You Want My Vote?

Dear Mr. President,

After reading some of my letters, several people said “You must really hate Obama.” No, I don’t hate you but I am angry, frustrated, shocked, at times outraged at your betrayal and I won’t vote for you again. You had so much promise, so much potential, but you squandered it. You could have done great things, been a great president, but you sold out for who knows what or why. You presented yourself as someone with vision, a sense of morality and a desire to do the right thing, as someone who would change the disastrous course America was on but instead you continued that course and accelerated it. I feel betrayed, even violated by you. Gulled into believing your lies and false promises, believing you when you said you would address global warming and didn’t; believing you when you promised to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the rich and instead extended and increased them, believing your promise to regulate the Banksters of Wall Street so they could never again destroy the economy, and instead you passed toothless rules that did nothing. You bailed out the elites and turned your back on those who elected you. You promised to restore transparency in government and did just the opposite. You praised whistle-blowers as essential to democracy and then prosecuted them with a vengeance unseen in the history of America. You promised to fight for single payer health care and took that option off the table before negotiations even began. But most of all, Mr. President, I feel betrayed by your false promise to deliver us from the nightmare of the Bush years, of torture and renditions, of secret prisons and unjustified wars; betrayed by your covert drone wars, your kill lists and targeted assassinations. The wars go on, Guantanamo remains open, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, injustice prevails, the future looks bleaker than ever,and you want my vote? You sign legislation that permits indefinite detention of anyone anywhere and want my vote? You militarize America, set the stage for mass repression of dissent, and ask for my vote? You count on being the lesser of two evils, campaign this time, not with lies and empty promises, but with the vague slogan of “Forward” and think that’s enough to scare me off Romney and my vote? Not this time, Mr. President. I’m not voting for you or Romney. I’m casting my vote for someone with a sense of morality and justice, with a vision of a Green America and a plan for peace. Jill Stein for President!