Open Letter To North Korean President Kim Jong Un From Washington, DC's Homeless
President Kim Jong Un:
My name is Eric Jonathan Sheptock. I've advocated for Washington, DC's homeless community since mid-June 2006. In short, that means that I am one of a number of people who've approached government with the concerns of the homeless community and with ideas for decreasing homelessness. I personally have dealt primarily with the local government (DC Government), as opposed to the federal government (Washington). I've watched the homeless population go through a glitch pattern that DC Government refuses to have any meaningful conversation about, as it swung through a series of ups and downs -- reaching it's low of 5,757 people in 2007 after a high of 8,977 in 2005. We had 8,350 homeless people in 2016 and 7,473 in 2017, which was very close to our 2001 and 2002 numbers of 8,325 and 7,468 respectively. Long story short, we have a local government in the nation's capital who've said in 2004 that they wanted to end homelessness in 10 years but whose level of ineffectiveness at addressing poverty and homelessness is surpassed only by its unwillingness to discuss its failures and the return to where the local homeless census stood 15 years ago. With the 2016 and 2017 numbers each having been very close to the 2001 and 2002 numbers, if the 15-year pattern holds, we'll count almost 500 more homeless people this month than we counted in January 2017. Coincidentally, the foreign affairs of the federal government have also cycled back to where they were 15 years ago. That begins to explain why I've written this open letter to you.
I wasn't not under any illusion that this open letter would actually make it to your desk, being as the president of a young nation has more important things to do than to read the writings of an American homeless man. I figured that, in the off-chance that you actually DO read this open letter, I would lay out for you some of the truths about the United States that will give you the space to indict our federal government for crimes against its own people -- especially its poor people. Even if this open letter hadn't made its way to your desk, the American people who could become "collateral damage" in a war that begins with unwarranted American military aggression against your country got the chance to read it and become all the wiser. I've gone so far as to offer an alternative to another missile test which the U.S. Government falsely refers to as "provocations" by your government. I'm also aware of the possibility that writing a letter -- even an open letter -- to you might put me on America's terror watch list and cause the authorities to pay me a visit; as, they wouldn't have far to go anyway. That's a chance that I'm willing to take. It's a much lower risk than remaining in DC during a conflict that could burgeon into World War III if tRump were to overreact to your exercise of your sovereign right to perform missile tests, only to have China and Russia come to the defense of North Korea.
You, Mr. Kim, actually taught me an English word that I'd never heard when you referred to 45 as a "dotard". Newspapers gave the definition for this rarely-used word after you correctly referred to tRump as such. The term is quite fitting for the man [sic] that many Americans refuse to call "president". (Take notice of what I called you at the beginning of this letter.) As much as people that I know didn't like former president George Walker "W" Bush (aka: "Bush, Jr" or "Bush 43"), at least we respected him enough to call him "president". Now the very people who abhorred Bush 43 when he was in office are wishing we had him over tRump -- or better yet, that President Obama could have had a third term. That said, most Americans have less respect for Mr. tRump than you do.
Before I delve into what promises to be a long diatribe of American capitalism and poor governance or I describe what may be the simplest, cheapest and most effective measure for creating peace between our respective nations, I'll explain a bit more about myself. I was born in Atlantic City, NJ as Erick Gooden on February 15th, 1969 and will turn 49 next month. My birth mother, Malvenia Gooden (1943-2006) abused me throughout my first eight months of life. She fractured my skull when I was eight months old. She was never prosecuted; but, I went to a foster home until I was 5.5 years old in August 1974. I was then taken in by Rudy Sheptock (1932-2000) and his wife Joanne (1937-present). They adopted me a year later as Eric Jonathan Sheptock. They had seven kids and adopted 30. My brother Robert Philip "Bobby" Sheptock was actually born in Korea. My connections to Korea don't end there.
My father fought in the Korean War, having served in the U.S. Navy from 1950 to 1954. Naturally, I love my father, though I hardly expect you to look favorably upon his involvement in the Korean War. I don't put too much effort into understanding the causes of wars that occurred before I reached manhood in 1987. I know all too well that there are countless factors in the lead-up to any war -- including the third world war that could erupt in 2018 if the tRump administration continues its "provocations" by challenging the sovereignty of your nation. At any rate, I know that you have the good sense to ensure that you don't hold my awesome father's involvement in the Korean War against me. That said, I have brothers in the U.S. military right now (not Bobby); and, I hope that they don't get deployed to fight in this emerging conflict which is being manufactured by an administration that seeks to redefine global politics with a major war that they might not realize can very easily get out of their control and usher in the much-needed end to American imperialism -- after more than 70 of world domination by the U.S.
You might wonder how other Americans feel about the matter of a Second Korean War and what it might lead to. I definitely can't speak for the nation as a whole. However, there have been several historical events that can give us an eye into what the majority of American's are likely to think when a critical mass of them realizes how terribly the Americans who didn't vote and the electoral college that (s)elected tRump did us in 2016. In the early 1950's, as we fought the First Korean War, an American congressman named Joseph McCarthy was accusing many Americans of being Communist sympathizers. He was eventually censured by Congress and lost his seat over his apparent dishonesty. However, McCarthy-ism has survived for more than 60 years, as Americans are conditioned to dislike Marxism, Communism and Socialism. A nation that prides itself in its level of freedom fails to realize that perpetuating the thinking of a man who was proven to have been a liar and also conditioning people to believe in a certain type of system doesn't amount to freedom. There's a certain irony in actually mandating that people believe that a free society is the best type of society, in trying to ensure that they adopt this belief by failing to teach them about the alternatives, in forcing one nation's brand of freedom on all other nations that we invade, in ignoring the devolution that has taken place in recently-freed societies and in hiding the widespread social ills of our own long-free society the whole while. Too many Americans fail to realize these things or that the only thing that's really free in the U.S. is the market and the only free people are those who have enough money to matter to the market.
The United States has been described as a "Christian nation" or "one nation under God"; but, from what I can tell, a majority of professing Christians in this country fail to acknowledge and might not realize that God is the biggest dictator of all and that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has major socialistic overtones. They still have some uncertainty as to whether the Father and son are one deity or two. (They're two with one sense of direction.) That speaks volumes to the level of ignorance that has been fostered by American schools, churches and broad society for the last 60 years -- with me having attended school prior to the quality of education dipping below an acceptable level. Some years ago, an American singing group named "En Vogue" put out a song that said, "Free your mind and the rest will follow". Americans have yet to do that. The American superstructures (religion, government, school etc) are screwing many of us with the American super fuctures -- the dumbing-down of America.
One of the great Americans of old told us that "Arguing with those who have renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead". Bearing that truth in mind, I don't expect that your attempts to reason with tRump will do much good. He's rationally dead, which leaves me hoping that he'll have the fatal heart attack that the world so terribly needs for him to have soon. Maybe the idea that I'll offer you will help to get us to that good place. As for the matter of how Americans think, it's worth noting that 62.9M Americans (representing 46% of those who voted in November 2016) chose tRump. Another 65.8M Americans (48% of voters) chose Hillary Clinton, with about 8M (6%) voting for an independent or third party candidate. Another 63M registered voters stayed home and the remaining 123M people were either too young or couldn't vote for some other reason -- such as having committed crimes of survival or some other crimes, possibly as a result of poor education and all that logically follows. Then the archaic electoral college handed tRump the victory through a process that I won't try to make sense of for you. If these numbers say anything, it is that almost one-third of people figure that ignoring an issue will make it go away and that almost half of those who weigh in make irrational choices. That's American democracy (err "dumb-ocracy") for you. I'm frustrated by these truths on a daily basis.
Ironically, it's the homeless men of Washington, DC that seem to be most in tune with just how ignorantly tRump's face-off with you is playing out. Then again, maybe it's not so ironic, given the fact that homeless men, by virtue of their lot in life, are forced to understand different grim realities that directly affect them -- more so than any other subset of the American population. These truths include them being unattractive to employers, possibly feeling a need to commit crimes in order to survive, having to worry constantly about the elimination of this or that social service and the prospect that housed people in this or that neighborhood will refuse to allow a social service to be set up in their neighborhood.
Well-to-do Americans oftentimes place blind faith in our national leaders and have an aversion to discussing bad news -- until we get attacked. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, many Americans in the 1940's seem to have accepted the internment of Japanese Americans. After the attacks of September 11th, 2001, many Americans seemed to have wanted a feeling of safety at any cost. In 2016 almost half of those who voted chose someone who touted stereotypes about Muslims and Mexicans, similar in fashion to how people re-elected Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944. This is true despite the fact that the U.S. has been called "the melting pot of the nations", with tRump's grandparents immigrating here from Bavaria (present-day Germany) in the 1880's.
