Dear President Obama,
I have published earlier “letters to Barack Obama” on my web site (www.tree.org/obama.htm), but not this one. At the present time, you seem to be so unpopular that I would only squander my own credibility were I to publish anything in your defense (oh — no one listens to me anyway, so I may as well publish this along with the others). Surely you understand the problem: all of the seeds of economic despair have been sown by your predecessors, and you have inherited a bankrupt country. Make no mistake: while there remain many wealthy and powerful people and corporations in the United States, the country itself is way beyond bankrupt. The only reason the Chinese bankers do not refuse to renew their loans is because they, along with everyone else in the world, are terrified of the world which would follow after the United States is unable to meet its obligations. The nation has existed on credit for many years, tossing more trillions on top of the camel’s back, because there doesn’t seem to be any other option. The real problem is that the effects of fiscal policies are not really felt until twenty years after they have been implemented, yet a sitting president must defend his record every two years.
So you are reduced to only two options: either stand up sheepishly, like Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, and admit that the American System has fallen victim to its own success: the wealthy and powerful have become so wealthy and so powerful that they have been able to enrich themselves while impoverishing the country as well as the “little people,” their less fortunate brethren. Then the American people can dissolve the Union, put a new government in its place, and repudiate the $12 trillion debt as the extravagance of the previous corrupt and bankrupt system in its dying days.
Or, you can begin to implement a serious program to pay off that debt. Forget about rampant poverty and unemployment — there is nothing you or anyone can do about that now. Contrary to the popular wisdom, flushing more money down the economic toilet will only make the problem worse, not better. The time when an influx of cash would buy another year or two at the expense of an ever more certain ultimate collapse is long gone. Scattering another trillion dollars into the wind will barely slow down the rapid collapse of the financial system.
There is only one policy that makes any sense: slash government spending and raise taxes, especially on the wealthiest segment of the population. Yes, this will plunge the country into a very deep, dark depression from which it may never recover, but a determination to pay down the debt is the only way to restore faith in the troubled American Dollar. This will mean that the United States will simply have to cancel all of its international adventures (read: “wars”).
I have seen pie charts of the budget: it is basically divided into three large sections: 1. Service on the Debt; 2. Defense (war); 3. Transfer payments to impoverished Americans. (Oh, yes, there is also one other tiny sliver: all other functions of government, but that doesn't amount to much.) If you elect not to let the Debt continue its spiral out of the world of reality into utter fantasy land, that leaves just the Department of Defense, and the Transfer Payments. The Defense budget must be shrunk to just a tiny shadow of its current budget. The only way to do this is only to fund projects that are genuinely concerned with “defense”, and curtail all activities of war.
As to those pesky transfer payments, I have had an idea many years ago which I still believe makes a lot of sense. The current system pays out checks beyond number so that recipients can rent a cheap hotel room in the city and spend their life drinking coffee (or beer) and smoking cigarettes. None of this makes any sense to me. I would propose that paying out cash money to all of those people is not only bankrupting the country, but it is also counter-productive. As an alternative, the nation should sponsor the establishment of Free Farms where impoverished people can go and live their lives in peace, with a place to sleep and food to eat. It will be incomparably cheaper to provide direct services of food and housing to people than to send out millions of dollars in welfare checks every month.
None of this will be popular, and you will be hounded out of office at the end of your term, but that is going to happen anyway. At least if you launch programs that might save the country, then after another ten or twenty years the country might conceivably come out of its downward spiral and begin the long road back to prosperity. You may live long enough to be recognized as a Statesman after all.
Roland Stahl
Another Letter to Barack Obama
24 March, 2009
Like a great many people all over the world, I have been enormously encouraged by your successful campaign to the Presidency. I had been predicting a bad end to this country, but now I see some glimmer of hope. Perhaps it may not yet be too late to make the immediate and radical changes needed to halt the slide of this country into poverty and oblivion.
I even felt that I understood your position with respect to Afghanistan! Of course, it is not easy being President, even a very popular one. It is still necessary to proceed very carefully. You not only have to do the right thing, but you have to manage so that your agenda will be allowed to proceed across political minefields.
Accordingly, I thought I understood the political reasons for your bellicose stance with regard to Afghanistan. It was necessary to pound the war drums proudly in order to cover the retreat from Iraq. By talking tough over the Afghanistan question, you would be able to accomplish the difficult task of withdrawing from the morass of Iraq without arousing too much opposition.
“But,” I said to myself, “once the Iraq withdrawal were accepted politically, once you had entered upon your Presidency and were enjoying the increased stature and approval that would come from your new administration, then,” I speculated, “you might evolve the political process to enter upon some period of diplomacy. While standing ready to unleash a whole new military offensive in Afghanistan, you might temporize, and gradually the diplomatic process would proceed while the military option would be ‘temporarily’ withheld. Finally, to everyone’s surprise, you might find grounds for an exit strategy from Afghanistan on vastly better terms than could ever have been obtained from military activities (just ask the Russians what they think about fighting a war in Afghanistan . . . ). Best of all, such a diplomatic solution would save untold billions of dollars that the country just cannot afford to spend, frankly.”
I sincerely hope that I have correctly guessed your intentions. It is a very clever plan; in fact, it is brilliant. No one has to know that it was your intention all along to extricate this country from a totally unwinnable conflict in Afghanistan (a conflict that would make Vietnam look like the Falkland Islands) by diplomatic evolutions rather than by military actions.
John Roland Stahl
16 February, 2009
Further Advice to Barack Obama:
The first step is to understand the way the world works, and how things happen, which is all about the Sequence of the Process of Change.
