Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Energetic Open Letter to Mitch McConnell

Dear Senator McConnell:

I haven’t written in a while because it seemed such a waste of time. Your form-letter responses often started with, “As you know,” and followed with the exact opposite of what I knew and what I had stated in my letters. That told me, if you had bothered to read my letters, you must have hoped I was someone who would fall for your inaccurate talking points without investigating – someone who would turn her brain over to you and assume she must be wrong if you say so – someone who doesn’t keep up – a Republican. The process seemed pointless since it only created negative energy for me, so I stopped writing to you and focused on politicians who haven’t sold their souls and my future to a dead party.

Now that you’ve said it is “absurd” for Democrats to criticize the mob-style tactics being employed at town hall meetings, and you think it is a sign of weakness for anyone to demonize those mobsters because, to you, they are simply “energetic citizens”, I want to thank you for unleashing and inviting my energy. Are you proud of using a three-year-old But Mo-o-o-oom, he did it first defense/excuse, or is that just the level you think your supporters might understand? A good parent/leader might have used this opportunity to point out an example of how effectively organizing positive, hopeful people works. The Obama Presidential campaign would have been a good example.

I think your comments about these hired-goons were totally irresponsible. If you don’t know that they are hired goons, shame on you for being so out of touch. If you do know and condone that, shame on you even more for promoting dishonesty, obstructionism, ignorance, and violence. What kind of leader would do that? In the past, I said that, although I disagree with you politically, I thought you were a good person. This changes my opinion. My family is politically active. By condoning these tactics, you just put my life, and the lives of everyone I love in danger, and a good person would not have done that.

You blew yet another opportunity to appeal to your supporters to stop the nonsense and debate or ask questions like intelligent, responsible adults. Although many have warned me against assuming, I believe there are times when history and experience prove more valuable than their clichéd advice. History and experience tell me that when a “leader” sees escalating problems and excuses or rationalizes them, he is promoting more of the same. You do know that there are groups of hateful, bigoted, ignorant “energized citizens” on your side, arming themselves (sadly, a great number of them in YOUR state) and preparing to do “whatever it takes” to make sure President Obama doesn’t succeed at anything, right? They don’t care if they go down and take the rest of us with them when he fails – as long as he fails. (No need to answer rhetorical, “energized” questions. I know you can’t have your head buried too deeply to know these things.)

Your admission that you can’t predict what might save jobs is something I hope every voter in this district will think about when it’s time to decide if you need to retire. The fact that you projected your inability onto others is, in my opinion, the true sign of weakness you should have focused on this morning. I don’t expect you, or any other politician, to know everything about everything. But I do expect you to know to whom you can turn to for the information you need in order to make informed statements and decisions. If you were open to listening to citizens outside your party I'll bet there might be someone right here in Kentucky who could help you understand how to predict ways to save jobs.

Regarding your statements about “astronomical spending” – are you ever going to address the astronomical spending on illegal, unnecessary wars that got us into this mess in the first place?

Your state gave birth to Humana, the biggest disgrace and lesson about how for-profit medicine drives costs through the roof while thumbing a nose at quality. Shame, shame, shame on you for not learning anything from that experience.

And finally, please clarify when you make statements about how Americans feel and what Americans want. You never speak for me so I would appreciate your prefacing those statements with an honest percentage of Americans you are speaking for.

That’s it for today. Stay tuned; I plan to use this newly released “energy” to catch up with the months I’ve missed.

Sandy

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