#Letters to Presidents
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Have you ever written a letter to a president and got a response?
I've been a Presidential history nerd since I was a little kid. I don't know when I first became interested in the Presidents or what specifically piqued that interest, but I know that I can't remember a time where it wasn't something I wanted to learn everything I could possible learn about it. So when we'd go to the school library in elementary school, my friends would check out age-appropriate kids books and I would check out full-fledged Presidential biographies.
So, yes, I absolutely wrote letters to Presidents and I still have some of the responses I received. As a kid, I sent a letter to the White House whenever there was a new President because I never forgot what happened the first time I wrote to a President. I was probably 7 or 8 years old and back when the phone companies would publish yellow pages and white pages, they would have sections with contact information for government officials. I saw that there was an address for the White House (1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW), so I wrote a letter to President Reagan. I have no idea what I wrote at the time, but I remember that I got a big envelope from the White House with a little note written on fancy paper with the Presidential seal and a signed photo of the President, as well as a little booklet about the White House. I don't have that first letter from Reagan, but after he left office, I had learned about the Presidential Libraries and the fact that former Presidents had post-Presidential offices. I wrote to former President Reagan at his office in Los Angeles and received pretty much the same thing I had been sent while he was still in office. I do still have that:
I wrote to President George H.W. Bush and President Clinton when they were in the White House, too. President Bush sent a letter and photo and President Clinton sent a photo:
Those were the last incumbent Presidents that I wrote to while they were in the White House. I turned 13 years old when President Clinton took office in 1993 (and I mean that literally -- believe it or not, my birthday is Inauguration Day) and while I was still interested in Presidential history, I was also interested in girls, so I kind of grew out of the letter-writing. But when I was a teenager, I did also write to former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter at their post-Presidential offices. Sadly, I didn't get around to writing to former President Nixon before he died in 1994, so I never received anything from him. I regret that I didn't write to him in time because that's around the time I wrote to former Presidents Ford and Carter.
But President Ford and President Carter really made my nerdy letter writing all worthwhile. The letters and photos I received from President Reagan, President Bush, and President Clinton were all signed by an auto-pen, as you would expect for someone responding to as much mail as the President of the United States does.
However, President Ford and President Carter sent me photos with their actual autographs! I remember Ford sent some packets of information about himself and a copy of an interview where he answered a bunch of questions about stuff that kids might be interested in. Carter also sent something like that, as well as a folder with information about the Carter Center and the work it does around the world. But the coolest thing to receive were the photos with their genuine autographs on them. I took advantage of that and actually wrote to President Ford several times when I was a teenager (I don't know why I seem to have written to President Carter only once) in hopes that his office would send me more autographs and they did!
Looking back, I wish I never would have grown out of writing letters to Presidents because those are all really cool little souvenirs, especially for a Presidential history fanatic. It would have been fun to have similar things from other Presidents. But if you have a kid or if you are a kid (if you are a kid, I sure hope you have parental permission to read my blog because I say bad words sometimes) with interest in the Presidents/Presidential history, it's really fun to write to the President or former President and get something back. At one point, you could just drop a letter in the mail addressed to "THE PRESIDENT, Washington, D.C.) and it would be delivered to the incumbent in the White House, but I'm not sure if they do that anymore. But it's super easy to find the mailing address to the White House or to the post-Presidential offices of former Presidents online. Presidents and former Presidents have franking privileges, so it's also cool to get a big envelope with a President's signature in the place of stamps. If you're a teacher of younger kids who are learning about the Presidents or Presidency, it's also a cool little project to do. When I was running afterschool programs many (way too many) years ago, I did that with my students and they all received photos from the President at the time (George W. Bush), along with a letter that was addressed to the entire group as a whole.
#History#Presidents#Presidential History#Presidency#Ronald Reagan#President Reagan#George H.W. Bush#President Bush#Bush 41#Bill Clinton#President Clinton#Gerald Ford#Gerald R. Ford#President Ford#Jimmy Carter#President Carter#Presidential Autographs#Presidential Signatures#Presidential Letters#Letters to Presidents#Post-Presidency#Presidential Libraries#POTUS#Presidential Souvenirs#White House#White House History
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A mother's word for word transcription of the imaginary phone call her four-year-old made to Santa Claus in 1911.
(source: The Harbor Beach Times, December 22, 1911.)
Through some outrageous case of serendipity I found a recording of another phone call this same child made 60 years later. Though I have to say his choice of conversational partner is a definite downgrade from the first call.
