This just came floating into my inbox.
Eric —
Tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, Americans across the country will sit down together, count our blessings, and give thanks for our families and our loved ones.
American families reflect the diversity of this great nation. No two are exactly alike, but there is a common thread they each share.
Our families are bound together through times of joy and times of grief. They shape us, support us, instill the values that guide us as individuals, and make possible all that we achieve.
So tomorrow, I’ll be giving thanks for my family — for all the wisdom, support, and love they have brought into my life.
But tomorrow is also a day to remember those who cannot sit down to break bread with those they love.
The soldier overseas holding down a lonely post and missing his kids. The sailor who left her home to serve a higher calling. The folks who must spend tomorrow apart from their families to work a second job, so they can keep food on the table or send a child to school.
We are grateful beyond words for the service and hard work of so many Americans who make our country great through their sacrifice. And this year, we know that far too many face a daily struggle that puts the comfort and security we all deserve painfully out of reach.
So when we gather tomorrow, let us also use the occasion to renew our commitment to building a more peaceful and prosperous future that every American family can enjoy.
It seems like a lifetime ago that a crowd met on a frigid February morning in Springfield, Illinois to set out on an improbable course to change our nation.
In the years since, Michelle and I have been blessed with the support and friendship of the millions of Americans who have come together to form this ongoing movement for change.
You have been there through victories and setbacks. You have given of yourselves beyond measure. You have enabled all that we have accomplished — and you have had the courage to dream yet bigger dreams for what we can still achieve.
So in this season of thanks giving, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to you, and my anticipation of the brighter future we are creating together.
With warmest wishes for a happy holiday season from my family to yours,
President Barack Obama
I so agree with what you say about Obama dear Eric. So good to read your comments – it’s so easy to denigrate, to indulge in disappointment, nay, revel in it. And was really touched by what you wrote about your past dear Len. Sounds like you’ve come a long long way.
Love
Liz xx
Don’t forget the FBI. It is no secret that J. Edgar had a vendetta against not only all of the key players in the Civil Rights Movement, but that his two most famous hits were a President and his soon to be elected government. I still cry when I think what our country could have been today if Bobby Kennedy had been elected.
It seems that i am an example of how age does not confer wisdom. Eric, your words are observations are wise and i want to acknowledge that in front of the e-ther and everybody.
For me this is very painful. i can recall how i got radicalized. Next door neighbor, oldest son, came home from his first tour in Vietnam. He told me about the corruption that was not revealed in the newspapers or on TV. American arms and supplies openly being siphoned off to the other side. It was like Milo in Catch-22 except it was real. There were no controls. It was allowed to happen. It was profitable. And that’s just one example. There was worse than that going on. My little world broke open like Humpty Dumpty. He told me to expect to be drafted. i was thirteen. i never saw him again – he lost his life in the Tet – he died like a dog.
Shortly thereafter my family moved to the west coast (by dad was transferred by his employer). A conversation about Muhammad Ali in the school hallway got me invited to a meeting. Within to weeks i was in The Movement. It was a deliverance, albeit a double life for 3 years until my dad intercepted my conscientious objector application in the mail and told me i should find another place to live. Given his politics he showed admirable restraint. He knew what i knew, he just chose to accept it as the price of having a job and a family in the United States.
Now, i am faced with releasing attachment to the past and looking at things fresh because that was then and this is now. So i want to thank you, Eric, but i also want to say it’s not going to be easy for me to come around. i have a lot of letting go to do.
Well, get ready. We are about to have a conversation about Afghanistan.
As I said, I voted for Barack knowing that Afghanistan was going to be escalated. I think it’s a grave mistake, and that it’s going to go terribly, but it was either that or Sarah Palin for Prez, and all her yokels on the Supreme Court till the Second Coming of Mohamed.
The president of the United States is a figurehead. He has powerful subordinates who have been entrenched in power for decades. He can be killed by the CIA. He presides over a system that has substantial momentum, and every businesses interest worth the paper its stock certificates are printed on has an investment in this war.
And — the American people are not objecting. He could pull the troops out, if there were hell raising, in the streets, on the Net, or wherever.
He is in a terrible double bind. Remember his Damocles opposite the Sun; he is a Leo and he is the president. This is not easy for him and I am going to guess that he feels damned no matter what he does.
I hate to sound like a Republican, but we need to stand behind him even if he’s wrong, and deal with the mistakes, in advance, or as soon as we can.
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” – President John F. Kennedy