It's safe to assume that well-to-do Americans will ignore the developing crisis until the U.S. military fires the first shots around March 19th, 2018 -- the 15-year anniversary of our invasion of Iraq. Homeless men, on the other hand, are neither the victims of rabid emotion nor under any illusion that life is a day in the park (though some of them sleep in the park and some have been arrested or cited for it). The fact that our lives are controlled by the grim realities of American capitalism makes it considerably easier for us to think about the ugly truths that others tend to ignore or avoid discussing. As I sit down to lunch with homeless men, I have frequent and deep conversations with them about the reality of another major war. We talk about the lack of principle from the American side of the current conflict and about how similar it is to the lead-up to the Iraq War 15 years ago.
In one recent conversation I pointed out that, during the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the White House press secretary repeatedly said, "We don't want to depose Saddam Hussein. We just want to get him out of Kuwait". Saddam had already killed 180,000 Kurds during an act of ethnic cleansing in 1982. His ethnic cleansing was raised during the Iraq War (which began on 3/19/2003) as a reason for which he needed to be deposed. If he did such terrible things in 1982, we should have deposed him in 1991 at the latest -- at least if morality and the removal of a rogue leader were the TRUE motives of the U.S. Government. The Persian Gulf War lasted 28 days. America lost 130 soldiers, mostly from friendly fire. (With friends like that, who needs enemies??? .....or friends, for that matter???) The world society agreed with the American mission at that time. We didn't finish the job. General Norman "Stormin' Norman" Schwartzkoff retired shortly after the Persian Gulf War. Someone who fought in that war told me that the timing of Stormin' Norman's retirement was due to his disappointment about not being allowed to finish the job. We went back to Iraq in 2003 and began a much longer, much more expensive war for which we didn't have as much international support. It looked less like an American reaction to Saddam's supposed human rights violations which date back to the early 80's and more like an effort to get American oil from under Iraqi soil. Interestingly enough, Saddam accused the Kuwaitis of slant drilling and stealing his oil. Homeless men discuss these and similar matters over lunch or as we watch the news together. We are not blindly accepting whatever our government does.
Poor Americans -- even those who live in run-down houses and poorly-maintained government apartments -- tend to understand it when I tell them that it makes absolutely no sense for the U.S. Government to fight another country because they don't like that country's weapons. We understand that the easiest way to ensure that we are not attacked with someone's weapon is not to "provoke" the weapon's owner. America and the bigger world need more of a 'hood (poor neighborhood) mentality in the White House. Well-off people take a bit longer to come around and they try to keep any conversations about such basic sensibilities short. I'm convinced that it is a homeless man's bad situation that causes him to have the uncanny but very relevant ability to think at length about the grim realities of life. It also helps that he's not predisposed to emotion either. Affluent Americans are lagging behind in this respect -- much like the affluent Americans who committed suicide when the stock market crashed in 1929. We homeless men sometimes talk about the mental weakness of housed people who go ballistic during an economic downturn like the one we had in the fall of 2008 -- some men killing their entire families, rather than become homeless. I'm sure that, in most cases, it's the rigors and stigmas associated with homelessness that cause middle-class Americans to prefer death over homelessness. In at least a few instances, it might be that a person who just had their fall from grace realizes that they might soon be sleeping in a shelter next to people whom they've looked down on and disparaged in the past. The fact remains that homeless men have the strong character and resilience that are necessary in these perilous times. We understand that the best way to ensure that Korea doesn't attack America is for us not to attack or threaten YOU.
It may please you to know that even the Republican establishment that, in the fall of 2015, begged tRump to continue his candidacy as a Republican and not to change parties or run as an independent is now willing to question the sanity of THEIR candidate -- the one that THEY strove so hard to retain. When retaining tRump meant that the GOP would regain the White House, they were willing to tolerate his madness. Now that 45's words are pushing us toward a major war and now that removing him through impeachment or a declaration that he's unfit to serve (Article 25) would cause the GOP to retain the White House through a Pence presidency, the Republicans are acknowledging tRump's mental illness. For the GOP it's not a matter of morality, religion, love of country or love of innocents. They're playing pan-partisan politics all the way to World War III and only seeking to remove the American madman when it's convenient for their political party.
I recently read an article from an academic who is privy to meetings about our national security. He claims that North Korea threatened the United States first and that dictators usually act on their threats. He used that set of suppositions to support the claim that the United States must prevent North Korea from further developing its nuclear program -- even if it means going to war. As I shared the article on Facebook, I expressed doubt about the claim that North Korea threatened the U.S. first. This tit-for-tat has been going on since your father was alive. I honestly don't know where it started; and, I'm not quick to say that my nation is in the right. We've been in the wrong in times past -- most definitely. So, I was elated when I read about your New year's Day speech in which you made it clear that you would not attack the United States unless you were threatened by our government and thereby forced to defend your nation. If dictators are known to keep their word, then there you have it. A dictator has said that he won't attack without American "provocations". Sadly, some American media are so stupid as to classify your statement about having the nuclear button on your desk as a threat. I don't take that to be a threat, but a fair warning. In all honesty, tRump saying that he'll blow North Korea off of the map (civilians and all) with "fire and fury" is more of a threat than anything that you've said; but tRump supporters seem to be fine with that. He responded to your fair warning by claiming that "his nuclear button is bigger and actually works", in effect beginning what Americans often refer to as a "pissing contest".
His tweet also accused you of starving your people. Being blessed (or cursed) with a good memory, I recall Bush 43 using the exact same narrative as he accused Saddam Hussein of starving his people in order to invest in the military. Bush, Jr. conveniently forgot to mention that his father completely destroyed the Iraqi military, leaving Saddam to make a difficult choice: Death by malnutrition and starvation, death by a neighboring country's military or death by America??? By the way, America's homeless people sometimes have to make difficult choices: Go to work and sleep outside or line up for shelter by 2 PM to ensure that you get a bed??? Either choice has negative consequences. Saddam understood that. America's homeless people understand that. Bush, though less emotional and crazy than tRump, played to America's emotions by only telling the part of the story that would garner support for his unjust war.
It's also important to realize that the tRump administration and its supporters across this country tend to use irrational sensationalism and hyperbole to build support for an attack of your country -- which is not unlike the emotional populism and demagoguery that contributed to 45 becoming the current White House resident. It's also closely related to the failure of Americans to realize that a nation that has promoted male-female equality for almost 50 years needs to require women to be as mentally strong and rational as men -- to require that women be strong enough to report sexual harassment and assault within five years (or by age 25 if they were a child at the time of the offense), not to wait a full 40 years -- only coming out when the man is rising to prominence (a method that failed miserably when it came to tRump). That still represents a low bar; but, it brings us a bit closer to real equality by limiting how long a woman can play the victim and requiring her to implement the solutions that women often tell men not to implement. Yes, it's true that American women sometimes tell a solution-oriented man, "Don't solve it; just listen". I've always thought that was quite idiotic. I can support equality that doesn't suppress or eliminate rational thought and I see the majority of American men as having been so weak as to allow their way of thinking to be totally suppressed in lieu of emotion. The appalling truth is that nearly 50 years of male-female equality have led to a loss of rationale in the public discourse -- it having been replaced with emotion -- thus tRump.
The article also points out the valid reasons that you have for not trusting the American Government. It explains that other nations have given up their nuclear programs, only to be attacked by the U.S. Of course, it mentions Iraq -- a nation that we've attacked twice during my adult life. After watching the Persian Gulf War play itself out in 1991, I paid attention during the lead-up to the Iraq War from September 2002 to March 19th, 2003. I noticed that, for five of those six months, then-secretary of state General Colin Powell said that Saddam Hussein didn't have any weapons of mass destruction. He changed his tune in the final month, which suggests that Dick Cheney twisted his arm. During the war, we would learn that Saddam actually did not have any WMD's and that General Colin Powell should have stood his ground -- the Valerie Plame outing notwithstanding. Seeing what the U.S. Government does to nations that lack or dismantle nuclear programs, it makes sense for you to hold your ground. Nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation discussions aside, it just doesn't make sense for anyone at any level of existence to think that they can tell an enemy what weapons to fight them with. Everyday Americans used to say, "There's no such thing as a fair fight", or that, "All is fair in love and war". Our supposed elites seem to have fallen out of touch with this basic truth. Common sense has become a thing of the past in America; and, it might take the homeless men of America to make sense common again. Then again, it might take a third world war.