#I've started using 'our bees are all dead' as my standard filler during lulls in conversation#and no I am not kidding#that is actually 64 year old George Arthur Lincoln in the recording#I'm writing up a bio of him that will hopefully be up within a few days#because this kid grew up to be involved in Forrest Gump levels of 20th century historical events#he was the youngest american general in wwii and was involved in the strategy of d-day and the planned invasion of Japan#he was at yalta and potsdam#he started a social sciences department at West Point#which resulted in his students being called commies because why should soldiers study culture and economics instead of shoot gun at thing#he ended up as the director of the office of emergency preparedness while nixon was president - hence the phone call#this poor man had to sit through so many meetings with Henry Kissinger#his younger brother (Waunce from the letter) was also a general#they were known as 'big abe' and 'little abe'
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i used to be into wax sealing like 5 years ago i didn’t even write letters i was just obsessed with stationary (is it stationery idk) and i thought it was fun
anyway i bought a new resin for my 3D printer that’s supposed to be high-temp resistant bc in the past i would try to print my own stamps but they just stuck to the wax, but now it looks like i can actually make my own stamps so here’s what that looks like lol
#shadow the hedgehog#shadow the ultimate lifeform#sonic the hedgehog#sonic the hedghog fandom#this is such a weird niche to post but i’m getting back into wax sealing and now my pinterest page is just a bunch of cute designs and ideas#now i can write letters to the president telling him i pissed on his wife or something#my art#? ig??
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saw a list of “things to do INSTEAD of voting for president” get passed around yesterday and at least 1/3 of them were literally inseparable from policies that are on the docket this presidential election so uh that’s where we are with civic competence
Don’t vote! Just uh (checks notes) write letters to the mailman (who surely will not be affected by the outcome of a presidential election!) and volunteer at a library ❤️💕😘 (which surely will not be affected by the outcome of a presidential election) and bake cookies for the fire department ❤️💕 (who surely will not be affected by the outcome of a presidential election)
#You have no fucking idea how angry this makes me#I can promise these public service workers don’t want cookies or letters half so much as they don’t want to be fired or have their budgets#Axed due to a retraction in public service spending during a Republican presidency#Trump has tried to destroy the us postal service and he will do it again! I’m soooo angry what is this conservative bullshit
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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
December 29, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Dec 30, 2024
Former President Jimmy Carter died today, December 29, 2024, at age 100 after a life characterized by a dedication to human rights. His wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, died on November 19, 2023; she was 96 years old.
James Earl Carter Jr. was born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, in southwestern Georgia, about half an hour from the site of the infamous Andersonville Prison, where United States soldiers died of disease and hunger during the Civil War only sixty years earlier. He was the first U.S. president to be born in a hospital.
Carter’s South was impoverished. He grew up on a dirt road about three miles from Plains, in the tiny, majority-Black village of Archery, where his father owned a farm and the family grew corn, cotton, peanuts, and sugar cane. The young Carters and the children of the village’s Black sharecroppers grew up together as the Depression that crashed down in 1929 drained away what little prosperity there was in Archery.
After undergraduate coursework at Georgia Southwestern College and at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Carter completed his undergraduate degree at the U.S. Naval Academy. In the Navy he rose to the rank of lieutenant, serving on submarines—including early nuclear submarines—in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets.
In 1946, Carter married Rosalynn Smith, a friend of his sister’s, who grew up in Plains. When his father died in 1953, Carter resigned his naval commission and took his family back to the Carters’ Georgia farm, where he and Rosalynn operated both the farm and a seed and supply company.
Arriving back in Georgia just a year before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, Carter quickly became involved in local politics. In 1962 he challenged a fraudulent election for a Georgia state senate seat, and in the runoff, voters elected him. The Carters became supporters of Democratic president John F. Kennedy in a state whose dominant Democratic Party was in turmoil as white supremacists clashed with Georgians eager to leave their past behind. Kennedy had sent troops to desegregate the University of Mississippi.
Carter ran for governor in 1966, the year after Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. He lost the primary, coming in third behind another liberal Democrat and a staunch segregationist Democrat, Lester Maddox, who won it and went on to win the governorship. When Carter ran again in 1970, he emphasized his populism rather than Black rights, appealing to racist whites. He won the Democratic primary with 60% of the vote and, in a state that was still Democrat-dominated, easily won the governorship.
But when Carter took office in 1971, he abandoned his concessions to white racists and took a stand for new race relations in the United States. “I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over,” he told Georgians in his inaugural speech. “No poor, rural, weak, or Black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job, or simple justice.”
His predecessor, Maddox, had refused to let state workers take the day off to attend services for the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral; Carter pointedly hung a portrait of King—as well as portraits of educator Lucy Craft Laney and Georgia politician and minister Henry McNeal Turner—in the State Capitol.
Carter brought to office a focus not only on civil rights but also on cleaning up and streamlining the state’s government. He consolidated more than 200 government offices into 20 and backed austerity measures to save money while also supporting new social programs, including equalizing aid to poor and wealthy schools, prison reform and early childhood development programs, and community centers for mentally disabled children.
At the time, the state constitution prohibited Carter from reelection, so he built recognition in the national Democratic Party and turned his sights on the presidency. In the wake of the scandals that brought down both President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew, as well as many of their staff, when it seemed to many Americans that all of Washington was corrupt, voters welcomed the newcomer Carter as an outsider who would work for the people.
