I Wrote Obama Again

Dear President Obama,

In many parts of the world our power as a nation is connected to a perception of us as killers, a perception that some of our policies re-enforce. When does the time come to step up to an actual morality in stead of the high-flown language?

Conducting war with its unthinkable killing is an activity that humanity in its most enlightened thinking has moved beyond. The question is in the air: Why stay in that primitive past? Have you thought about what it actually means that we conduct and encourage wholesale massacre of the “animals” that live on our American lands?

First, consider the other man-decided deaths, the ongoing decision to kill those who have no voice: the “animals” who are our co-inhabitants in America and on the earth. American representatives work in many parts of the world to encourage local peoples to stop killing local “animals” because such short-sightedness blocks their opportunity for tourism, one of the most effective forms of infusing money into their economies. In our country we think different rules apply. "They" should stop killing "wild" animals -- not us.

We, including you -- President Obama -- speak continually of our high ideals and our humanity. How can you reconcile these ideals with allowing the Interior Secretary to sit motionless during the murders of an entire wolf pack in one of our revered places, Yellowstone and the Northern Rockies? What was the wolves’ undoing? They ate a sheep. What is the cost of a sheep compared to killing an entire pack which had become known throughout our country and the world? One of the pack’s mothers was radio-collared. The wolf cubs have been left to die.

Who can say humanity is not now in its transition time of life on the planet -- live, die or stay as a remnant? That transition time is not arriving or coming in a distant future. It is here. Will we decide to live differently in the transition or cement our feet into the unknowing past? How do we measure, for instance, the interests of emperor-rich ranchers with those of our disastrously dwindling fellow creatures, such as wolves? According to a god, to science or to mysteries the planet exists as a living organism with its own life, necessities and essential patterns. Wiser ones talk about the tipping point for the planet and therefore for humanity. Why would we think the killing of fellow “animal” inhabitants does not figure into the question? Why would be think the web, the interconnectedness of all life, is not important?

Will we eventually use means other than killing to figure out how to exist with our fellow human beings? In as much as that is an honorable and perhaps necessary aspiration why would not the same thinking be used for our fellow inhabitants, “animals”? Why is it the case that all land on the globe is owned by humans or human-sourced entities that act, elementarily, with the power of long ago emperors or kings?

Does anyone think the planet can exist denuded of “animals” except for those imprisoned for food, those in laboratories, and those in places such as zoos and circuses as a source of commercial entertainment?

Is it the destiny of humanity to kill all life because the human mind can not do other than consider “animals” as a momentary or permanent obstacle to human power and aspiration?

Please.