I've also noticed that the United States starts wars against various problems which it then ends up having more of. Though we didn't call it a war, the U.S. fought a war against alcohol in the 1920's -- during Prohibition. We fought the likes of Al Capone. The government lost and alcohol was legalized again. During Prohibition, people drank more than they had previously. You might say that we made war against world war in the 1940's, as the United Nations was established. We learned that World War I was not big enough and bad enough to discourage nations from letting things get that out of hand again. We learned that we needed to take active steps to prevent another world war. The war against world war might be lost in two months or so. In the 1960's we had what President Lyndon B. Johnson called "the War on Poverty". America now has more poverty. In the 1980's Reagan began "the War on Drugs" -- more like "the War OF Drugs". We now have more drugs and the nation is experiencing an opioid crisis. In the 2000's we began the "War on Terror" under Bush 43. There is now more terror for us to fear.
That's an interesting topic, to say the least. The U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. We didn't pay Saddam's border patrol. They went to paying jobs, so that they could feed their families. The borders were open for anyone to enter Iraq from neighboring countries. We know that Al Qaeda in Iraq was set up in 2004 with Abu Musab Al Zarqawi as its leader. The U.S. military caught Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi in 2004, determined that he was only a street thug, that he wasn't military business and let him go. We killed Abu Musab Al Zarqawi in June 2006. The remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq took eight years to regroup and made their debut in 2014 as ISIS -- with Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi as their leader. This string of events speaks volumes to why Bush 41 (Bush, Sr.) decided not to depose Saddam. It also highlights the ill-preparedness of his son in 2003. All things considered, America did more to create terror than it did to end it. We would end up decimating two countries, only to find Osama Bin Laden in a third -- Pakistan. What's more is that it didn't take a war in nuclear-armed Pakistan to get Bin Laden. It took two helicopters of special forces (of which one went down before reaching Bin Laden's home). America began two devastating wars in two countries that did nothing to us and we eventually got the person that it was right for us to kill and who was hiding out in a third country. These truths need to be brought to remembrance before the U.S. military begins a war in North Korea under circumstances that nearly mirror those which existed prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq -- with the distinct difference being that you've shown us that you actually DO have nukes. It's been argued that Bush 43 would not have attacked Iraq if he thought Saddam had nukes. Donald tRump is totally devoid of rationale -- yea even the level of rationale that 43 had. Bush 43 also struck me as having more of a religious grounding than tRump.
I'm not sure how you feel about religion; but, I know that you like to celebrate North Korean holidays with shows of military might. That said, Christians celebrate the Epiphany on January 6th or the Sunday closest to it. I'll be at my church -- the Church of the Epiphany (a 10-minute walk from the White House) -- celebrating the Epiphany this Sunday. My bishop will also be doing her mandatory once-every-three-years visit to my church on January 7th. The Epiphany might have an Asian connection. It refers to when three "wise men" of magi traveled from "the east" to see the baby Jesus. He might have been 3.5 years old when they arrived. If so, then he was able to speak with them and impress them as he impressed the elders in the Jewish temple when he was 12. Theologians aren't certain as to just where these wise men came from, as they brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. We just know that they came from east of Israel and that they traveled for a considerable amount of time. As you stand your ground against 45, you show that wise men still come from the east.
Such wisdom and abdominal fortitude are currently lacking in the two governments that are headquartered in Washington, DC. Beginning in 1989, the U.S. has had three odd presidents -- 41, 43 and 45 -- each one more odd than the one before him. All three have also been Republicans. Bill Clinton (the 42nd president) and Barack Obama (the 44th president) have pulled the country back from a crisis or developing crisis. Clinton balanced the federal budget. Obama ended the Iraq War and oversaw our recovery from the economic collapse that began during 43's administration. We've gone from 41 fighting a short war to 43 fighting a long and protracted war in the same country to 45 now trying to start a war in your country using the same failed narrative as 43. If the pattern holds, then we can expect a Democratic president to fix the mess being created by tRump -- who hopefully won't get a second term. (If 45 were to die or get impeached and removed before January 2021, that would break the pattern by giving us GOP President Mike Pence as 46.)
I was bothered when, 10 or so years ago, Bush 43 refused to read an 18-page letter from then-President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Bush was telling President Ahmadinejad to cease and desist production of nuclear arms. Mr. Ahmadinejad chose not to; but; he sent a long letter to Bush explaining where he was coming from. Bush called it a diversion and refused to read it. I'd say that it's utterly foolish to refuse to reason with someone whom you're prepared to fight. If you must fight, it's imperative to know what you'll be fighting for. Even the harsh God that I believe in (the Father of Jesus Christ) has acted graciously enough to reason with those whom He is fully capable of destroying quite handily. I guess Bush 43 never read Isaiah 1:18. He was more foolish than his father but less foolish than tRump.
Republican presidents of this day and age can be compared to a man who foolishly fights any other man that even gives his wife a crooked look or who only struck the wife who deserved to get hit in return for her having hit him first. Democratic presidents, governors and mayors of this day and age are more like the man who avoids defending a foolish woman but is quite willing to provide for a well-behaved housewife. Of course, tRump is the husband who is going out to fight and defend foolishness -- albeit his own foolishness. Forty-one had a logical reason to fight Iraq. Forty-three had an illogical reason to return to Iraq. Forty-five has an even more illogical reason for fighting you. I don't fight to defend foolishness; nor do I support anyone who does. As it turns out, the billions of dollars that the U.S. spends fighting unjust wars draw money away from domestic issues like social services for the poor -- even the underpaid working poor. This begins to explain why Martin Luther King, Jr. said about 50 years ago that "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom". He spoke out against the Vietnam War. He was assassinated on April 4th, 1968.
One of the good things that Bush, Jr. did was to appoint a homelessness czar in 2002. Because of this federal appointment and the initiatives set forth by Phil Mangano, various American cities began to develop five- and 10-year plans for ending homelessness. Unfortunately, the tension between efforts to assist the poor on the one hand and capitalistic interests on the other hand would cause many of those efforts to fail. Yet, the various levels of government in the U.S. refuse to articulate any social theory, leaving myself and others to tease out the hurtful and capitalistic aspects of what government does.
As stated earlier, DC Government began working on its 10-year plan to end homelessness in 2004. Since then, the local government has spent approximately $2 billion on homelessness. The $215M that DC Government is spending in the current fiscal year on homeless services such as shelter and soup kitchens works out to almost $30,000 per homeless person -- with rent running around $24,000 per year. They're spending more to maintain people in shelter than it would cost to put them in homes. (To be fair, I'll say that the funding also includes money for transporting people to shelter and for at least one meal per day.) The crux of the issue is that the local government would rather spend over $200M per year (c. 1/70th of a $14B budget) on services that maintain the homeless (c. $160M in previous years) than to force greedy landlords and developers to bring the rent down. What's true about Washington, DC's social services is true about the social services in other major American cities. America's social services are subsidies to corporations and greedy businessmen. They're designed to "keep the natives from getting restless -- not to actually end the social ills that they claim to want to end. This truth is reinforced by the fact that some of those who ostensibly "work" on ending homelessness actually make $200,000 per year (more than three times the amount of money one needs to earn in order to afford to live in DC and eight times the local minimum wage). Some of the money that DC Government spends on homeless services comes from the federal government. DC is not in a state and lacks a state government from which to receive funding. A Second Korean War would, no doubt, draw much social service funding away from poor Washingtonians and other needy Americans. The American homeless population therefore has multiple reasons for not wanting this war to break out -- the apparent immorality on which the American case for war is built and the fact that it will take food out of the mouths of poor Americans.
This begs the question: "Why don't the poor people just go to work and support themselves???" Well, many of the poor actually DO work and support themselves as best they can. But their paychecks don't pay all of the bills; so, in addition to working 40 hours per week, they must spend a lot of time at the social service office. Some of the poor were offered substandard education that didn't prepare them for the workplace, which means that they can't get jobs in the city that educated them; but, better-educated folk from other cities can come and get the available jobs. Some went to jail or prison -- often for committing crimes of survival (or for helping the needy). Once a person leaves prison (having been there for multiple years), there sometimes are supports that help them to re-assimilate into society -- sometimes. That's not as true about jails across the country (where a person may spend up to a year). In some instances, a person's skills have become irrelevant in a society where technology is replacing people in more and more jobs. Still others, though they're intelligent and capable of adjusting to the ever-changing job market, are 50 and over; and, that makes them unattractive to employers who want to get a good 15 years of work out of them. There are some programs through which a person can fight age discrimination -- though I can't speak to their effectiveness. Some of the American poor do a lot of day labor. That is to say that they report to a temporary work agency that fishes them out to employers who might only need them to work for one day. Such work doesn't look all that good on a job application; and, the worker might still have difficulty landing a permanent job. There are all sorts of struggles which America's poor face. However, the governments that claim to want to alleviate poverty or to end homelessness try to formulate solutions from their ivory towers without letting the poor contribute to the planning process -- throughout the planning process.
I would suggest that people ask a much more relevant question: "Why, after all these years of working to reduce poverty and to end homelessness, has government not succeeded???" I've already answered the question earlier in this open letter. However, the American voters (and citizens of other countries as well) should ask this question to the governments of America -- starting with the feds. Too often people critique the homeless people whom they see, while they fail to question the doings of the government whose elected officials they voted for. That's why I'm on a campaign to point out to the general public some of what their government is doing that they might not know about. I hope to shift people's criticisms away from the poor who lack resources and toward the government that is mismanaging public resources. As a matter of fact, if we find out in May that DC had an increase in homeless people since 2017, I'll use that as fodder against a mayor who made addressing homelessness her pet project and who is up for re-election in June. As a matter of fact, I plan to make my run for DC mayor official after the June primaries, at which time the city will be able to better gauge the effectiveness of the mayor's plan. Whether I win or lose, I'll have a platform from which to tell the public about the ineffectiveness of its government and to force greater sensibility into the winner.
Being as in June we might be three months into a major war and have large war protests taking place in DC, there may be opportunities to force greater accountability from both governments in this town. You can almost bank on the fact that war protesters will use the suffering of Americans as a reason not to spend billions on war. There's no guarantee that non-violent protests in 2018 will do any more good than the non-violent protests against the Vietnam War or the Iraq War. Even so, I'm sure that people will try.
The local government is considerably less difficult to work with insomuch as the city council will likely find local dollars to replace the majority of war-induced (AND tax-plan induced) federal cuts. Still, something tells me that everything is going to be more difficult this time around than it was in the past. I'm guessing that we'll find out in May that there was an increase in DC's homeless population and that the war protests will bring hundreds of thousands of people of whom hundreds will remain in DC as homeless people. Mayor Muriel Bowser might appear to have failed at her pet project, which can bid well for my mayoral run. Regardless of how well or poorly Mayor Muriel Bowser does in her efforts to address homelessness during this campaign season, I have a sneaky suspicion that the soon-to-come uproar about the impending war will lead to people thinking more deeply and analytically about government effectiveness and accountability -- at all levels of government. This could translate into Washingtonians doing their homework and uncovering the governmental game that Bowser is part of. She might run unopposed in the Democratic Primary, forcing those who uncover her game thereafter to vote in a Republican or independent DC mayor for the first time ever. I'll decide by June 21st how wise it is for me to run as an independent. If it takes a war to make people think well, then fire away. War is a grat teacher and thought provoker.
There is at least one more topic that I should address before giving you "the big idea". The United States of America was established as a nation by the Europeans who exploited other peoples. The Native Americans (who some still incorrectly call "Indians", thereby continuing a 500-year old mistake) were mistreated by the European settlers who came here starting in 1492. Now many tribes live on reservations. Africans were brought here as slaves beginning in the 1600's. Slavery was ended in the 1860's and each Black freed man was promised 40 acres and a mule, which he never got. After slavery was ended, those who didn't like Black people having been freed created a system of Jim Crow laws through which they mistreated Blacks. Jim Crow laws were ended around 1970. In 1972 U.S. President Richard Nixon began mass incarceration of Blacks which continues to this day. Since the end of Jim Crow laws, Black men have have gone all the way from being forced to work for nothing as slaves (but at least having food and homes -- that they built at night under candlelight) to often having a hard time obtaining living-wage jobs that pay all of the bills and keep food on the table. Black women, over the past 50 years, have often been told no to work if they want to receive much-needed social services and that they may not have a man in the house -- not even the father(s) of their children. Unlike Native Americans, we didn't receive reservations. The closest that Blacks come to reservations are the ones that employers have about hiring us. Black Americans have become our opposite, due partly to government policies. Those who were forced to work are now denied work. Those who were once sold at market have become unmarketable in today's economy. Go figure. The vast majority of Americans would agree that Blacks were the victims during slavery and Jim Crow. Though we never got our 40 acres and a mule or even an effective program of social uplift, many Americans are quite willing to see Black Americans as the perpetrators now. That gives me an idea as to how I should advise poor, Black and homeless Americans throughout 2018.
I've already begun to tell homeless people and others that I foresee DC being flooded with protesters beginning this winter, as we get closer to a war with your country. I also tell them that there will likely be very deep cuts to social services beginning on October 1st, 2018. Between those two sets of concerns, there is the publishing of DC's homeless census in May and the Democratic Primary for an incumbent candidate who made addressing homelessness her pet project. I advise DC's homeless people to bear in mind that they'll have less social supports within the next nine months and to govern themselves accordingly. Though I don't advise them to commit crimes, I acknowledge that crimes of survival will likely skyrocket this fall. I remind them of how flash mobs of 40 or 50 people have stolen tons of necessities from supermarkets and that necessity is the mother (f***er) of invention. I talk about how the government decreasing social service funding and then locking up those who commit crimes of survival amounts to merely transferring the cost to a more expensive alternative. I also tell them of how Orlando, Florida had to stop arresting drug offenders about 20 years ago and begin giving them citations. The Orange County jail had gotten so full that the Health Department mandated that some people be let out of jail. The injustice system was bursting at the seams and had to let some people go. Something similar could happen in DC when it comes to protests. Then again, there are the extra-judicial executions of Kent State and of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. If tRump were to implement martial law, extra-judicial executions would be legal. The local homeless community is being primed for the coming crisis.
Now for the big idea:
Korean President Kim Jong Un,
Donald tRump is a proud man -- what of, I'm not sure. He is emotion (and all of its accompanying stupidity) in motion. He wants you to stop testing nuclear weapons; and, it stands to reason that he wants you to dismantle your nuclear program altogether. There is a way in which you can oblige partially, if only for a short while, and build international support for your perspective -- which is likely similar to the perspective of President Ahmadinejad. After garnering support from the majority of Americans who didn't vote for 45 and from many other nations in the world, you would then have the go-ahead to continue to grow your nuclear program which no American president should ever assume that he has the right to shut down.
I strongly suggest that you do a public reading of a list of indictments against the United States for its crimes against humanity the world over and how it treats its own poor. You can point out the hurtful aspects of capitalism, some of which are mentioned in this open letter. Please be sure to mention some facts about American homelessness. (Feel free to mention my name, the fact that I'm Black and the fact that I am smarter than tRump without attending a college or university -- though it's not really all that important that you mention me by name.) Tell tRump that it is on account of America's poor in general and/or me in particular that you've decided to suspend all missile tests for the foreseeable future. Emphasize that your reason has nothing to do with anything that tRump or his administration have said and demand that he invest in the social uplift of America's poor -- like another Black suggested during the lead-up to America's invasion of another Asian country in the 1960's. I can assure you that it would tear his heart to shreds to know that you respect the words of America's poor in general and/or myself in particular over him and his empty threats. I'm not afraid of him coming after me. He'd jump from the frying pan into the fire.
If you were to use that idea, then I can almost promise you that the war protesters would quote you as they inundate DC to tell the tRump regime not to start another major war. Other nations that have called out America's human rights violations might also rally behind you. I have no idea what your allies in Russia and China (who've already said that they would respond militarily to an American overreaction) are currently doing to rally their networks of allies to help them deal with the possibility of unjustified aggression from the U.S. Even so, I'll assume that they're making such preparations. Let's hope. If America is defeated in the impending war, maybe the U.S. Government will devote more of its attention thereafter to programs of social uplift -- starting with an infrastructure program to repair cities and highways that were damaged during World War III and they'll hire America's poor people for many of those jobs. Let's hope.