He seemed a new kind of Democrat, one who could usher in a new, multicultural democracy now that the 1965 Voting Rights Act had brought Black and Brown voters into the American polity. Like many of the other civil rights coalitions in the twentieth century, Carter’s supporters shared music reinforced their politics, and Carter’s deep knowledge of blues, R&B, folk, and especially the gospel music of his youth helped him appeal to that era’s crucially important youth vote. Bob Dylan; Crosby, Stills & Nash, Nile Rodgers, Willie Nelson, and Johnny Cash, as well as the Allman Brothers, all backed Carter, who later said: “I was practically a non-entity, but everyone knew the Allman Brothers. When they endorsed me, all the young people said, ‘Well, if the Allman Brothers like him, we can vote for him.’”
Elected by just over 50% of American voters over Republican candidate Gerald R. Ford’s count of about 48%, Carter’s outsider status and determination to govern based on the will of the people sparked opposition from within Washington—including in the Democratic Party—and stories that he was buffeted about by the breezes of polls. But Carter's domestic policy advisor Stuart Eizenstat once said that Carter believed an elected president should “park politics at the Oval Office door” and try to win election by doing the right thing. He took pride in ignoring political interests—a stance that would hurt his ability to get things done in Washington, D.C.
Carter began by trying to make the government more representative of the American people: Eizenstat recalled that Carter appointed more women, Black Americans, and Jewish Americans to official positions and judgeships “than all 38 of his predecessors combined.”
Carter instituted ethics reforms to reclaim the honor of the presidency after Nixon’s behavior had tarnished it. He put independent inspectors in every department and established that corporations could not bribe foreign officials to get contracts. He expanded education programs, establishing the Department of Education, and tried to relieve the country from reliance on foreign oil by establishing the Department of Energy.
Concerned that the new regulatory agencies that Congress had created since the mid-1960s might be captured by industries and that they were causing prices to rise, Carter began the deregulation movement to increase competition. He began with the airlines and moved to the trucking industry, railroad lines, and long-distance phone service. He also deregulated beer production—his legalization of homebrewing sparked today’s craft brewing industry.
But Carter inherited slow economic growth and the inflation that had plagued presidents since Nixon, and the 1979 drop in oil production after the Iranian revolution exacerbated both. While more than ten million jobs were added to the U.S. economy during his term—almost twice the number Reagan added in his first term, and more than five times the number George H.W. Bush added in his—inflation hit 14% in 1980. To combat that inflation, Carter appointed Paul Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve, knowing he would combat inflation with high interest rates, a policy that brought down inflation during the first term of his successor, Ronald Reagan.
Carter also focused on protecting the environment. He was the first president to undertake the federal cleanup of a hazardous waste site, declaring a federal emergency in the New York neighborhood of Love Canal and using federal disaster money to remediate the chemicals that had been stored underground there.
Carter placed 56 million acres of land in Alaska under federal protection as a national monument, saying: “These areas contain resources of unequaled scientific, historic and cultural value, and include some of the most spectacular scenery and wildlife in the world,” he said. In 1979 he had 32 solar panels installed at the White House to help heat the water for the building and demonstrate that it was possible to curb U.S. dependence on fossil fuels. Just before he left office, Carter signed into law the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, protecting more than 100 million acres in Alaska, including additional protections for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Coming after Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia and support for Chile’s right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose government had systematically tortured and executed his political opponents, Carter’s foreign policy emphasized human rights. Carter echoed the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights established by the United Nations, promising he would promote “human freedom” while protecting “the individual from the arbitrary power of the state.” He was best known for the Camp David Accords that achieved peace between Israel and Egypt after they had fought a series of wars. Those accords, negotiated with Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel paved the way for others. Carter credited the religious faith of the three men for making the agreement possible.
Carter also built on his predecessor Nixon’s outreach to China, normalizing relations and affording diplomatic recognition of China, enabling the two countries to develop a bilateral relationship. While commenters often credit President Reagan with pressuring the Soviet Union enough to bring about its dissolution, in fact it was Carter who negotiated the nuclear arms treaty that Reagan honored and who, along with his national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, saw the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 as a major breach in international relations. He cut off grain sales to the USSR, ordered a massive defense buildup, and persuaded European leaders to accept nuclear missiles stationed in their countries, which Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said was a significant factor in the dissolution of the USSR.
To Carter also fell the Iran hostage crisis in which Muslim fundamentalists overran the American embassy in the Iranian capital Tehran, seizing 66 Americans and holding them hostage for 444 days, in return for a promise that the American-backed Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, whom Carter had admitted to the U.S. for cancer treatment, be returned to Iran for trial. Carter immediately froze Iranian assets and began secret negotiations, while Americans watched on TV as Iranian mobs chanted “Death to America.” A secret mission to rescue the hostages failed when one of the eight helicopters dispatched to rescue the hostages crashed, killing eight soldiers. Before he left office, Carter successfully negotiated for the hostages’ return; they were released the day of Reagan’s inauguration.
Carter left office in January 1981, and the following year, in partnership with Emory University, he and Rosalynn established the Carter Center, an Atlanta-based nongovernmental, not-for-profit organization to advance peace, health, and human rights around the world.
The Carter Center has supervised elections in more than 100 countries, has helped farmers in 15 African countries to double or triple grain production, and has worked to prevent disease in Latin America and Africa. In 1986, when the Carter Center began a program to eradicate infections of the meter-long Guinea worm that emerges painfully from sufferers’ skin and incapacitates them for long periods, 3.5 million people a year in Africa and Asia were infected; in 2022 there were only 13 known infections, in 2023 there were 14. So far in 2024, there have been 7, but those will not be officially confirmed until spring 2025. In a 2015 interview, Carter said he hoped to outlive the last case.
