My friend and I worked on the State Senate campaign for an Illinois State Senate Candidate name Kelly Mazeski who unfortunately lost. While we were both reeling from that loss after the man hours we put in, we were even more devastated by Trump’s surprise victory. My friend Francis decided to put all of his feelings out there in this letter that he wants to spread around so I’m helping him do so when I read everything in it’s entirety. I’m asking show this to anybody you know that’s still feeling hopeless or even the ones that gloated to you about Trump’s victory.
December, 2016
Dear humanity,
We American voters of the November 2016 United States Presidential Election who failed to achieve the outcome we sought, wish to respectfully declare to all people of the world that we are sorry our votes were not enough to prevent a candidate who chose to use the tools of division over unity, fear over empathy, and blame over hope from emerging as our President Elect.
We are proud Americans and we accept the outcome of the 2016 election even though it troubles us, because as true patriots who love our country, we know democracy is bigger than any one man or any one woman.
Although we believe that our democracy will survive what seems a terrible misfortune, we are disappointed to learn conclusively that our major media outlets are not of a serious mind, that they persistently opt for simplistic and sensationalist sound-bites over in depth exploration of the issues, that they constantly fail to report on the actual effects of policy initiatives, and, as a consequence of this approach, that the power of propaganda still holds undue sway over the minds of many voters.
We are shaken by the realization that the age-old device of divide and conquer has again been successfully deployed, that half of our population succumbed to the paranoid lie that the other half is the enemy, and that many of our neighbors and friends now believe the real life problems they encounter every day are caused not by grotesque income inequality and the men and policies that protect and promote it, but by their fellow Americans who share the very same struggles and concerns they themselves have.
We are stunned to see the incoming president of the world’s greatest democracy delight in the fact that many Americans now believe fighting amongst ourselves is an act of patriotism instead of folly.
We are disheartened to see wage earners and laborers elect to power those who fight against fair wages and dismiss the value of labor. We are disheartened that many of the most powerful members of our society are fundamentally incapable of empathy, that they still look upon the blind pursuit of profit as a character strength instead of as a character flaw and that they are either ignorant to or careless of the fact that the demise of the middle class means the eventual demise not only of the country they claim to love, but of themselves – for how long can one expect to gather the bounty of the branches when one cuts the tree at the root?
We can ignore the often ridiculous rhetoric of the President Elect’s campaign and hope it fades away like the impossible promises he made, but we would do this at our peril. While it may be easy enough to see these hateful ravings as what they generally are - convenient devices employed by the morally lawless to keep the misinformed raging at and fearful of the invented other – it is far less easy to heal the wounds these hateful ravings affect.
Throughout history we have observed the powerful dosing the disenfranchised with fear and anger in order to flood them with the high of self righteous indignation, for it is only so intoxicated that men can be compelled to cheer on the executioner as they are sacrificed to the gods of the moment (today’s being quarterly profits and the privatization of everything). And throughout history we have been reminded that hate and anger are not so easily corralled once summoned. These emotions fester. They destabilize the very pillars of our society and eventually, if left unchecked, they manifest in blind violence against the innocent.
On the campaign trail the President Elect famously said, “I love the poorly educated.” We ask him, do you love them enough to educate them? Or, do you love the fact that they are poorly educated?
We fear that many of our fellow Americans, uninformed or misinformed, are oblivious to the very real consequences of the usual policies to come from men of the President Elect’s ilk - namely, the removal of oversight of the abuses of the rich and powerful, the privatization of our natural resources, our infrastructure, our education system and government services, and, the destruction of worker, consumer and environmental protections - all of which lead to ever greater costs and sacrifices for the average men and women of America and an ever lessening of opportunity for their children.
We worry that too many voters have been convinced of the lie that the government is our enemy rather than our servant and that our assets are always better off in the hands of private profiteers. We grow tired of hearing the deliberately repeated fallacy that the only alternative to the privatization of every aspect of our society and the relentless concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a few oligarchs that inevitably follows it is . . . a communist dictatorship!
We are intelligent Americans who are keenly aware that despite our prejudices, all of the Earth’s people are intimately connected - that a single humanity shares this magnificent and fragile planet. We also acknowledge that we share this planet with the grasses and trees, indeed with every life that dwells here and that their protection is our protection. We respect our borders, both political and cultural, yet also understand that if we as a species are to survive and thrive we must equally respect the winds and rains that pay our borders no heed. With clear and open eyes we see that the problems we let flow down our rivers return to us in the rain.
We are realistic Americans who acknowledge that for all of our disappointment over the outcome of the November 2016 election, many millions of Americans would have felt the same way we feel now had their chosen candidate failed to emerge as victorious. While we believe that the tools of propaganda have succeeded in misrepresenting the truth behind each of these candidates, we remain hopeful that the President Elect will rise to this incredible opportunity and seek to use his new found powers to ensure enduring liberty and justice for all instead of using them to ensure the further enrichment of himself and other plutocrats.
We are a defensive people and gravely warn any group that may think this moment in our American story is one of weakness and therefore an opportunity to attack us, that they would be tragically mistaken. Such an enemy would learn too late that our connections run deeper than our divisions and that we Americans will always stand united to crush any intrusions on our sovereignty. That said, we wish our new president the courage to use the greatest power of all those that he has been granted, a luxurious power too rarely used by the strong though it would seem to be their duty, that is - the ability to be the first to extend the hand of peace and reconciliation to those with whom we find ourselves in conflict.
We as a people have learned over time that our kindnesses and our cruelties make their way back home, that our abuse and neglect of the environment is an abuse and neglect of ourselves and that the things that divide us are only errant thoughts and ideas, but what unites us is flesh and blood.
We as proactive Americans going forward vow this very day to continue to reflect on the great truth that all of humanity is created equal, that each of us is valuable and that all of our lives have purpose and meaning. We acknowledge that our culture is more nurture than nature; that our race is but a leftover circumstance of evolution and that in this modern day our color is merely a pigment coincidence. We also know deep in our hearts that although our lives for moments may seem to be a toss of the dice, in the end our greatest dreams coupled with our greatest efforts will bring about the changes we desire.
With hope for peace in our world and success in our lives, we wish for our elected officials to reflect the best in us and to shun the worst. We demand that they contemplate deeply the gravity of the office, that they do not betray our trust and that they obey their sworn vow to use the office to further serve the ultimate glory of any democracy – governance by and for the people.
Sincerely,
Francis Puccinelli,