My name is Eric Jonathan Sheptock. I've advocated for Washington, DC's homeless community since mid-June 2006. In short, that means that I am one of a number of people who've approached government with the concerns of the homeless community and with ideas for decreasing homelessness. I personally have dealt primarily with the local government (DC Government), as opposed to the federal government (Washington). I've watched the homeless population go through a glitch pattern that DC Government refuses to have any meaningful conversation about, as it swung through a series of ups and downs -- reaching it's low of 5,757 people in 2007 after a high of 8,977 in 2005. We had 8,350 homeless people in 2016 and 7,473 in 2017, which was very close to our 2001 and 2002 numbers of 8,325 and 7,468 respectively. Long story short, we have a local government in the nation's capital who've said in 2004 that they wanted to end homelessness in 10 years but whose level of ineffectiveness at addressing poverty and homelessness is surpassed only by its unwillingness to discuss its failures and the return to where the local homeless census stood 15 years ago. With the 2016 and 2017 numbers each having been very close to the 2001 and 2002 numbers, if the 15-year pattern holds, we'll count almost 500 more homeless people this month than we counted in January 2017. Coincidentally, the foreign affairs of the federal government have also cycled back to where they were 15 years ago. That begins to explain why I've written this open letter to you.
I wasn't not under any illusion that this open letter would actually make it to your desk, being as the president of a young nation has more important things to do than to read the writings of an American homeless man. I figured that, in the off-chance that you actually DO read this open letter, I would lay out for you some of the truths about the United States that will give you the space to indict our federal government for crimes against its own people -- especially its poor people. Even if this open letter hadn't made its way to your desk, the American people who could become "collateral damage" in a war that begins with unwarranted American military aggression against your country got the chance to read it and become all the wiser. I've gone so far as to offer an alternative to another missile test which the U.S. Government falsely refers to as "provocations" by your government. I'm also aware of the possibility that writing a letter -- even an open letter -- to you might put me on America's terror watch list and cause the authorities to pay me a visit; as, they wouldn't have far to go anyway. That's a chance that I'm willing to take. It's a much lower risk than remaining in DC during a conflict that could burgeon into World War III if tRump were to overreact to your exercise of your sovereign right to perform missile tests, only to have China and Russia come to the defense of North Korea.
You, Mr. Kim, actually taught me an English word that I'd never heard when you referred to 45 as a "dotard". Newspapers gave the definition for this rarely-used word after you correctly referred to tRump as such. The term is quite fitting for the man [sic] that many Americans refuse to call "president". (Take notice of what I called you at the beginning of this letter.) As much as people that I know didn't like former president George Walker "W" Bush (aka: "Bush, Jr" or "Bush 43"), at least we respected him enough to call him "president". Now the very people who abhorred Bush 43 when he was in office are wishing we had him over tRump -- or better yet, that President Obama could have had a third term. That said, most Americans have less respect for Mr. tRump than you do.
Before I delve into what promises to be a long diatribe of American capitalism and poor governance or I describe what may be the simplest, cheapest and most effective measure for creating peace between our respective nations, I'll explain a bit more about myself. I was born in Atlantic City, NJ as Erick Gooden on February 15th, 1969 and will turn 49 next month. My birth mother, Malvenia Gooden (1943-2006) abused me throughout my first eight months of life. She fractured my skull when I was eight months old. She was never prosecuted; but, I went to a foster home until I was 5.5 years old in August 1974. I was then taken in by Rudy Sheptock (1932-2000) and his wife Joanne (1937-present). They adopted me a year later as Eric Jonathan Sheptock. They had seven kids and adopted 30. My brother Robert Philip "Bobby" Sheptock was actually born in Korea. My connections to Korea don't end there.
My father fought in the Korean War, having served in the U.S. Navy from 1950 to 1954. Naturally, I love my father, though I hardly expect you to look favorably upon his involvement in the Korean War. I don't put too much effort into understanding the causes of wars that occurred before I reached manhood in 1987. I know all too well that there are countless factors in the lead-up to any war -- including the third world war that could erupt in 2018 if the tRump administration continues its "provocations" by challenging the sovereignty of your nation. At any rate, I know that you have the good sense to ensure that you don't hold my awesome father's involvement in the Korean War against me. That said, I have brothers in the U.S. military right now (not Bobby); and, I hope that they don't get deployed to fight in this emerging conflict which is being manufactured by an administration that seeks to redefine global politics with a major war that they might not realize can very easily get out of their control and usher in the much-needed end to American imperialism -- after more than 70 of world domination by the U.S.
Being from a gambling city to which I returned briefly as an adult and Where tRump owned casinos, I can tell you something that probably gets said in every casino town. (I never developed a habit of gambling, though I've flirted with it a few times over the years.) The gambler-in-chief, on the other hand, is gambling with millions of lives in ways that might cause all of the allies that our two countries have in common to side with North Korea. When I returned to Atlantic City in 1994, I heard people say:
"Gambling is addictive because, if you're winning, you think your luck will stay the same; and, if you're losing, you think your luck will change." -- gambling town adage
It might be time for Imperial America's luck to change.
(Is is indictable treason for me to say that???)
You might wonder how other Americans feel about the matter of a Second Korean War and what it might lead to. I definitely can't speak for the nation as a whole. However, there have been several historical events that can give us an eye into what the majority of American's are likely to think when a critical mass of them realizes how terribly the Americans who didn't vote and the electoral college that (s)elected tRump did us in 2016. In the early 1950's, as we fought the First Korean War, an American congressman named Joseph McCarthy was accusing many Americans of being Communist sympathizers. He was eventually censured by Congress and lost his seat over his apparent dishonesty. However, McCarthy-ism has survived for more than 60 years, as Americans are conditioned to dislike Marxism, Communism and Socialism. A nation that prides itself in its level of freedom fails to realize that perpetuating the thinking of a man who was proven to have been a liar and also conditioning people to believe in a certain type of system doesn't amount to freedom. There's a certain irony in actually mandating that people believe that a free society is the best type of society, in trying to ensure that they adopt this belief by failing to teach them about the alternatives, in forcing one nation's brand of freedom on all other nations that we invade, in ignoring the devolution that has taken place in recently-freed societies and in hiding the widespread social ills of our own long-free society the whole while. Too many Americans fail to realize these things or that the only thing that's really free in the U.S. is the market and the only free people are those who have enough money to matter to the market.
The United States has been described as a "Christian nation" or "one nation under God"; but, from what I can tell, a majority of professing Christians in this country fail to acknowledge and might not realize that God is the biggest dictator of all and that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has major socialistic overtones. They still have some uncertainty as to whether the Father and son are one deity or two. (They're two with one sense of direction.) That speaks volumes to the level of ignorance that has been fostered by American schools, churches and broad society for the last 60 years -- with me having attended school prior to the quality of education dipping below an acceptable level. Some years ago, an American singing group named "En Vogue" put out a song that said, "Free your mind and the rest will follow". Americans have yet to do that. The American superstructures (religion, government, school etc) are screwing many of us with the American super fuctures -- the dumbing-down of America.
One of the great Americans of old told us that "Arguing with those who have renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead". Bearing that truth in mind, I don't expect that your attempts to reason with tRump will do much good. He's rationally dead, which leaves me hoping that he'll have the fatal heart attack that the world so terribly needs for him to have soon. Maybe the idea that I'll offer you will help to get us to that good place. As for the matter of how Americans think, it's worth noting that 62.9M Americans (representing 46% of those who voted in November 2016) chose tRump. Another 65.8M Americans (48% of voters) chose Hillary Clinton, with about 8M (6%) voting for an independent or third party candidate. Another 63M registered voters stayed home and the remaining 123M people were either too young or couldn't vote for some other reason -- such as having committed crimes of survival or some other crimes, possibly as a result of poor education and all that logically follows. Then the archaic electoral college handed tRump the victory through a process that I won't try to make sense of for you. If these numbers say anything, it is that almost one-third of people figure that ignoring an issue will make it go away and that almost half of those who weigh in make irrational choices. That's American democracy (err "dumb-ocracy") for you. I'm frustrated by these truths on a daily basis.
Ironically, it's the homeless men of Washington, DC that seem to be most in tune with just how ignorantly tRump's face-off with you is playing out. Then again, maybe it's not so ironic, given the fact that homeless men, by virtue of their lot in life, are forced to understand different grim realities that directly affect them -- more so than any other subset of the American population. These truths include them being unattractive to employers, possibly feeling a need to commit crimes in order to survive, having to worry constantly about the elimination of this or that social service and the prospect that housed people in this or that neighborhood will refuse to allow a social service to be set up in their neighborhood.