President Carter said, “When I was in the White House, I thought of human rights primarily in terms of political rights, such as rights to free speech and freedom from torture or unjust imprisonment. As I traveled around the world since I was president, I learned there was no way to separate the crucial rights to live in peace, to have adequate food and health care, and to have a voice in choosing one’s political leaders. These human needs and rights are inextricably linked.”
In 2002, Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” When journalist Katie Couric of The Today Show asked him if the Nobel Peace Prize or being elected president was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him, Carter answered: “When Rosalynn said she’d marry me, I think that’s the most exciting thing.”
In his Farewell Address on January 14, 1981, President Jimmy Carter worried about the direction of the country. He noted that the American people had begun to lose faith in the government’s ability to deal with problems and were turning to “single-issue groups and special interest organizations to ensure that whatever else happens, our own personal views and our own private interests are protected.” This focus on individualism, he warned, distorts the nation’s purpose because “the national interest is not always the sum of all our single or special interests. We are all Americans together, and we must not forget that the common good is our common interest and our individual responsibility.”
Carter urged Americans to protect our “most precious possessions: the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land which sustains us,” and to advance the basic human rights that had, after all, “invented America.” “Our common vision of a free and just society,” he said, “is our greatest source of cohesion at home and strength abroad, greater even than the bounty of our material blessings.”
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
#Letters From An American#Heather CoX Richardson#Jimmy Carter#history#American History#American Presidents#R.I.P#The Carter Center
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❝letters for coriolanus snow.❞
(coriolanus snow x fem reader)
summary: going through your belongings after you married someone else, coriolanus found something that could've changed everything.
warnings: drama, songfic, sadfic, toxic relationship.
you were panem's brightest star. the one that brought pride over anything. it didn't matter, somehow you were famous enough for the entire panem to love you.
but not enough for coriolanus to notice you.
you, the star of panem, fell in love with coriolanus snow when you were still ten. something about him being your protector from other kids caused you to actually believe he was a good person. god, you were so wrong.
it's a shame you didn't notice it earlier. now, he was still obsessed with you even after your marriage with sejanus. his best friend.
it was three months before your marriage that you decided to send him a letter. it was the last humiliation that you were aching to pass through. and, with the mark of a kiss on the end of thy letter, snow only read it when it was too late.
"Dear Coriolanus,
I stopped caring about how you treated me badly after a while. Each time you mistreated me was enough for me to smile just because you gave me attention enough to be mean with me.
I am what's left of when we swam under the moon, now the rest of my days, I remember how your fingers traced tragedies over my skin. How you not even once gave me attention and how i kneeled myself to your feet, begging you to at least be mean to me. I was so used to being mistreated by you that I started smooking just because your kisses tasted like it.
Only God knows how much I wanted you. How I still want you even after all that. How humiliating it was to beg for your attention, for anything you had to offer me. I spent so much time wanting you and I was so tainted by whatever it is that you call love that I considered myself unworthy of anything good.
I could smell the truth in your words and God, you were such a liar. I was so slow to accept the truth; thus being that you didn't actually loved me. You were lying too."
fact is, he wasn't.
coriolanus had a very twisted sense of love. each time he was with you and you were on his feet, head lying on his lap as you cried for another rude thing you did or said, he loved you even more.
somehow, seeing you cry and humiliate yourself for him was like god's heaven-sent gift for him. a manner to say "sorry" for his poverty.
and yet, he recognized just how mean he actually was with you.
his white lotus whom shined so brightly when crying that he had your image burned into his brain.
and you were gone.
"I'm getting married within a few months, and god, Sejanus is like a gift for me.
He's caring, sweet, lovely and knows how to treat me right. He's a dream come-true for me.
And yet, you tainted me. You hurt me so bad that now, the one on his knees it's not me but him.
I hate you so much. And even though it is a lie, I hope for god's sake that I'll learn to hate you.
Xo, Y/N." and a kiss-mark.
if only he'd knew how much he affected you, you would be by his side now.
It didn't matter now. Not when his brain kept remembering of you in your wedding dress.
#young coriolanus snow#coriolanus snow x reader#the hunger games the ballad of songbirds & snakes#young president snow#coriolanus snow fanfiction#coriolanus x reader#coriolanus snow imagine#coriolanus x you#x reader#drama#letters#heartbreak
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MIRACLE: LETTERS TO THE PRESIDENT (2021)
dir. Lee Jang-Hoon
#miracle: letters to the president#park jung min#lim yoona#lee sung min#lee soo kyung#kdramasource#kdramaedit#kdramadaily#asiandramasource#charactersofcolordaily#userstream#dramasource#dailyasiandramas#cinemapix#cinematv#mediagifs#chewieblog#userbbelcher#filmcentral#filmedit#filmgifs#filmandtv#filmtv#moviegifs#gifs
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The Arab-Americans who backed Trump in Dearborn, Michigan, sent him this letter today (but addressed to the White House…) urging him to fulfill his promises to the community and work on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon
File this under “BLACK PEOPLE TOLD YOU!!”” You are new to this, we’ve been dealing with them for over 400 years. Now the Palestine ppl are going to fade away due to genocide, hostages are being be abused if not executed, and Gaza gonna be a beachfront property for trump and his friends as the face eating leopards feast amongst your bodies!!
meanwhile the black ppl who WARNED you ingrates about this will just sit back and watch yall suffer don’t ask us for anything regarding the free Palestine movement again! Let’s go get some Starbucks
#Besides sending a letter to a place he isn't even living in#don't they know he will never read all that? 😂 He can barely read at all!#100%#Oh it's about to be a cease fire alright!#They should have listened. Do they also believe his first day on the job is Nov 6? 😂#Trump promptly used that letter as toilet paper.#Fuck them they weep what they sew#2024 presidential election#election 2024#early voting#us election#kamala for president#tim walz#harris walz#kamala 2024#presidential election#harris walz campaign#kamala harris#harris walz ticket#harris walz administration#Trump vance#harris walz 2024#trump vance 2024#harris walz rally#breathe#self care#maga 2024#trump2024#donald trump#healing
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Dear President Russell M Nelson,
Congratulations on making it to 100. I know it was a significant goal for you and you worked hard both physically and spiritually to make it this far. I know there are a lot of things outside our control to having a long life, but it also takes work.
Thank you for the challenge to read the Book of Mormon before the year was out back in 2018. My life has been irrevocably changed for the better for following that counsel. I learned much about myself and the world and Gd’s plan for me and began a path of repentance that has brought me closer to Christ and brought joy into a life that was characterized by despair before.
And that is simply a personal way that I know you are called of Gd to be our prophet. It is very clear how you were prepared to lead the Church at this time, especially with how your responses to revelation prepared the Church for the pandemic. A pandemic following a change in policy that barred me from sharing the joy that I found by following your counsel. It is sometimes hard to reconcile the exclusionary policy that you have permitted to be put in place under your leadership with my testimony that you are a prophet of Gd because following your counsel led me to Christ and the good things that come from repentance.
It is the same juxtaposition of you having a medical degree and then claiming that life (when the spirit enters the body) begins at conception because a unique genetic code was created. Conception comes before the medical definition of pregnancy which is before the latest point identical twins can be formed. Identical twins are clearly two different spirits with the same genetic code. The truth we learn from science is giving a different truth than the one that you claimed in your press conference on the reversal of roe v wade.
Not to harp on something you said one time not even during General Conference, but I was finally pregnant after years of infertility and it seemed to mock my pain of late periods and failed fertility treatments. I came to the conclusion that you were wrong and speaking your personal opinion and not the thoughts and feelings of Heavenly Father or our Savior Jesus Christ. A conclusion that many would think contradicts my previous statement about believing that you are a prophet of Gd.
But to believe that the prophets can do no wrong is idolatry. To claim that the truth is only what prophets have confirmed first is priestcraft. This is not the Lord’s way who said: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.” (John 7:17); “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” (Matthew 7:20). Or even Moroni closing his addition to the Book of Mormon “And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.” (Moroni 10:5) and “For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight is from the dark night.” (Moroni 7:15).
Besides, how can we be fit for the Celestial Kingdom if we, as individuals of the Church, are to surrender our agency to you and never learn how to discern truth for ourselves. You set yourself up as the king of the Church when you say you are the only source of truth. Then all the sins of those who follow you without question become stains on your garments.
It is a difficult task to reconcile these types of mistakes with someone upholding a high calling that presumably has direct access to Gd, but then I realized that the traditions of our fathers was what made me ignore Gd telling me to repent much earlier than the 2018 Book of Mormon reading challenge. False traditions drain true intent and curiosity when you ask Gd because you feel confident that you know the answer and so you study with bias to confirm your worldview and you don’t have intent to do anything different if the answer isn’t what you expect. False traditions frame revelation so that you ignore key pieces because your mind fills in the default expectation instead of what actually exists in the revelation. In the end, I’m glad that I’m a nobody who only has to deal with the consequences of my own actions instead of being in your shoes where my same mistakes would’ve cause much more damage and would’ve been much harder to change direction when I learned I was wrong.
So I pray that your mind will be open to look past the false traditions of our fathers, to be open to the testimony of those othered by the Church organization. I pray that you realize that what you are doing is priestcraft so that you will swiftly repent and put effort into making sure you aren’t standing between us and Christ. I pray that you will repent in this life so you can share our joy.
Sincerely,
nottskyler
#2024 prophet and apostle letter campaign#tumblrstake#queerstake#church of jesus christ of latter-day saints#president russell m nelson
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bishop asked to meet with me to 'let me know that I am welcome and loved' and I said yes and then he was like 'okay the stake president wants to come too if you're cool with that' and now I'm wondering if this is about the erm intense letter I wrote against the new policies
#we'll see this sunday ig#I chose to not remain anonymous so I'm not gonna be a coward and say no#hope it's just a friendly chat though#because I'm probably one of if not the only active trans person in the stake#so that could warrant special attention by itself#who knows#idk how many years it's been since I've met with a stake president#plan is still in action that if I get disciplined then I start distributing the letter amongst my neighbors#and I'll probably post it here in that event too
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okay when i say "what adult swim did to metalocalypse is a travesty" i don't mean it in a "this is my all-time favorite show on adult swim and im still bitter about it 10 years later" kind of way, i mean it in a "mike lazzo fucked over one of the most popular shows on adult swim at the time, before the story had even finished, out of almost nothing but pure spite and pettiness against the showrunners, and the following actions he took after canceling it should never have been handled in the way that it was" kind of way
#like sure cancel the show if you want#but to LITERALLY SHOW A LIVESTREAM IN THE MTL TIME SLOT#OF YOU PRINTING OUT FAXED FAN LETTERS ONLY FOR THEM TO GO RIGHT INTO A SHREDDER#IS THE PETTIEST MOST DOGSHIT WAY OF HANDLING SOMETHING I HAVE EVER SEEN#ESPECIALLY AS A FUCKING PRESIDENT OF A NETWORK???#YOU CAN HAVE SPITE FOR A SHOWRUNNER#WHATEVER#BUT SHOWING YOUR SPITE FOR THAT SHOWRUNNER IN THAT MANNER IS THE MOST CHILDISH THING I HAVE EVER SEEN#it just makes me. so angry???#ugh.#metalocalypse#dethklok#not stam1na#not sabaton#jamesposting#jamesranting
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Dear Mr. President:
Always there have been men who had contempt for the "word" although words have survived better than any other man-made things. St. John says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God." When you have finished using a weapon, someone is dead or injured, but the product of the word can be life and hope and survival. All of the greatness of our species rests on words -- Socrates to his judges -- the Sermon on the Mount, the introduction to Wyclif's Bible, later taken by Lincoln for the Gettysburg Address. And all of these great and irretrievable words have the bravery of fear and hope in them. There must have been a fierce but hollow feeling in the members of the Continental Congress when the clerk first read the words, "When in the course of human events --." Lincoln must have dwelt with loneliness when he wrote the order of mobilization.
In our history, there have been not more than five or six moments when the word and the determination mapped the course of the future. Such a moment was your speech, Sir, to the Congress two nights ago. Our people will be living by phrases from that speech when all the concrete and steel have long been displaced or destroyed. It was a time of no turning back, and in my mind as well as in many others, you have placed your name among the great ones of history.
And I take great pride in the fact that you are my President.
Yours in admiration, John Steinbeck
-- Letter from John Steinbeck to President Lyndon B. Johnson on March 17, 1965, two days after LBJ's monumental "We Shall Overcome" speech to a Joint Session of Congress urging the passage of the Voting Rights Act in the wake of "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, Alabama
#History#Presidents#Lyndon B. Johnson#LBJ#President Johnson#John Steinbeck#Presidential Friendships#Voting Rights Act#Civil Rights#Civil Rights Movement#Bloody Sunday#Selma#Selma to Montgomery March#We Shall Overcome#We Shall Overcome speech#Presidential Speeches#Great Presidential Speeches#Letters to Presidents#Presidential Correspondence#Steinbeck#LBJ and Civil Rights#Presidency#Johnson Administration
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First Letter from Julia I. Sand to Chester A. Arthur
[1881 Aug 27]
To the Hon Chester A. Arthur.
The hours of Garfield's life are numbered--before this meets your eye, you may be President. The people are bowed in grief; but--do you realize it?--not so much because he is dying, as because you are his successor. What President ever entered office under circumstances so sad! The day he was shot, the thought rose in a thousand minds that you might be the instigator of the foul act. Is not that a humiliation which cuts deeper than any bullet can pierce? Your best friends said: "Arthur must resign--he cannot accept office, with such a suspicion resting upon him." And now your kindest opponents say: "Arthur will try to do right"--adding gloomily--"He won't succeed, though--making a man President cannot change him."
But making a man President can change him! At a time like this, if anything can, that can. Great emergencies awaken generous traits which have lain dormant half a life. If there is a spark of true nobility in you, now is the occasion to let it shine. Faith in your better nature forces me to write to you--but not to beg you to resign. Do what is more difficult and more brave. Reform! It is not the proof of highest goodness never to have done wrong--but it is a proof of it, sometime in one's career, to pause and ponder, to recognize the evil, to turn resolutely against it and devote the remainder of ones life to that only which is pure and exalted. Such revolutions of the soul are not common. No step towards them is easy. In the humdrum drift of daily life, they are impossible. But once in a while there comes a crisis which renders miracles feasible. The great tidal wave of sorrow which has rolled over the country, has swept you loose from your old moorings and set you on a mountain-top, alone. As President of the United States--made such by no election, but by a national calamity--you have no old associations, no personal friends, no political ties, you have only your duty to the people at large. You are free--free to be as able and as honorable as any man who ever filled the presidential chair.
