LETTER TO PRESIDENT THOMAS JEFFERSON

Misanthropic Boomer

I was fortunate enough to have found this letter. It is from the United States of America to President Thomas Jefferson. I don't know when the nation found the time or energy to write this but here it is...

The Honorable Thomas Jefferson

President of the United States

Family Plot

Monticello, VA

Dear President Jefferson

Hello sir, you may remember me. My name is “The United States of America.” I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to you, Mssrs. Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, et al. It is obvious by now that I did not turn out as expected. I never quite matured, and do consider myself to be a complete and utter failure. I have not come close to the hope that you, who was both father and mid-wife to me, had for my place in history. I am also sorry that I disappointed your political descendants, such as Mr. Lincoln, both of the Roosevelts, Jack and Robert Kennedy, and Barack Obama

I am fully aware that your intentions were to prevent the abuses of humanity under which you and your fellow Americans were suffering at the hands of a despot. I am also cognizant of the fact that I was supposed to ever better serve my entire citizenry as I matured; at this I have failed. Once again I feel I must apologize.

When you drafted the Declaration of Independence, you were quite careful to delineate all of the reasons that justified the need for redress. Within those justifications you were careful to not only detail the nation’s grievances, but to suggest why and how they must be redressed; and the consequence of failure.

“I regret that I am now to die,” you wrote, “in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it. If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world.”

Unfortunately those very prescient words have fallen upon deaf ears. It was actually thus from the very beginning. Although you and your most bold and amiable fellows were indeed on the correct path you did, for the sake of expediency take, shall we call them shortcuts. The refusal to deal up front with the issues of Slavery, Women’s Suffrage, and Indigenous Peoples (it was you that posited “all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights and that among these rights are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”) was definitely a weak position to take in my birthing. I do understand that there were issues such as these that you felt might jeopardize the successful achievement of your work. Thus, although I am saddened by the three-fifths compromise, I really do try to understand the position y in which you found yourselves. However, in all fairness the lack of attention to these omissions is, in great part, a significant contributory factor to my failings as a nation. I cannot begin to detail the suffering they have caused me, I know that Mr. James Madison made every effort to see to it that the shortcomings of my conception could be overcome by ensuring that no one part of me would be more important than another. His concept of a three pronged governing body with equal powers and responsibilities was sheer genius. Unfortunately I have learned in the last two hundred odd years that man’s greed, mendacity, and lust for power transcend even the most well intentioned control systems.

I do not intend to lay the bulk of the blame for my failure on you and your comrade’s shoulders. You did a remarkable job given the time in history, and the general lack of integrity and veracity in human beings. I must admit that my conception was daring and more than a bit heroic. You had no way of knowing that it is next to impossible to make a government, or any other abstract system foolproof…fools are far too ingenious.

A fair example of your general lack of understanding of human nature is evidenced in the Constitution over which you and your fellows so diligently labored. You gentlemen carefully stated that the Congress should meet at least once a year, preferably after the annual harvest had been accomplished, sometime in December; and/or when anything of significant import should arise: the obvious implication was that it was a part time position. Failure came when you did not recognize the fundamentally base nature of human beings and thus specify term limits on the Congress, or that that particular government service should never become a profession unto itself. That omission has led me to some of my most painful and hobbling episodes. Avaricious men have decided that Congress Person is a wonderful profession (did I forget to mention that a correction was made some one hundred thirty-three years after my birth that gave women the right to vote…oh yes, Black Men and Indigenous Men were also franchised eighty-one years following my Natal arrival.): it is a position that can make people wealthy and can be a substitute for the royalty that was eliminated when you and your audacious fellows broke with the tyrannous royalty that held sway at the time of the rebellion. This is achieved by allowing the passing down of the position of Representative or Senator, or even President to one’s children due to the fact that it takes a great deal of money to acquire such a position. It begins to give the appearance of “The Divine Right of Kings.”

Of course, since it has become a profession and people stay at it for twenty or more years, it becomes much like an elite club, with the members all doing favors for one another and for people that are called lobbyists who represent special interests…unfortunately the Congress, my lawmakers have begun to believe that this is their main job, not the People’s business. Theses professional Representatives and Senators have also exempted themselves from the laws which the rest of my people must follow. All this because, although a brilliant political philosopher, you apparently learned very little from the tyranny from which you removed the yoke. You didn’t look around the King to the sycophants that attended him; else you would have prepared for that eventuality as well.

Although you and your most exemplary companions my not have necessarily have believed in your own White Superiority, since you neglected to address the issue it has become one of the major indicators of my failure as a nation. As I previously indicated it took 81 years to merely acquire the franchise for the descendants of those human beings stolen from their homes in Africa. Eighty-one years may not be long in the history of my time, however, in human terms it is sufficiently long enough for prejudices to develop and be sustained to the point of attempts to change those particular ideas caused a schism of such magnitude that a war was fought over them which, to be quite frank, damn near killed me. Although we had a very courageous and insightful President, Mr. Abraham Lincoln (I think you would have liked him) that stewarded me through those hard war years, a damage was done to my psyche as a nation from which I have still have been unable to recover.

That “Civil War” as it is referred was not civil at all, and it did great damage from which, I have as yet to recover. Oh, to be sure I have facilitated many great happenings in the history of humankind, and solved many apparently unsolvable problems, but always at a tremendous cost. As I said, I facilitated the franchise of Americans of African descent, but at the cost of my near demise. I was first to develop the kind of travel and communications infrastructure that allowed me to dominate the world’s commerce, however that promoted a kind of secret Imperialism worldwide. I am also the chief reason that the entire planet is at risk from the pollutants which I not only allowed, but promoted as well. I saved the world from a Monster from Bavaria, but in doing so I made possible the entire world’s destruction through my people’s development of wartime atomic technology. I am the only nation that has used that technology on another nation.

In addition to all of these things you must know that I have allowed my citizens to know many false fears, the worst of which is the fear of “others:” those who don’t look, or act like you Mr. Jefferson and the other Founders. In support of that fear (it is called xenophobia…isn’t that a horrid sounding word?) I have allowed people of our descendents from Africa to be hung for no reason other than they seem to be different (it is called “lynching”…isn’t that also a horrid word?). I also allowed the imprisonment of thousands of my own citizens because they merely looked like an enemy with which we were at war (I called that “internment”…another horrid work: and a lie). I did not do that to my people who looked to be of European descent, like you Mr. Jefferson, with whom we were also at war.

Mr. Jefferson I don’t know what to do. I have done and allowed many terrible things. Your lack of foresight is partly to blame, but I did these things so I won’t lay the fault at your door. However, would that it not be overly much trouble for you as you rest in your grave, to give me some hint, some tiny clue as to how I can pull myself together and fulfill the dreamed of promise you envisioned for me. I need help Mr. Jefferson, and I know it will not come from the government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” because the “people” are not only no longer in charge, they aren’t even considered.

That’s about all I have to say Mr. Jefferson. I do want to apologize, for being such an abject failure and for disturbing your slumber. Thank you for listening, and if you come up with an idea of how fix things (your last one was a pip) you know where to reach me.

Sincerely,

The United States of America