Day 125- Why I'm still drinking the koolaid

Dear Mr. President,

Cults make me uncomfortable. I choke on the corporatespeak they feed us at work. I can't stomach the suspension of disbelief required for organized religion. I'm a skeptical person by nature and I can't shut off the part of me that constantly questions what I am told. I do not often fit in with ideologies, isms or cults of personality. And yet, I drink the Hope Koolaid better than almost any one I know.

It's not that I think you're always right; it's not that I think you always make the best choices or even act with the best of intentions. You're really my last hope, these days. I can't give up, believe the system to be hopelessly corrupt and refuse to participate; that would hand my power as a citizen over to some one else. I can't, honestly, envision a viable third party candidate, especially one who is more representative of my beliefs than you are. I have to believe in your wisdom and in your goodness, because if you're not the person best able to steer our nation right now, I'm at a loss for who the alternative would be.

This is not to say that my support for you is out of a lack of other options. Maybe it's just as irrational and just as naive as any other kind of faith, but it is more than blind loyalty. I do have issues with your policies and some of your beliefs, but I think, even among the Democrats, you're the person I respect the most because of the way you approach problems. I have a tremendous amount of faith in the people of this country; in my generation and the force of demographics to, slowly, move us closer to a fairer, freer and more just nation; I also know I can't change anything acting by myself. I believe that the change you promised us will come, probably long after you've left office, but we have to keep working toward it, more slowly than any one will find acceptable.

I am subject to the system, as are you. The difference, I think, is that I have the capacity to shift it very little, while you seem to have accepted too much of the status quo as inevitable, without consideration of your own, considerably greater, power to change it. You don't have to accept things as they've always been; be it the wars you inherited, the legacy of American imperialism, our backwards and bigoted social policies or the same old blue dog incumbents in the Democratic party. Your campaign empowered so many of the disenfranchised of this nation; it isn't hubris to reject the trappings of the system that disenfranchised them in the first place. The 17 months of your presidency have seen no shortage of missed opportunities to bring about the kind of change you asked us all to hope for; but I'm raising a glass, and keeping the faith, for the two and half years you've got left.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey