Mr. President,
I’ve been told, more times than I can count, that I “just hate you.” That’s not true.
I hate some of the things you’ve said and done. I hate the damage certain choices have caused, to our institutions, to our alliances, and to the way Americans now speak to one another. But I do not hate you as a person. In fact, I think I understand something about you that both your most devoted supporters and your most committed critics often miss:
You want to make America great. And you want to be loved.
I’m writing this because I believe both are still possible, but not through the usual path of winning the next fight, humiliating the next opponent, or extracting the next “big price.” Greatness doesn’t come from dominance. It comes from service, especially service that costs you something.
Your supporters online have challenged me and said there is nothing you could do to make me support you.
That is also not true.
There are things you could do, real, concrete, measurable things, that would make even people like me say: “I disagree with him on plenty, but he did something historic. He earned it.”
My grandmother used to speak of Franklin Delano Roosevelt with awe. Not because he was perfect. Not because everyone agreed with him. But because he reached into the suffering of ordinary families and built a government that finally looked like it could see them.
You could be even more universally respected than FDR.
Here is how.
Start by turning your focus away from the performance of power and toward the protection of people, especially the people who cannot hire lawyers, buy politicians, or wait out hard times.
Cap credit card interest at ten percent.
You called for a one-year ten-percent cap and asked Congress to enact it. Now do it. Not as a press-release promise, do it as a sustained, public, relentless fight. Americans are being bled by compounding interest and “late fee” traps that punish stress and misfortune. Families can’t build stability while being harvested by usury dressed up as finance.
Then do something even bigger: guarantee healthcare.
Call it Medicare for All, call it American Care, call it whatever you want. But make the promise real: if you are an American, you can see a doctor without fear of bankruptcy. That single act would free entrepreneurs to take risks, parents to breathe, and workers to leave abusive jobs without losing the ability to treat a sick child. It would be the most pro-family, pro-worker, pro-business reform of our lifetime.
And if you did it, you would break the political map in half, in the best way.
Now do the thing that would prove you mean “law and order” as a principle, not a slogan:
Put the body cameras on. Take the masks off.
If federal officers need protection, protect them, with training, with resources, with clear policies, with secure procedures for legitimate threats. But do not protect government power with anonymity. In a free country, the state’s use of force must be accountable to the public.
Body cameras can help protect officers from false claims and protect civilians from abuses that should never happen. Research on their effects on force and complaints is mixed. Visible identification can also support accountability. It can lower the temperature. It can reduce panic. It can reduce escalation. It tells the country: we don’t need fear to do our jobs, we need professionalism.
And then, Mr. President, stop attacking the Constitution.
Stop treating the press like an enemy to be punished. Stop treating prosecutors like obstacles to be crushed. Stop treating elections as legitimate only when you win. Stop speaking as if the law is a tool for loyalty, rather than a framework for restraint.
The Constitution is not a nuisance. It is the reason this country is worth leading.
Here’s the hard truth I suspect you already know: the game is rigged for the wealthy.
You’ve said versions of that yourself over the years. You’ve pointed at the system and called it unfair. You’ve described the way elite networks protect their own. You’re not wrong about that part.
So I’m asking you, man to man, citizen to president, do something that takes real courage:
Turn on your wealthy pretend friends.
Because the truth is: they don’t love you. Not really. They use you. They flatter you. They profit from you. And they will discard you the moment you stop serving their interests.
But your base, your working-class supporters, have put out for you. They’ve defended you. They’ve carried water for you. They’ve taken heat in their workplaces and families for you. They have given you loyalty that most leaders never earn.
Pay them back.
Go one step beyond FDR: give us a thirty-two-hour work week.
Not as a fantasy, but as a national project: a modern economy should not require people to burn out to survive. Productivity has risen. Corporate profits have risen. Executive compensation has risen. But the average family is still exhausted, still juggling, still drowning.
You want a legacy? Give people their lives back.
And yes, someone has to pay for it.
It should not be the waitress. It should not be the warehouse worker. It should not be the nurse. It should not be the small-town cop. It should not be the family trying to keep the lights on.
It should be the people and institutions who have spent decades extracting wealth from everyone else while calling it “the market.”
If you do these things, if you choose to be the president who takes on predatory credit, healthcare profiteering, anonymous state force, constitutional erosion, and elite rigging, you won’t need to demand monuments.
You will earn them.
Because you don’t build monuments for yourself. History tears those down. The only monuments that survive are the ones people build out of gratitude.
Make America great by making Americans safer, freer, healthier, and more secure.
Make us love you by being brave enough to disappoint the people who never loved you in the first place.
Protect our republic.
Be the greatest president this country has ever had.
You can still choose that path.
Respectfully,
A citizen who refuses to give up on America
Executive Dysfunction Weekly (EDW)
