An open letter to the citizens of the world:

George W. Bush might be the president of my country, but he’s not MY president. For two years now, I’ve been keeping track of his policies and decisions, and comparing these to my own preferences. He has failed. In every fundamental way that I can think of, he has failed. Name an issue: From economic policies to foreign affairs, if George has chosen up, I would have chosen down. If he had chosen right, I’d have chosen left. Where George has chosen white, I would have chosen black. Every time. Name an issue. I don’t agree with the man or the policy.

Oh sure, he’s had a rather full plate since 9/11. Except that he took that moral high ground of the leader of a nation attacked, and has chosen to spend that political and moral capital on making war on countries that may have had possibly only the slightest association of that tragedy. I firmly believe that if Iraq didn’t have huge oil reserves, then we wouldn’t be plotting “regime change” in the region. We defeated a client state of the nation that held and protected the perpetrators of 9/11. Where did Iraq come into this? It was citizens of Saudi Arabia that planned, paid for, and perpetrated this horrible deed on our country. Why aren’t we attacking them? I believe that it’s because Iraq exists as an easier target, the better to focus our attention on what the (current) Bush administration wants us to think about, while distracting us from other, less convenient issues.

This administration is steering my country towards a police state. Secret lists are drawn up of people to seize and interrogate, holding them for months without access to legal due process. Your spending habits and whereabouts are to be monitored for suspicious activities. The richest 2% of our citizens get mega-bucks in tax breaks, while plans are drawn up to increase the tax burden on low and middle class persons. Make no mistake: I live rather well, compared not only to people living in my country, but especially when compared to most of the citizens of the world. George W. Bush wants to make it easy for consumerist SUV credit-card wielding TV watchers to maintain their lifestyles, and the rest of the world can go to hell.

Make no mistake here: I LOVE my country. I spent 4 years of my life putting my ass on the line to defend it from all enemies, both foreign and domestic. George W. Bush is an enemy to the way of life of the entire world, as well as the enemy of citizens of this country who don’t wear suits, have law degrees, and own stock portfolios. The game is being rigged so that corporate interests will trump the interests of the vast majority of the citizens of this country. And the best interests of the corporate state are not in my best interests.

I’ll not coddle terrorists or law-breakers of any ilk that seek to do harm to me, my family, or my country, but I believe that, in the name of domestic security, we are losing fundamental freedoms that have been won by the blood and sweat of people like me who have fought for, defended, and died for those freedoms. And yes, some of those freedoms included the process that put this person in high office in the first place. I don’t have to be happy about it. (We can forget for a minute the fact that he lost the popular vote. I recently found a screed that I wrote in high school, bemoaning the Electoral College system that put G. W. Bush in the White House so many years later. Don’t get me started there!) But things are being done in my name that I don’t agree with, that I feel strongly about. And I don’t like it.

People of the world, please be patient with us. Help us find our better selves in this time of crisis. Don’t enable the war mongering policies of our politicians. And please help us through our times of technical difficulties.

People of America: Please vote. Please vote this very dangerous man and his cronies out of office. It’s one thing to know that G. W. Bush got in by the slimmest of margins. It’s another thing to know the tremendous apathy for politics that “prevented” you from voting. I care. And you’ve helped screw up not only my country, but the entire planet in your apathy. Thanks for nothing…

Copyright 2002 by Rich Webb, aka The Outsider.

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This page is authored and maintained by Rich Webb.You can send E-mail to me by following this link to the contact page. And feel free to contact me if you have any comments, criticisms, or suggestions. I remain, however, perfectly capable of ignoring your useless opinion...

This document was last modified on December 17, 2002, and has been viewed countless times.