Farewell; Welcome; Thank You Both

 

Yes, that is right.

Thank you to both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

Those of you that have been following this blog or the Facebook discussion page for any length of time might find the latter inclusion confusing.

Thank you Mr. Obama for modeling who we are capable of becoming and what we are capable of accomplishing.    Thank you Mr. Trump for proving who we still are and how far we have yet to go.

Last night, President Barack Obama offered his “farewell address” although it was much more a State of the Union address than a farewell.    While he is leaving the office of the Presidency, it is clear he is not leaving the political arena and will remain active striving for progressive change in our nation.

So, in light of your absolutely incredible amount of progressive reform and accomplishments as President over the last eight years despite a congressional opposition dedicated to obstructing his every action even when doing so would be detrimental to their own constituents of voters, Thank you, good sir.

While I do not agree with everything you have done, I approve and appreciate the majority of it.   You have been one of the most successful Presidents our country has ever elected.

Here is a list of hundreds of President Obama’s accomplishments as President. Every one of them has a citation, so no one can dismiss them out of hand.

As part of his closing, President Obama said,

“I am asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change – but in yours.”

I would like to take the opportunity to respond:

Thank you, sir, for your service, offered at all times with grace and dignity far above and beyond our highest expectations, and despite the overt racism directed at both you and your family.   You lead by example and modeled the behavior and ideals we should all hold dear in this nation.  

I deeply regret that as citizens we have failed you, as far too many of us strayed from the path you laid out for us and refused to learn from your example.

Having said that, I’d like to shift now to offering my thanks and undying gratitude to President-Elect Donald Trump as he prepares to assume the responsibilities and duties of the office of the President of the United States.

Thank you, Mr. Trump, for opening our eyes and launching what history will recognize hopefully as the Second Civil Rights Movement of the United States, and not the Second American Civil War or World War III.

Until your campaign, many people actually thought we were living in a post-racial, religiously tolerant, gender equal society. with only some odd, old, hold-out fringe elements still causing some friction.

Now thanks to your campaign we know beyond a doubt that there is still far too much to be done and no time to waste.

The use of dog whistle rhetoric throughout the campaign cycle calling out to the White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis, Sovereign Citizens, and just plain willfully ignorant that were hiding among us, showed us that despite our reform efforts racism and bigotry still thrive hidden just below the surface in the hearts and minds of far too many.

As a result of your Anti-Muslim rhetoric and embrace of legalized religious intolerance and discrimination of non-Christians which have stoked a marked increase of violent hate crimes, we now know that no amount of social justice reform or new laws will have any lasting affect upon our society until the laws created are enforced fairly and equally in a manner that doesn’t provide the illusion of a progress that is not enforced in reality.

Your classless and distasteful public mockery of Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Serge F. Kovaleski‘s physical disability, shows we must prepare for the fact that those with a physical or mental disability will be at greater risk under your administration from discriminatory policies, public abuse, disregard, and disenfranchisement than at any point in my lifetime.

The abundant history of your misogyny as well as the more recent ones from you throughout the last year and a half have proven that gender equality is still far from being achieved or even desired, especially in the eyes of the Republican party leadership and members.  In fact, we now know our next President is not only an advocate of the American rape culture but an active participant thanks to your recorded confession of workplace sexual assault.

Your assertion in that recorded confession that:

“When you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”

And:

“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters, ok? It’s, like, incredible.”

have shown that Affluenza is not a buzzword, but a real affliction that we must strive to eradicate if equality of justice is ever to be an attainable goal.

Your call to Russian hackers to directly attack your own political rivals and embrace of their actions once done shows how vulnerable our election process is to outside foreign influence.

The pandering throughout your campaign to the “alt-right” agenda of racism and white nationalism and Neo-Nazi beliefs, your constant propagation of their messages and fabricated fake news stories through social media, speeches and interviews, and your appointment of one of their media leaders, Steve Bannon, to your transition team and White House administration have clearly exposed how dangerously widespread and prevalent subversive racism really still is in our society.

The win you achieved through the Electoral College, despite having lost the election by a greater margin of votes than any President in history, has exposed the inherent flaws and deeply entrenched racism within the system that we had been led to believe was designed to prevent a candidate like you from ascending to the Presidency.  Thank you for exposing these flaws and showing us what needs to be addressed to start adjusting the allocation so that people of color aren’t discredited as 3/5 of a vote in future elections.

I also need to thank you for demonstrating to everyone that civility, decorum, and human decency are qualities reviled by a significant segment of our population.   For teaching our young children that the path to success, fame, fortune, and power is best achieved through lies, deceit, manipulation, belligerence, personal attacks, greed, selfishness, and the emotional fortitude of an elementary school bully.

Thank you for showing us just how fragile the small level of democracy in our Democratic Republic truly is and for galvanizing us to begin fixing these flaws that too many were not even aware were there.

So finally, to close and recap, Thank you President Obama for using your time in office to show us who we can and should be — and thank you, President Elect Trump for holding up the mirror and showing us who we still are and what is really left to be done.

Now it is time to get started.

By exposing all of this to those that believed we had actually made progress on many of these issues over the last half century,  Mr. Trump may have unwittingly and inadvertently done more for the civil rights of America before even being sworn in as president than any single person since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr died.

It is time for us to answer President Obama’s farewell request — that we believe in our ability to change.  And utilize it.

Don’t wait.  Start now.  Today.

Rally.  Protest.  Call and write your governmental representatives.  Get everyone who is eligible registered and eager to VOTE.  Be informed.  Be involved.  Donate to or help campaign for candidates that support your values and represent your concerns on the issues at hand.  Cast a ballot on every issue and for every office at ever opportunity for each city, county, state, and national level.