Dear Bobby,

Thank you for your rebuttal to President Obama’s State Of The Nation address last Tuesday. In hearing your optimistic message “Americans can do anything” my heart soared, and it harkened me back to the times of my youth when my parents would say something similar to us kids at the dinner table, assuring us that our futures were full of possibillity, as long as we worked and studied hard.

Of course this is just something that parents say. Americans can’t possibly do everything. For example, did you know that 25%  of American’s can’t curl their tongue upwards? And that no amount of hard work can remedy this? They can’t do it Bobby. They just can’t.

And then there are things that we could possibly do, but aren’t likely to do. For instance, I could be an astronaut…but if I hold down two jobs flipping burgers just to make ends meet, chances are I won’t have money or time to study whatever it is that astronauts study. No number of burgers I flip will send me to the moon. No one eats burgers on the moon Bobby, there is simply no market for fast food there.

And I also got to thinking (and this is where you should pay attention) that there are the things we can possibly do, but shouldn’t do. For example, I could own a fourth flat screen TV or buy a house using one of those “fuck me in ten ways I don’t understand ” mortgages, but that could mean financial ruin. All of the pie-eyed optimistic slogans in the world won’t save me then Bobby. I will own a nice piece of real estate in cardboardboxville, with a spectacular view of shit alley and my next door neighbor who reeks worse than his pet dog.

All this to say Bobby, that the world is a complicated place and we live in complicated times. For at least 8 years we’ve lived in complicated times but pretended they were simple…and you know what? It seems if you think things are simple, they have a way of getting more complicated on you. So what if we just agree that things are complicated and talk like grown ups? We think Americans can do that.

Bobby: We Want To Believe You