Well-to-do Americans oftentimes place blind faith in our national leaders and have an aversion to discussing bad news -- until we get attacked. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, many Americans in the 1940's seem to have accepted the internment of Japanese Americans. After the attacks of September 11th, 2001, many Americans seemed to have wanted a feeling of safety at any cost. In 2016 almost half of those who voted chose someone who touted stereotypes about Muslims and Mexicans, similar in fashion to how people re-elected Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944. This is true despite the fact that the U.S. has been called "the melting pot of the nations", with tRump's grandparents immigrating here from Bavaria (present-day Germany) in the 1880's.
It's safe to assume that well-to-do Americans will ignore the developing crisis until the U.S. military fires the first shots around March 19th, 2018 -- the 15-year anniversary of our invasion of Iraq. Homeless men, on the other hand, are neither the victims of rabid emotion nor under any illusion that life is a day in the park (though some of them sleep in the park and some have been arrested or cited for it). The fact that our lives are controlled by the grim realities of American capitalism makes it considerably easier for us to think about the ugly truths that others tend to ignore or avoid discussing. As I sit down to lunch with homeless men, I have frequent and deep conversations with them about the reality of another major war. We talk about the lack of principle from the American side of the current conflict and about how similar it is to the lead-up to the Iraq War 15 years ago.
In one recent conversation I pointed out that, during the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the White House press secretary repeatedly said, "We don't want to depose Saddam Hussein. We just want to get him out of Kuwait". Saddam had already killed 180,000 Kurds during an act of ethnic cleansing in 1982. His ethnic cleansing was raised during the Iraq War (which began on 3/19/2003) as a reason for which he needed to be deposed. If he did such terrible things in 1982, we should have deposed him in 1991 at the latest -- at least if morality and the removal of a rogue leader were the TRUE motives of the U.S. Government. The Persian Gulf War lasted 28 days. America lost 130 soldiers, mostly from friendly fire. (With friends like that, who needs enemies??? .....or friends, for that matter???) The world society agreed with the American mission at that time. We didn't finish the job. General Norman "Stormin' Norman" Schwartzkoff retired shortly after the Persian Gulf War. Someone who fought in that war told me that the timing of Stormin' Norman's retirement was due to his disappointment about not being allowed to finish the job. We went back to Iraq in 2003 and began a much longer, much more expensive war for which we didn't have as much international support. It looked less like an American reaction to Saddam's supposed human rights violations which date back to the early 80's and more like an effort to get American oil from under Iraqi soil. Interestingly enough, Saddam accused the Kuwaitis of slant drilling and stealing his oil. Homeless men discuss these and similar matters over lunch or as we watch the news together. We are not blindly accepting whatever our government does.
Poor Americans -- even those who live in run-down houses and poorly-maintained government apartments -- tend to understand it when I tell them that it makes absolutely no sense for the U.S. Government to fight another country because they don't like that country's weapons. We understand that the easiest way to ensure that we are not attacked with someone's weapon is not to "provoke" the weapon's owner. America and the bigger world need more of a 'hood (poor neighborhood) mentality in the White House. Well-off people take a bit longer to come around and they try to keep any conversations about such basic sensibilities short. I'm convinced that it is a homeless man's bad situation that causes him to have the uncanny but very relevant ability to think at length about the grim realities of life. It also helps that he's not predisposed to emotion either. Affluent Americans are lagging behind in this respect -- much like the affluent Americans who committed suicide when the stock market crashed in 1929. We homeless men sometimes talk about the mental weakness of housed people who go ballistic during an economic downturn like the one we had in the fall of 2008 -- some men killing their entire families, rather than become homeless. I'm sure that, in most cases, it's the rigors and stigmas associated with homelessness that cause middle-class Americans to prefer death over homelessness. In at least a few instances, it might be that a person who just had their fall from grace realizes that they might soon be sleeping in a shelter next to people whom they've looked down on and disparaged in the past. The fact remains that homeless men have the strong character and resilience that are necessary in these perilous times. We understand that the best way to ensure that Korea doesn't attack America is for us not to attack or threaten YOU.
It may please you to know that even the Republican establishment that, in the fall of 2015, begged tRump to continue his candidacy as a Republican and not to change parties or run as an independent is now willing to question the sanity of THEIR candidate -- the one that THEY strove so hard to retain. When retaining tRump meant that the GOP would regain the White House, they were willing to tolerate his madness. Now that 45's words are pushing us toward a major war and now that removing him through impeachment or a declaration that he's unfit to serve (Article 25) would cause the GOP to retain the White House through a Pence presidency, the Republicans are acknowledging tRump's mental illness. For the GOP it's not a matter of morality, religion, love of country or love of innocents. They're playing pan-partisan politics all the way to World War III and only seeking to remove the American madman when it's convenient for their political party.
I recently read an article from an academic who is privy to meetings about our national security. He claims that North Korea threatened the United States first and that dictators usually act on their threats. He used that set of suppositions to support the claim that the United States must prevent North Korea from further developing its nuclear program -- even if it means going to war. As I shared the article on Facebook, I expressed doubt about the claim that North Korea threatened the U.S. first. This tit-for-tat has been going on since your father was alive. I honestly don't know where it started; and, I'm not quick to say that my nation is in the right. We've been in the wrong in times past -- most definitely. So, I was elated when I read about your New year's Day speech in which you made it clear that you would not attack the United States unless you were threatened by our government and thereby forced to defend your nation. If dictators are known to keep their word, then there you have it. A dictator has said that he won't attack without American "provocations". Sadly, some American media are so stupid as to classify your statement about having the nuclear button on your desk as a threat. I don't take that to be a threat, but a fair warning. In all honesty, tRump saying that he'll blow North Korea off of the map (civilians and all) with "fire and fury" is more of a threat than anything that you've said; but tRump supporters seem to be fine with that. He responded to your fair warning by claiming that "his nuclear button is bigger and actually works", in effect beginning what Americans often refer to as a "pissing contest".
His tweet also accused you of starving your people. Being blessed (or cursed) with a good memory, I recall Bush 43 using the exact same narrative as he accused Saddam Hussein of starving his people in order to invest in the military. Bush, Jr. conveniently forgot to mention that his father completely destroyed the Iraqi military, leaving Saddam to make a difficult choice: Death by malnutrition and starvation, death by a neighboring country's military or death by America??? By the way, America's homeless people sometimes have to make difficult choices: Go to work and sleep outside or line up for shelter by 2 PM to ensure that you get a bed??? Either choice has negative consequences. Saddam understood that. America's homeless people understand that. Bush, though less emotional and crazy than tRump, played to America's emotions by only telling the part of the story that would garner support for his unjust war.
It's also important to realize that the tRump administration and its supporters across this country tend to use irrational sensationalism and hyperbole to build support for an attack of your country -- which is not unlike the emotional populism and demagoguery that contributed to 45 becoming the current White House resident. It's also closely related to the failure of Americans to realize that a nation that has promoted male-female equality for almost 50 years needs to require women to be as mentally strong and rational as men -- to require that women be strong enough to report sexual harassment and assault within five years (or by age 25 if they were a child at the time of the offense), not to wait a full 40 years -- only coming out when the man is rising to prominence (a method that failed miserably when it came to tRump). That still represents a low bar; but, it brings us a bit closer to real equality by limiting how long a woman can play the victim and requiring her to implement the solutions that women often tell men not to implement. Yes, it's true that American women sometimes tell a solution-oriented man, "Don't solve it; just listen". I've always thought that was quite idiotic. I can support equality that doesn't suppress or eliminate rational thought and I see the majority of American men as having been so weak as to allow their way of thinking to be totally suppressed in lieu of emotion. The appalling truth is that nearly 50 years of male-female equality have led to a loss of rationale in the public discourse -- it having been replaced with emotion -- thus tRump.
The article also points out the valid reasons that you have for not trusting the American Government. It explains that other nations have given up their nuclear programs, only to be attacked by the U.S. Of course, it mentions Iraq -- a nation that we've attacked twice during my adult life. After watching the Persian Gulf War play itself out in 1991, I paid attention during the lead-up to the Iraq War from September 2002 to March 19th, 2003. I noticed that, for five of those six months, then-secretary of state General Colin Powell said that Saddam Hussein didn't have any weapons of mass destruction. He changed his tune in the final month, which suggests that Dick Cheney twisted his arm. During the war, we would learn that Saddam actually did not have any WMD's and that General Colin Powell should have stood his ground -- the Valerie Plame outing notwithstanding. Seeing what the U.S. Government does to nations that lack or dismantle nuclear programs, it makes sense for you to hold your ground. Nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation discussions aside, it just doesn't make sense for anyone at any level of existence to think that they can tell an enemy what weapons to fight them with. Everyday Americans used to say, "There's no such thing as a fair fight", or that, "All is fair in love and war". Our supposed elites seem to have fallen out of touch with this basic truth. Common sense has become a thing of the past in America; and, it might take the homeless men of America to make sense common again. Then again, it might take a third world war.
