I am not good at rants and probably don’t own sufficient vocabulary, but I will do my best.
Dear President Bush,
I didn’t agree with your election, however once it had been decided I thought about how much I hated all the “It’s not my fault, I didn’t vote for him” bumper stickers about President Clinton, and I shut my mouth. I always thought that was sore loosing, and it doesn’t look any better when my side does it.
The problem is, Mr. President, you are now interfering with my parenting. It was hard when she asked me “Why are we going to war?” To this day none of the answers add up the WMD thing seems like a smoke screen to me and the “He’s a really bad guy” thing is interesting but hardly justifyable when a quick survey of Latin America shows we actively support regimes who have killed far more of their citizens than Sadaam Husein. OTOH I have been trying to teach her that in order to be a civilized person it is always important to see the other side of any issue, to at least understand what it is you are disagreeing with. Maybe this is too much for a 9 year old there are alot of adults including the president who seem to have missed that lately. But I realy tried my best to give both sides. I don’t think she understands, but then again I don’t so I am not sure I did give a fair representation of the other side.
This brings us to the problem. One of the other things I have tried to teach her is that we can disagree with our friends, and they are still friends. I think her life will be alot less lonely that way. My daughter goes to The Milwaukee French Immersion School. It is a public school made as one of the magnet schools here 25 years ago as an answer to desegrigation. In terms of ethnic diversity it does pretty well, in terms of economic diversity not so well, the spanish immersion school does better at that. Anyway, for the last twenty years. MIFS has had an exchange program in place. Every spring for two weeks a bunch of fifth graders goes from MIFS to live in France with a French family for two weeks, and then a group of French students comes here. This year only one French family sent their child.
God damn you President Bush. Your my way but the high way bull shit is threatening 200 years of good relations with the French. Your arguments with the government of France is making it so that Parents of 11 year olds don’t think their children will be safe here. You have in less than a year destroyed 200 years of history and devistated two schools full of fifth graders. Maybe the fifth graders aren’t important In your grand scheme of organising the world correctly, but one future 5th grader is pretty damn important to me.