Your past--you know best what it has been. You have lived for worldly things. Fairly or unfairly, you have won them. You are rich, powerful--tomorrow, perhaps, you will be President. And what is it all worth? Are you peaceful--are you happy? What if a few days hence the hand of the next unsatisfied ruffian should lay you low, and you should drag through months of weary suffering, in the White House, knowing that all over the land not a prayer was uttered in your behalf, not a tear shed, that the great American people was glad to be rid of you--would not worldly honors seem rather empty then?
Make such things impossible. Rise to the emergency. Disappoint our fears. Force the nation to have faith in you. Show from the first that you have none but the purest aims. It may be difficult at once to inspire confidence, but persevere. In time--when you have given reason for it--the country will love and trust you. If any man says, "With Arthur for President, Civil Service Reform is doomed," prove that Arthur can be its firmest champion. Do not thrust on the people politicians who have forfeited their respect--no matter how near they may be to you as personal friends. Do not remove any man from office unnecessarily. Appoint those only of marked ability and of sterling character. Such may not be abundant, but you will find them, if you seek them. You are far too clever to be easily deceived. In all your policy, have none but the highest motives. With the lamp of patriotism in your hand, your feet will not be likely to stumble.
Do you care for applause? Of course, you have had it, after a fashion. Perhaps from the dregs of the populace, inspired by the lowest of politicians. Possibly it pleased you at the time--it may have served some purpose that you solved then. But in the depths of your soul, do you not despise it? Would not one heart-felt "God bless you!" from the honest and true among your countrymen, be worth ten thousand times more? You can win such blessing, if you will.
Your name now is on the annals of history. You cannot slink back into obscurity, if you would. A hundred years hence, school boys will recite your name in the list of Presidents and tell of your administration. And what shall posterity say? It is for you to choose whether your record shall be written in black or in gold. For the sake of your country, for your own sake and for the sakes of all who have ever loved you, let it be pure and bright.
As one of the people over whom you are to be President, I make you this appeal. Perhaps you have received many similar. If not, still believe that this expresses the thoughts in many hearts, today--and do not give those who have had faith in you, cause for regret.
Yours Respectfully,
Julia I. Sand.
46 E. 74th st. New York.
Aug 27th 1881.
#history is awesome#presidential talk#last week if you'd known me in real life there's a 50% chance i'd have tackled you and forced you to read this#isn't this letter just astounding?#imagine sending this to a soon-to-be president!#and him *saving* it!#there are such lovely turns of phrase#even while she is *so* brutal and unflinching#my favorite line might be 'you are far too clever to be easily deceived'#just appealing straight to his vanity#brilliant!#i haven't loved a letter this much since 84 charing cross road#the moral of the story is that the best letters are written by slightly cracked politically-minded literary spinsters
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Harris is at 224 and Trump is at 267 im shaking in my boots guys.
#・❥・love letters ♡#us politics#usa#election 2024#2024 election#kamala harris#vote kamala#kamala 2024#kamala for president
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Dr. Abrahamsen examines several bizarre episodes in Nixon's early life
that he thinks foreshadowed later developments.
a serious, studious, sickly, unsmiling boy.
a boy who wanted desperately to achieve the respectability that had eluded his father.
In all of this, Dr. Abrahamsen finds a self‐destructive instinct
“Did Nixon wish to save himself?”
“The answer is simply no.”
#txt#american history#us presidents#richard nixon#web weave#not rlly#kind of#psychoanalysis#freud#hmmm#if anyone somehow understands what i mean by this thatd be cool#its mostly focusing on the my dear master letter (and the idea it was written as a letter to his mother and not a school project)#and 'my mother was a saint'#as well as the psychoanalysis in the article i quoted#and also what went into it in part is how hannah died before richard became prez...#if no one really understands or cares idm#i will post for myself always before anyone else#anyway this was really fun#ive spoent.#2 whole hours on it...#why cant i focus this well on my school work#oh well
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Steve Brodner
* * * *
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
July 24, 2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
JUL 25, 2024
Tonight, President Joe Biden explained to the American people why he decided to refuse the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination and hand the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Speaking from the Oval Office from his seat behind the Resolute Desk, a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880, Biden recalled the nation’s history. He invoked Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence; George Washington, who “showed us presidents are not kings”; Abraham Lincoln, who “implored us to reject malice”; and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who “inspired us to reject fear.”
And then he turned to himself. “I revere this office, but I love my country more,” he said. “It’s been the honor of my life to serve as your president.” But, he said, the defense of democracy is more important than any title, and democracy is “larger than any one of us.” We must unite to protect it.
“In recent weeks, it has become clear to me that I need to unite my party in this critical endeavor,” he said. “I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term. But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. So I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. It’s the best way to unite our nation.”
There is “a time and a place for long years of experience in public life,” Biden said. “There’s also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now.”
Biden reminded listeners that he is not leaving the presidency and will be continuing to use its power for the American people. In outlining what that means, he summed up his presidency.
For the next six months, he said, he will “continue to lower costs for hard-working families [and] grow our economy. I will keep defending our personal freedoms and civil rights, from the right to vote to the right to choose. I will keep calling out hate and extremism, making it clear there is…no place in America for political violence or any violence ever, period. I’m going to keep speaking out to protect our kids from gun violence [and] our planet from [the] climate crisis.”
