An Open Letter to the President

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT

(A New Year Wish)

Dear President Trump:

Patriotism is loyalty to the values of one’s country.  American democracy stands for the innate worth of every citizen, politics devoted to the citizenry’s common good, and the citizenry’s responsibility to sustain these by their vote.   When the nation elects a president their expectation is that this leader will model the meaning of patriotic loyalty.

Unfortunately, you have chosen a different focus – loyalty to Donald Trump. This makes you a country unto yourself.  The choices you make about the leaders who surround you are based on this self-centered obedience.

Such loyalty, to the president rather than the country, is difficult to sustain except by the brutalities of despotism. The uncomprehending citizens that voted the despot into power will eventually vote him out unless the entire nation capitulates to despotic rule.

Richard Nixon, also a president who relied on personal loyalty above patriotic loyalty, eventually had his true character revealed. He resigned rather than being impeached.  However, he was only a crook named Tricky Dick.  Your political signature speaks of higher betrayal.

Eventually, your supporters will decide that you are not fulfilling your anti-democratic campaign promises for which they had hoped. Feeling betrayed they will vote for someone else.  While you have a political party that continues to support you because it has sold its soul to despotic power above country it, too, will find a path more convenient for its future.  Your venture as president could be short-lived.

I suspect there is no hope for you to convert from despotism to democracy since you display no understanding of a distinction between the two or any signs of awareness for the need to change.  However, I still hold out this hope for the sake of the nation.

Please ask yourself this question:  Will my present view of reality actually bring me the permanent sense of being worthy for which I so desperately yearn?  It seems obvious from your public behavior that your view of reality has not fulfilled this need. Perhaps embracing the intentions of democracy might satisfy this deep hunger.  You have nothing to lose because continuing down your present path of despotism will only end in tragedy for you, your family, and the nation. And such a tragedy will only deepen your ego despair.

Here is an alternative: Embracing the democratic view that affirms you were born worthy. Such a view could be transforming. It offers the possibility of going to bed at night without lying awake scheming how to acquire a greater sense of worth at the expense of others.  As we enter this New Year, I hope for you the self-respect of accepted worth.

Robert T. Latham

American Citizen