I've also noticed that the United States starts wars against various problems which it then ends up having more of. Though we didn't call it a war, the U.S. fought a war against alcohol in the 1920's -- during Prohibition. We fought the likes of Al Capone. The government lost and alcohol was legalized again. During Prohibition, people drank more than they had previously. You might say that we made war against world war in the 1940's, as the United Nations was established. We learned that World War I was not big enough and bad enough to discourage nations from letting things get that out of hand again. We learned that we needed to take active steps to prevent another world war. The war against world war might be lost in two months or so. In the 1960's we had what President Lyndon B. Johnson called "the War on Poverty". America now has more poverty. In the 1980's Reagan began "the War on Drugs" -- more like "the War OF Drugs". We now have more drugs and the nation is experiencing an opioid crisis. In the 2000's we began the "War on Terror" under Bush 43. There is now more terror for us to fear.
That's an interesting topic, to say the least. The U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. We didn't pay Saddam's border patrol. They went to paying jobs, so that they could feed their families. The borders were open for anyone to enter Iraq from neighboring countries. We know that Al Qaeda in Iraq was set up in 2004 with Abu Musab Al Zarqawi as its leader. The U.S. military caught Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi in 2004, determined that he was only a street thug, that he wasn't military business and let him go. We killed Abu Musab Al Zarqawi in June 2006. The remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq took eight years to regroup and made their debut in 2014 as ISIS -- with Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi as their leader. This string of events speaks volumes to why Bush 41 (Bush, Sr.) decided not to depose Saddam. It also highlights the ill-preparedness of his son in 2003. All things considered, America did more to create terror than it did to end it. We would end up decimating two countries, only to find Osama Bin Laden in a third -- Pakistan. What's more is that it didn't take a war in nuclear-armed Pakistan to get Bin Laden. It took two helicopters of special forces (of which one went down before reaching Bin Laden's home). America began two devastating wars in two countries that did nothing to us and we eventually got the person that it was right for us to kill and who was hiding out in a third country. These truths need to be brought to remembrance before the U.S. military begins a war in North Korea under circumstances that nearly mirror those which existed prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq -- with the distinct difference being that you've shown us that you actually DO have nukes. It's been argued that Bush 43 would not have attacked Iraq if he thought Saddam had nukes. Donald tRump is totally devoid of rationale -- yea even the level of rationale that 43 had. Bush 43 also struck me as having more of a religious grounding than tRump.
I'm not sure how you feel about religion; but, I know that you like to celebrate North Korean holidays with shows of military might. That said, Christians celebrate the Epiphany on January 6th or the Sunday closest to it. I'll be at my church -- the Church of the Epiphany (a 10-minute walk from the White House) -- celebrating the Epiphany this Sunday. My bishop will also be doing her mandatory once-every-three-years visit to my church on January 7th. The Epiphany might have an Asian connection. It refers to when three "wise men" of magi traveled from "the east" to see the baby Jesus. He might have been 3.5 years old when they arrived. If so, then he was able to speak with them and impress them as he impressed the elders in the Jewish temple when he was 12. Theologians aren't certain as to just where these wise men came from, as they brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. We just know that they came from east of Israel and that they traveled for a considerable amount of time. As you stand your ground against 45, you show that wise men still come from the east.
Such wisdom and abdominal fortitude are currently lacking in the two governments that are headquartered in Washington, DC. Beginning in 1989, the U.S. has had three odd presidents -- 41, 43 and 45 -- each one more odd than the one before him. All three have also been Republicans. Bill Clinton (the 42nd president) and Barack Obama (the 44th president) have pulled the country back from a crisis or developing crisis. Clinton balanced the federal budget. Obama ended the Iraq War and oversaw our recovery from the economic collapse that began during 43's administration. We've gone from 41 fighting a short war to 43 fighting a long and protracted war in the same country to 45 now trying to start a war in your country using the same failed narrative as 43. If the pattern holds, then we can expect a Democratic president to fix the mess being created by tRump -- who hopefully won't get a second term. (If 45 were to die or get impeached and removed before January 2021, that would break the pattern by giving us GOP President Mike Pence as 46.)
I was bothered when, 10 or so years ago, Bush 43 refused to read an 18-page letter from then-President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Bush was telling President Ahmadinejad to cease and desist production of nuclear arms. Mr. Ahmadinejad chose not to; but; he sent a long letter to Bush explaining where he was coming from. Bush called it a diversion and refused to read it. I'd say that it's utterly foolish to refuse to reason with someone whom you're prepared to fight. If you must fight, it's imperative to know what you'll be fighting for. Even the harsh God that I believe in (the Father of Jesus Christ) has acted graciously enough to reason with those whom He is fully capable of destroying quite handily. I guess Bush 43 never read Isaiah 1:18. He was more foolish than his father but less foolish than tRump.
Republican presidents of this day and age can be compared to a man who foolishly fights any other man that even gives his wife a crooked look or who only struck the wife who deserved to get hit in return for her having hit him first. Democratic presidents, governors and mayors of this day and age are more like the man who avoids defending a foolish woman but is quite willing to provide for a well-behaved housewife. Of course, tRump is the husband who is going out to fight and defend foolishness -- albeit his own foolishness. Forty-one had a logical reason to fight Iraq. Forty-three had an illogical reason to return to Iraq. Forty-five has an even more illogical reason for fighting you. I don't fight to defend foolishness; nor do I support anyone who does. As it turns out, the billions of dollars that the U.S. spends fighting unjust wars draw money away from domestic issues like social services for the poor -- even the underpaid working poor. This begins to explain why Martin Luther King, Jr. said about 50 years ago that "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom". He spoke out against the Vietnam War. He was assassinated on April 4th, 1968.
One of the good things that Bush, Jr. did was to appoint a homelessness czar in 2002. Because of this federal appointment and the initiatives set forth by Phil Mangano, various American cities began to develop five- and 10-year plans for ending homelessness. Unfortunately, the tension between efforts to assist the poor on the one hand and capitalistic interests on the other hand would cause many of those efforts to fail. Yet, the various levels of government in the U.S. refuse to articulate any social theory, leaving myself and others to tease out the hurtful and capitalistic aspects of what government does.
As stated earlier, DC Government began working on its 10-year plan to end homelessness in 2004. Since then, the local government has spent approximately $2 billion on homelessness. The $215M that DC Government is spending in the current fiscal year on homeless services such as shelter and soup kitchens works out to almost $30,000 per homeless person -- with rent running around $24,000 per year. They're spending more to maintain people in shelter than it would cost to put them in homes. (To be fair, I'll say that the funding also includes money for transporting people to shelter and for at least one meal per day.) The crux of the issue is that the local government would rather spend over $200M per year (c. 1/70th of a $14B budget) on services that maintain the homeless (c. $160M in previous years) than to force greedy landlords and developers to bring the rent down. What's true about Washington, DC's social services is true about the social services in other major American cities. America's social services are subsidies to corporations and greedy businessmen. They're designed to "keep the natives from getting restless -- not to actually end the social ills that they claim to want to end. This truth is reinforced by the fact that some of those who ostensibly "work" on ending homelessness actually make $200,000 per year (more than three times the amount of money one needs to earn in order to afford to live in DC and eight times the local minimum wage). Some of the money that DC Government spends on homeless services comes from the federal government. DC is not in a state and lacks a state government from which to receive funding. A Second Korean War would, no doubt, draw much social service funding away from poor Washingtonians and other needy Americans. The American homeless population therefore has multiple reasons for not wanting this war to break out -- the apparent immorality on which the American case for war is built and the fact that it will take food out of the mouths of poor Americans.
