I Have a Pull Chain in my Head

Dear Mr. Nader,

Sir, I like you. I really do. You make sense when you speak and that means a lot to me, but I still don't think I'd like to hang out with you and this seems to be the problem you have in these runs at the Presidency.

Ralph. As one guy to another,...you're a scold. And that doesn't work in politics.

Oh, I completely agree with you. You've been talking and talking to the people, but they just aren't listening. So, like any good scholar, you've studied harder and re-visited the issues, then talked to the people some more...and they still aren't listening. And all this study has made you knowledgable and that has made you certain that you have something meaningful to say. And that has made you hungry for a bully pulpit.

Well, I'd like you to take this last Presidential showing as an indication that you aren't going to find that bully pulpit in the political arena. You've built your fame upon the "outsider to power" persona. A smart man trying to make us safe from the greed-heads and safe from ourselves. When you make these inside runs, your own reputation is stopping you, Ralph. And when we see you trying to turn into an insider, well, it looks like hubris.

You're wasting your legacy. Now is not the time to be co-opted into the political system. Now is the time to get your ass back in the kitchen and start cooking up the sort of organization you're better suited too. You need to get it into your head that it's not about the cook, it's about the food.

Here's what we need you to do.

We need an independent and unbiased media in this country. I think there's a lot of that already going on with the small, hometown papers, but it certainly isn't going on in the big Media outlets. They're too interested in their bottom lines to want the truth and they've always been busy making, rather than reporting, the news. Many people believe them. (Or have come to just expect this trash and learned to live with it.) And the reason these people believe the media is...

...the sad state of our educational system.

Education is the major battleground, Ralph. I think you already know this. The creationists are sending in their skirmishers. Fact has become omission in the face of rampant, liberal 'political correctness' and supposed 'conservative compassion'. They all have their agendas, but educating a well-rounded human being doesn't seem to be on any of them. When those of us with working bullsh*t detectors compare what our authority figures (educators, politicians, parents) tell us to what the rest of our experience tells us, well...we stop listening, don't we? Trusting souls accept what they're told and wander through life lost in the comfortable 'certainties' they've been offered. Many of us stop thinking altogether.

If we taught Americans our real history, rather than our agreed upon folklore, then we might see a change in our political landscape. People might stop accepting the fiction of America's long history of 'freedom' and 'concern and sacrifice for the world'. Instead of believing we're 'already there' and 'just need to maintain our long tradition', they might learn to discern our facts from our fictions. And that might lead towards actually striving to achieve the ideals we're told we stand for.

So put your considerable intellect and energy into Education. Eviscerate our pathetic textbooks - not just the history texts, but our science and humanities texts as well. Get people to demand 'truth' and 'reality' over 'sensitivity' and 'insecurity'. At the same time, hammer on the media. Find an outlet to get out truthful, message-free, reporting. If unable to find one, create one! If unable to affect public education, open up alternative schools. If Montessori can do this, so can you and your people. Get your followers to be teachers and journalists. Support the small presses. Read Wendell Berry's Citizenship Papers and embrace the small.

Teach us something, Ralph.

And Ralph: get out of the limelight. It's ruining you. You give all the appearances of having forgotten your roots and that makes me more than a little sad. You're trying to be the beacon when you're best suited to be the power grid...and there are 2 generations of brand new bulbs among your followers just waiting for chances to keep lights on in their own windows. We want to find our ways home, but we can't see them past the shadow you're casting.

Love and respect to you for all the lives your safety measures have saved.

Dean Derby