Response Letter: Catching you up...

Dear Editor and Readers,

Transformation is an interesting word. According to Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary, its definition is 1) to change in composition or structure, 2) to change the outward form or appearance of, or 3) to change in character or condition. When President Obama said “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” what was he referring to? That’s a big question, but not a difficult one to answer.

To some, the transformation would seem that he wanted to ruin the country, that Obama still wields extra-presidential power and is making the decisions for the white house, the exemplar puppet master. Albeit impossible, it does make for a good story, bad vs. evil, God vs. Satan, Darth vs. Obi-Wan. Some “news” sources would have us believe this, and the hate hawkers the news channels schedule in the evenings point fingers to a make-believe monster class of citizens that we, the good people of the earth, are entrenched in spiritual warfare. But we don’t need a boogeyman to find the context of his comment. (Side note: turn off the cable news channels and read a newspaper, and stop quoting all online sources as credible. Any idiot can make a website.)

As a nation, America has a terrible history with African-Americans, Blacks, Indigenous, and People of Color. That is not up for debate, and calling it out for what it is is not critical race theory, it is reality. Chattel slavery, bad faith treaties, fugitive slave kidnappings, boarding schools, Jim Crow laws, forced sterilizations, theft of land, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, red-lining, the war on drugs, denying access to government services etc. ad naseum; we own a horrible past. If you can’t see that, there isn’t any helping you. The transformation President Obama was commenting on was that this country, a land he, you, and I love, was going to elect a Black man in five weeks. Imagine, in this country, where only 50 years earlier three young men were brutally murdered in the south attempting to register African-American voters, could elect a Black man as the leader of the country. And he was right, he won both the popular and the electoral votes (something that happens when Democrats win the presidency), and he was wrong at the same time. The election did not transform our anger and hate to brotherly love, it just focused it on the left, the Democrats, the liberal fiends.

Where did this vitriol and hyperbole come from? I can recall members from both sides of the aisle actually praising each other. Can you imagine that today? If you can, what color is the sky in your world?

First things first, we don’t have to agree with each other on how we think the country should go. Conservatives look to stall or even stop progress in the country and MAGA people yearn to return to the day where America was better than it is, some vague era where liberty was alive for all men, and women. Only problem is, that era is fiction. Liberals want the country to live up to a little document we are about to celebrate in a few weeks, the Declaration of Independence, and the line about “all men are created equal.” (Spoiler, contextually they meant all white men are created equal, for real, look it up, women and minorities didn’t have rights, even in the Bill of Rights.) Both political parties love their country, and both think the other side is full of morons. Yes, someone thinks you are a moron. Someone reading this right now is saying of me, “what a moron.” It’s the largest club I’ve ever been in, and it includes the whole citizenry of America. Welcome to Club Moron (not an actual place in Florida, but thank you for going there with me in your mind.) With that being said, no, there is not a big conspiracy to change the America you love. The fact is that people in power want to transform America to a land they will love more. Both parties do this. Medicare Part D, President George W. Bush wanted this and got it. The Affordable Care Act, President Obama wanted this and got it. Are either of them evil for wanting to change a broken system? No! And if you don’t think the insurance industry isn’t broken you are lucky enough to have not been seriously ill. Period. Speaking from experience.

So as for a long list of items you don’t agree with, who cares? Is renewable energy a bad thing? No. Will we ever be fully off of fossil fuels? Probably not. Is the Paris Agreement going to fundamentally change the way we drive cars? Maybe, but is that a bad thing? I don’t know about you, but I want clean air to breathe and I would also like clean water to drink, and not just for me, but for everyone. I think everyone could agree that clean air and water should be an American reality, not an American dream.

In conclusion, yes, I lean liberal on social issues. I don’t think we are in a contest, we can both have services to veterans and look out for people fleeing to America from oppressive governments, it’s how we formed our country. I long for a country where people are judged not by the color of their skin but for the content of their character. But we have such a long, long way to go. White America couldn’t agree with the simple statement Black Lives Matter (as a matter of fact, they do!). George Floyd, who did not possess a counterfeit $20 bill, should still be alive, and if you try to find some reason that justifies his death, you are an ogre. Breonna Taylor’s killer shouldn’t be able to hide behind a badge because no knock warrants are a breach of the sixth amendment. Elijah McClain shouldn’t have died at the hands of the police when he needed a mental health professional instead. The war on drugs was not a failure, it did exactly what it was supposed to do, lock up Black and Brown men. We will have not fundamentally transformed America until the point we recognize the importance of Juneteenth as equal to if not more important than the Fourth of July. That little sentence of men created equal is either true for all people, or one of the biggest lies of all time. It cannot be both.

Chris Pippin

Saco, Mont.