This begs the question: "Why don't the poor people just go to work and support themselves???" Well, many of the poor actually DO work and support themselves as best they can. But their paychecks don't pay all of the bills; so, in addition to working 40 hours per week, they must spend a lot of time at the social service office. Some of the poor were offered substandard education that didn't prepare them for the workplace, which means that they can't get jobs in the city that educated them; but, better-educated folk from other cities can come and get the available jobs. Some went to jail or prison -- often for committing crimes of survival (or for helping the needy). Once a person leaves prison (having been there for multiple years), there sometimes are supports that help them to re-assimilate into society -- sometimes. That's not as true about jails across the country (where a person may spend up to a year). In some instances, a person's skills have become irrelevant in a society where technology is replacing people in more and more jobs. Still others, though they're intelligent and capable of adjusting to the ever-changing job market, are 50 and over; and, that makes them unattractive to employers who want to get a good 15 years of work out of them. There are some programs through which a person can fight age discrimination -- though I can't speak to their effectiveness. Some of the American poor do a lot of day labor. That is to say that they report to a temporary work agency that fishes them out to employers who might only need them to work for one day. Such work doesn't look all that good on a job application; and, the worker might still have difficulty landing a permanent job. There are all sorts of struggles which America's poor face. However, the governments that claim to want to alleviate poverty or to end homelessness try to formulate solutions from their ivory towers without letting the poor contribute to the planning process -- throughout the planning process.
I would suggest that people ask a much more relevant question: "Why, after all these years of working to reduce poverty and to end homelessness, has government not succeeded???" I've already answered the question earlier in this open letter. However, the American voters (and citizens of other countries as well) should ask this question to the governments of America -- starting with the feds. Too often people critique the homeless people whom they see, while they fail to question the doings of the government whose elected officials they voted for. That's why I'm on a campaign to point out to the general public some of what their government is doing that they might not know about. I hope to shift people's criticisms away from the poor who lack resources and toward the government that is mismanaging public resources. As a matter of fact, if we find out in May that DC had an increase in homeless people since 2017, I'll use that as fodder against a mayor who made addressing homelessness her pet project and who is up for re-election in June. As a matter of fact, I plan to make my run for DC mayor official after the June primaries, at which time the city will be able to better gauge the effectiveness of the mayor's plan. Whether I win or lose, I'll have a platform from which to tell the public about the ineffectiveness of its government and to force greater sensibility into the winner.
Being as in June we might be three months into a major war and have large war protests taking place in DC, there may be opportunities to force greater accountability from both governments in this town. You can almost bank on the fact that war protesters will use the suffering of Americans as a reason not to spend billions on war. There's no guarantee that non-violent protests in 2018 will do any more good than the non-violent protests against the Vietnam War or the Iraq War. Even so, I'm sure that people will try.
The local government is considerably less difficult to work with insomuch as the city council will likely find local dollars to replace the majority of war-induced (AND tax-plan induced) federal cuts. Still, something tells me that everything is going to be more difficult this time around than it was in the past. I'm guessing that we'll find out in May that there was an increase in DC's homeless population and that the war protests will bring hundreds of thousands of people of whom hundreds will remain in DC as homeless people. Mayor Muriel Bowser might appear to have failed at her pet project, which can bid well for my mayoral run. Regardless of how well or poorly Mayor Muriel Bowser does in her efforts to address homelessness during this campaign season, I have a sneaky suspicion that the soon-to-come uproar about the impending war will lead to people thinking more deeply and analytically about government effectiveness and accountability -- at all levels of government. This could translate into Washingtonians doing their homework and uncovering the governmental game that Bowser is part of. She might run unopposed in the Democratic Primary, forcing those who uncover her game thereafter to vote in a Republican or independent DC mayor for the first time ever. I'll decide by June 21st how wise it is for me to run as an independent. If it takes a war to make people think well, then fire away. War is a grat teacher and thought provoker.
There is at least one more topic that I should address before giving you "the big idea". The United States of America was established as a nation by the Europeans who exploited other peoples. The Native Americans (who some still incorrectly call "Indians", thereby continuing a 500-year old mistake) were mistreated by the European settlers who came here starting in 1492. Now many tribes live on reservations. Africans were brought here as slaves beginning in the 1600's. Slavery was ended in the 1860's and each Black freed man was promised 40 acres and a mule, which he never got. After slavery was ended, those who didn't like Black people having been freed created a system of Jim Crow laws through which they mistreated Blacks. Jim Crow laws were ended around 1970. In 1972 U.S. President Richard Nixon began mass incarceration of Blacks which continues to this day. Since the end of Jim Crow laws, Black men have have gone all the way from being forced to work for nothing as slaves (but at least having food and homes -- that they built at night under candlelight) to often having a hard time obtaining living-wage jobs that pay all of the bills and keep food on the table. Black women, over the past 50 years, have often been told no to work if they want to receive much-needed social services and that they may not have a man in the house -- not even the father(s) of their children. Unlike Native Americans, we didn't receive reservations. The closest that Blacks come to reservations are the ones that employers have about hiring us. Black Americans have become our opposite, due partly to government policies. Those who were forced to work are now denied work. Those who were once sold at market have become unmarketable in today's economy. Go figure. The vast majority of Americans would agree that Blacks were the victims during slavery and Jim Crow. Though we never got our 40 acres and a mule or even an effective program of social uplift, many Americans are quite willing to see Black Americans as the perpetrators now. That gives me an idea as to how I should advise poor, Black and homeless Americans throughout 2018.
I've already begun to tell homeless people and others that I foresee DC being flooded with protesters beginning this winter, as we get closer to a war with your country. I also tell them that there will likely be very deep cuts to social services beginning on October 1st, 2018. Between those two sets of concerns, there is the publishing of DC's homeless census in May and the Democratic Primary for an incumbent candidate who made addressing homelessness her pet project. I advise DC's homeless people to bear in mind that they'll have less social supports within the next nine months and to govern themselves accordingly. Though I don't advise them to commit crimes, I acknowledge that crimes of survival will likely skyrocket this fall. I remind them of how flash mobs of 40 or 50 people have stolen tons of necessities from supermarkets and that necessity is the mother (f***er) of invention. I talk about how the government decreasing social service funding and then locking up those who commit crimes of survival amounts to merely transferring the cost to a more expensive alternative. I also tell them of how Orlando, Florida had to stop arresting drug offenders about 20 years ago and begin giving them citations. The Orange County jail had gotten so full that the Health Department mandated that some people be let out of jail. The injustice system was bursting at the seams and had to let some people go. Something similar could happen in DC when it comes to protests. Then again, there are the extra-judicial executions of Kent State and of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. If tRump were to implement martial law, extra-judicial executions would be legal. The local homeless community is being primed for the coming crisis.
Now for the big idea:
Korean President Kim Jong Un,
Donald tRump is a proud man -- what of, I'm not sure. He is emotion (and all of its accompanying stupidity) in motion. He wants you to stop testing nuclear weapons; and, it stands to reason that he wants you to dismantle your nuclear program altogether. There is a way in which you can oblige partially, if only for a short while, and build international support for your perspective -- which is likely similar to the perspective of President Ahmadinejad. After garnering support from the majority of Americans who didn't vote for 45 and from many other nations in the world, you would then have the go-ahead to continue to grow your nuclear program which no American president should ever assume that he has the right to shut down.
I strongly suggest that you do a public reading of a list of indictments against the United States for its crimes against humanity the world over and how it treats its own poor. You can point out the hurtful aspects of capitalism, some of which are mentioned in this open letter. Please be sure to mention some facts about American homelessness. (Feel free to mention my name, the fact that I'm Black and the fact that I am smarter than tRump without attending a college or university -- though it's not really all that important that you mention me by name.) Tell tRump that it is on account of America's poor in general and/or me in particular that you've decided to suspend all missile tests for the foreseeable future. Emphasize that your reason has nothing to do with anything that tRump or his administration have said and demand that he invest in the social uplift of America's poor -- like another Black suggested during the lead-up to America's invasion of another Asian country in the 1960's. I can assure you that it would tear his heart to shreds to know that you respect the words of America's poor in general and/or myself in particular over him and his empty threats. I'm not afraid of him coming after me. He'd jump from the frying pan into the fire.
If you were to use that idea, then I can almost promise you that the war protesters would quote you as they inundate DC to tell the tRump regime not to start another major war. Other nations that have called out America's human rights violations might also rally behind you. I have no idea what your allies in Russia and China (who've already said that they would respond militarily to an American overreaction) are currently doing to rally their networks of allies to help them deal with the possibility of unjustified aggression from the U.S. Even so, I'll assume that they're making such preparations. Let's hope. If America is defeated in the impending war, maybe the U.S. Government will devote more of its attention thereafter to programs of social uplift -- starting with an infrastructure program to repair cities and highways that were damaged during World War III and they'll hire America's poor people for many of those jobs. Let's hope.
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