Once Again: Why Not to Vote for Obama

Why is it so difficult for so many Democrats to understand why so many who eagerly supported him in 2008 will not vote for Barack Obama in 2012?

I'm told that if I "allow" Mitt Romney to become president because I "waste" my vote on a third party or independent candidate, or do not cast a presidential ballot at all, I will be to blame for a diminished, dysfunctional non-democratic America that will ensue.

Bovine excrement.

The fact is that by voting for Obama in 2008 I am complicit in a diminished, dysfunctional, non-democratic United States that has existed ever since Bush II took office.

Obama has continued to pursue some of the worst, actually criminal, policies of his predecessor.  I cannot condone that by voting for him again.  Why is that so difficult to understand?

But Obama is, some Democrats will say, the lesser of two evils.

Nonsense.

One cannot restore a sick nation to health by continually voting for the lesser of two evils. This country has been mis-governed so badly for so long that it probably can never be made into the democratic republic its founders envisioned.  Many of those who crafted this infant nation shared Franklin's famous skepticism in handing us "a republic -- if you can keep it." We have made their worst fears come true.

Our pathetic propensity for hero worship, manufacturing heroes if none exist, has placed those very founders on far too high a pedestal. Although they shared many praiseworthy democratic ideals, these were far from perfect humans -- vainglorious, privileged, wealthy, many of them slaveholders.  Enough of them recognized the faults of their original Constitution to hand down the ten amendments now called the Bill of Rights.

Presidents and Congresses have done their best over the ensuing two centuries to undo the wisdom of those amendments, crowning their hubris with the so-called USA Patriot Act, probably the most unpatriotic act of cowardice in the history of the wronged republic.

Barack Obama, as senator and as president, has been in the thick of this high treason, this betrayal of whatever noble ideals our founders left us.

As Commander in Chief, he is as guilty of crimes against humanity in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and the United States of America as Adolph Hitler was in Poland, France, Russia and Germany.  Killing innocent people is murder, whether the weapon is lethal gas or a CIA controlled drone.

I would not entrust the care of my dear companion, Brandi, to a man who shoots dogs.

I cannot consent to condemning my homeland to the continuing care of a man who kills innocent people.

Barack Obama is guilty of lying to the voters who elected him; of repeatedly selling out to corporate interests rather than protecting those of the common man; of toadying to the military-industrial profiteers rather than seeking peace; of political cowardice, ethical emptiness and moral blindness.

The Democratic party is telling me Mitt Romney would be worse.

If that is so, then neither candidate is worthy of my vote.  And neither will get it.