Biden reiterated his support for his Cancer Moonshot to end cancer—a personal cause for him since the 2015 death of his son Beau from brain cancer—and says he will fight for it, (although House Republicans have recently slashed funding for the program). He said he will call for reforming the Supreme Court “because this is critical to our democracy.”
He promised to continue “working to ensure America remains strong, secure and the leader of the free world,” and pointed out that he is “the first president of this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.” He promised to continue rallying a coalition of nations to stop Putin’s attempt to take over Ukraine, and vowed to continue to build the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). He reminded listeners that when he took office, the conventional wisdom was that China would inevitably surpass the United States, but that is no longer the case, and he said he would continue to strengthen allies and partners in the Pacific.
Biden promised to continue to work to “end the war in Gaza, bring home all the hostages and bring peace and security to the Middle East and end this war,” as well as “to bring home Americans being unjustly detained all around the world.”
The president reminded people how far the nation has come since he took office on January 20, 2021, a day when, although he didn’t mention it tonight, he went directly to work after taking the oath of office. “On that day,” he recalled, “we…stood in a winter of peril and winter of possibilities.” The United States was “in the grip of the worst pandemic in the century, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” But, Biden said, “We came together as Americans. We got through it. We emerged stronger, more prosperous and more secure.”
“Today we have the strongest economy in the world, creating nearly 16 million new jobs—a record. Wages are up, inflation continues to come down, the racial wealth gap is the lowest it’s been in 20 years. We are literally rebuilding our entire nation—urban, suburban and rural and tribal communities. Manufacturing has come back to America. We are leading the world again in chips and science and innovation. We finally beat Big Pharma after all these years to lower the cost of prescription drugs for seniors…. More people have health care today in America than ever before.” Biden noted that he signed the PACT Act to help millions of veterans and their families who were exposed to toxic materials, as well as the “most significant climate law…in the history of the world” and “the first major gun safety law in 30 years.”
The “violent crime rate is at a 50-year low,” he said, and “[b]order crossings are lower today than when the previous administration left office. I’ve kept my commitment to appoint the first Black woman to the Supreme Court of the United States of America. I also kept my commitment to have an administration that looks like America and [to] be a president for all Americans.”
Then Biden turned from his own record to the larger meaning of America.
“I ran for president four years ago because I believed…that the soul of America was at stake,” he said. “America is an idea. An idea stronger than any army, bigger than any ocean, more powerful than any dictator or tyrant. It’s the most powerful idea in the history of the world.”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” he said. “We are all created equal, endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. We’ve never fully lived up to…this sacred idea—but we’ve never walked away from it either. And I do not believe the American people will walk away from it now.
“In just a few months, the American people will choose the course of America’s future. I made my choice…. “[O]ur great vice president, Kamala Harris… is experienced, she is tough, she is capable. She’s been an incredible partner to me and a leader for our country.
“Now the choice is up to you, the American people. When you make that choice, remember the words of Benjamin Franklin hanging on my wall here in the Oval Office, alongside the busts of Dr. [Martin Luther] King and Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez. When Ben Franklin was asked, as he emerged from the [constitutional] convention…, whether the founders [had] given America a monarchy or a republic, Franklin’s response was: ‘A republic, if you can keep it.’... Whether we keep our republic is now in your hands.”
“My fellow Americans, it’s been the privilege of my life to serve this nation for over 50 years,” President Biden told the American people. “Nowhere else on Earth could a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and in Claymont, Delaware, one day sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office as the president of the United States, but here I am.
“That’s what’s so special about America. We are a nation of promise and possibilities. Of dreamers and doers. Of ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things. I’ve given my heart and my soul to our nation, like so many others. And I’ve been blessed a million times in return with the love and support of the American people. I hope you have some idea how grateful I am to all of you.
The great thing about America is, here kings and dictators do not rule—the people do. History is in your hands. The power’s in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands. You just have to keep faith—keep the faith—and remember who we are. We are the United States of America, and there is simply nothing, nothing beyond our capacity when we do it together. So let’s act together, [and] preserve our democracy. God bless you all and may God protect our troops.
“Thank you.”
And with that, President Joe Biden followed the example of the nation’s first president, George Washington, who declined to run for a third term to demonstrate that the United States of America would not have a king, and of its second president, John Adams, who handed the power of the presidency over to his rival Thomas Jefferson and thus established the nation’s tradition of the peaceful transition of power. Like them, Biden gave up the pursuit of power for himself in order to demonstrate the importance of democracy.
After the speech, the White House served ice cream to the Bidens and hundreds of White House staffers in the Rose Garden.
And when the evening was over, First Lady Dr. Jill Biden posted an image of a handwritten note on social media. It read: “To those who never wavered, to those who refused to doubt, to those who always believed, my heart is full of gratitude. Thank you for the trust you put in Joe—now it’s time to put that trust in Kamala.”
—
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
#Steve Brodner#political cartoons#Letters From An American#Heather Cox Richardson#President Joe Biden#Biden Presidency#accomplishments of Joe Biden#Biden Harris#election 2024#team work
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