The second step is to participate, by discovering the most important thing you can do to influence the path of the process of change. I have attempted to address all of the most important problems facing the survival of life on earth (not limiting it to human life), and here are my findings: Plant More Trees!! Trees are the most important expression of Life on this planet, and the earth is greatly suffering because of the loss of its trees. From the watersheds, to soil erosion, from the loss of its role converting carbon dioxide into oxygen, to climate change, the population of Trees on the planet is essential for the survival of life itself.
Send every out-of-work American to plant trees; the earth will thank you for it, and will repay with bounteous abundance.
November 10th, 2008
President-Elect Barack Obama:
I hope that it will not matter at all that you are unlikely to read this message. From everything I have seen, it seems likely that you are part of the spirit of energy that will bring a new spiritual consciousness to the world, and you already know all of the ideas which I mention here. In contrast with the abysmal level of the Bush Administration, there is already a huge groundswell of momentum for a massive change of direction, an undercurrent of growing spiritual consciousness world-wide that will provide the catalyst for a major change in the evolution of life on earth.
I am very pleased with your proposals for green development to provide renewable alternatives to the burning up of our dwindling supply of fossil fuels (which, incidentally, are worth far more for their industrial products potential than they are as simply fuel to burn up).
Your tax proposals are also long overdue. Deficit spending must be immediately curtailed, and the U.S. Debt must be repaid as quickly as possible. It is obvious that the Age of Military Power is passing, and the dominance of countries on the world stage will be determined henceforth almost exclusively by economic strength, not military strength.
The American Nation is on the verge of bankruptcy, and everyone is terrified to think of what might happen if the United States government were physically unable to meet its obligations. Forays into military excursions at this juncture are not a positive sign!
For the United States government to pull back from the brink of insolvency, as from the brink of war, those individuals holding most of the wealth of the country must be taxed. This, of course, runs counter to the natural and almost universal tendency of the wealthy and powerful in every country: to retain as much of the wealth and the power as possible in their own hands. For the wealthy and powerful of this nation merrily to increase their wealth while effectively tossing the cost of their winnings onto the backs of the American taxpayer in the form of debt, is a grotesque folly which could lead to the collapse of the American government. Haven’t they ever heard of the story of the goose that laid golden eggs? They should take very good care of that goose, not slaughter it in an attempt to get all the gold at once.
If the United States is able to run a tighter ship and manages to survive economically, even paying down some of that debt, then the international reaction will be very favorable, and confidence will be restored to the markets. But if the United States just goes on running up trillion dollar annual deficits to add to the existing mountain of debt, then they are out of touch with reality and are in for a very rude awakening, which a great many people around the world will welcome with considerable satisfaction.
Of course it is the whole world which you must consider; never think of yourself as just the Champion for the United States and its Interests; you must be in tune with the entire field of life energy on the planet, and help us progress to the next level of being, because if life survives on earth it will be because that stream of life energy comes into a harmonious state of clarity and balance, instead of spinning out of control from confusion to chaos.
Problems are as circular as the Solutions to those problems. The more you grind away on a politically problematic footing, the more your problems will continue to increase. But when you have a clear, positive, and forward moving energy going on, you should find errant energies finding their way back to the main central stream of flowing energy, and things begin to get better at an increasing pace.
Let your administration mark the passing of the Ugly American from the stage of the world. All of the problems for which the Ugly American has felt the need to use force have only consolidated themselves and become very much worse. Just look at the way the jihad is shaping up. Of course Muslims are being groomed as the heirs to the Communists, Blacks, Jews, Gays, and the Infidel. They are the ones to fear and hate; they are responsible for all of the problems we face. But what continuations are suggested by these attitudes? Of course, it only gets worse. The more troops George Bush sends to Iraq, the more the embers of anti-American hatred are fanned, and the more that attitude becomes cemented into place.
I recently heard a political commentator, announcing his forthcoming show, say “. . . above all, should we be afraid of the Russians?” – Oh, no, we do not have to be afraid of the Russians. What we have to do is to convince the Russians that they no longer have to be afraid of the Americans! (This may not be an easy sell.) Nor do we have to fear the Iranians or the North Koreans – we simply have to convince them that they do not have to fear the Americans any more, an idea which may take generations to sink in, so we had better start with the program now.
Everyone, all over the world, wants to be allowed to live their life in peace, in harmony with their neighbors. Yet everyone lives in fear all the time, like wild animals. All of this can be turned around – it is simply a matter of the direction of the energy. If the energy can make it past the Turning Point of Change, then it will get easier all the time as the errant energies all over the world will gradually be restored to a harmonious flowing within the main line of life energy. The other direction leads to increasing complexity, leading outward towards increasing levels of confusion and belligerence, and reaching ultimately into chaos.
But if the tangle of life energy on our planet can come together in clarity and order, then the energy will become simple, sleek, and efficient, and positive change will evolve at a dizzying pace, leading to a whole new world which must be totally unimaginable to everyone who is on the “ante” side of the change (the Omega Point, as suggested by Teillhard de Chardin).
All of the political problems in the world are expressions of mutual fear, out of which comes hostility, aggression, and violence. Once the Fear is addressed directly, and can be transcended, then the other manifestations will gradually subside until peace is achieved.
Economic problems are simply the inevitable consequence of political problems. The world is experiencing an economic crisis because the world is bursting with political problems all over the planet. As those politically volatile situations are ameliorated, then the wheels of commerce will begin to turn again, soldiers can return to their farms and their families, and life can begin to get better and better for everyone.
So it is really very simple – turn around the energy of the planet from flinging itself apart from confusion and chaos back towards clarity, balance, and peace, and all of the problems of the world will solve themselves, and the Kingdom of God will come on earth.
