjoy knowing what other people think whether they agree with me or not. I’m sure that you also appreciate feedback on the job you’re doing as President. The last thing a person should want is to be surrounded by a bunch of “yes men” that only tell him/her what they want to hear. Or worse, to have no feedback at all, as if everything you do is done in a vacuum.
Letter 66 to you got quite a response from a few readers mostly supportive of what you’re doing but others doubting that you had the strategy I had outlined for you. One person wrote: “We cannot lose our focus and faith in the President, he is a visionary, he is who we need for this time. I am proud of him, proud he represents me, and he cannot be all things to all people. Democrat, Liberal, Progressive, but not right wing, not conservative and not Tea Party… stick with him, we will see more of what we all want when he does not have to fight for re-election… Patience, and eat your peas!”
Another man wrote: “I don’t see any reason to accept that everything the President has been doing for the past two years has been some kind of deeply-laid plan. I see no reason to believe that he is not serious about making changes to S.S. that will be damaging to present and future retirees. He’s already said he wants to make those changes.” “…Nope, sorry, I continue to believe that the President ‘folds faster than a lawn chair’ when he’s up against determined resistance. He’s done it twice in the past. But, I will be among the happy many to admit I’ve been wrong, if he continues to stand, at last, as tall as the President of the United States should stand.”
Another writer leapt to your defense and said that there wasn’t another human being that could stand up to the ridicule and bigotry and narrow minded pot-shots that you’ve endured. This person also said, “This is an amazing person, [meaning you Mr. President] and we are lucky to have him leading us… it is not caving… it is making hard choices. This is not a game! It is our country and our people we are working for, not to win this game of chicken.”
Another comment came from a woman calling herself “chachacheryl” and she said it was a good thing I used Route 66 as an analogy for this piece, because it was going along fine until the end when I ran out of gas and veered off the road. She asked if I was a “tiny bit” of a control freak and wondered why I would write a letter to you every day? She asked, “What on earth will that accomplish, but to generate more letters back to you and using lots of paper, which means you are destroying trees, because of your own control freak issues?” She said I reminded her “…of the seniors who have nothing better to do with their time, but write a “Letter to the Editor” about each thing in life that annoys them! In other words, they are curmudgeons! There is more to life!”
I had to wonder about the trees and paper comment because she was obviously using a computer to comment on the letter. So to chachacheryl, I have this to say… I send them via email along with 100,000 other people all across this nation. No trees, just my own time.
I may be old, I may be a curmudgeon, I have written letters to the editor, and there may be more to life, but right now my country is more important to me than time spent on things for myself. So I will continue to write because we all need feedback from people we don’t know, and hopefully it’s not just because they have an axe to grind, or because they too may be a curmudgeon.
Most Respectfully,
Marcia Reimers
Your Gadfly Granny
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