Jake's Inflammatory Essay for August 2009

[Jake Patterson]

Dissention

Barack Obama's most praised feature may be his speaking abilities.
During the campaign he proved himself to be inspiring, able to rally a
crowd and excite its emotions. And this was exciting, given the total
of two great speeches that our last president delivered. We, as a
nation, had not had a really articulate President since Ronald Reagan.

But while President Obama may be able to infuse a concurring crowd
with passion on the campaign trail, he has fallen very short when
people disagree with him. In front of his supporters he has used
tested buzzwords to get a strong reaction out of them, but when he
addresses opponents he loses the articulate qualities that we so
admired in him.

When cities around the nation held "Tea Parties," unaffiliated with
any political party, to demonstrate their outrage at the stimulus
package, Barack Obama was not very diplomatic. The people in these
Tea Parties, he said, are Right-Wing Radicals, and went on to define
such as those who reject or distrust the Federal government. These
are not radicals. This is the oldest debate in American history.
These people have Thomas Jefferson on their side, who wrote on our
Declaration of Independence, "…A decent respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them." Demeaning statements from our President don't win respect or
bring unity.

As he has tried to gather support for his health-care plan, Americans
have shown up at town hall meetings around the country and asked hard
questions about this very dramatic change. Of them, our articulate
leader said they are "an unruly mob," and that they dominate the
debate through "willful misrepresentations and outright distortions."

Here is your leader, America, so solid in his opinions and determined
to impose them that he must insult those who disagree with him. Does
a leader invalidate dissention? Does a leader write off opposing
opinions and set himself up as the sole source of intelligent ideas?

His opponents have their own buzzwords they like to throw around, one
of them being "elitist." Who wants to support an elitist? Wasn't
this country built on poking people like that in the eye? Whether he
is an elitist or not I cannot say. But objective observations would
demonstrate that he, through his words, has acted like one. I do not
know him or his motives, but he must wear this title because of his
observable behavior.

So I would say to President Obama, temper your rhetoric. Make it more
inviting. You promised bipartisanship but we don't care about that.
Most of us are not members of parties. We just want to express
ourselves without authoritarian backlash. If the last Bush did
nothing else right, he stood in the face of savage criticism and let
it slide.

Eight months ago, dissention was the "highest form of patriotism."
That hasn't changed just because the administration has.