Letter to my torture voting Dem senator [View All]

[kitp]

Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.

I have been struggling over the last 6 years in choosing for whom to cast my vote. I most certainly would not vote for any of the Republican candidates who have been presented to me. However, the Democratic offerings have not been much better.
Certainly that last Democratic presidential candidate was a nightmare for we who are life-long Democrats. His policies were just barely to the left of Richard Nixon. Still, anyone in the Democratic camp was far, far better than any of the Republicans.

This election I have the same dilemma. I would not vote for the Republican candidate, however, you do not accurately represent the Democratic, or the liberal, position. If my vote for you would keep the Republican from winning, though, it would be worth it, or so my thinking has gone.

I would like to thank you for your vote on the Torture and Dictator bill. I cannot fathom why anyone who claims to represent a liberal or Democratic point of view would willingly give to this or any President such unrestrained power, who would drop the U.S. into that cesspool of believers that enemies are sub-human and are not subject to the golden rule, who would conceive that giving legislative blessing to kidnapping, torture, and disappearings bears any resemblance to sanity, who would so debase themselves in a short-sighted self-centered belief that pretending to be "tough on terror", or more pathetically worse, simply avoiding the feared "weak on terror" charge levied by the fascists in control, would gain the one or two votes needed to retain power, made especially nauseating as it is based on the assumption that Democrats must vote for you so you need not appease them, is unworthy of my respect and undeserving of my vote.

I regret that I ever cast a vote for you and I will never do so again.

I am faced with the difficult decision to splinter from the Democratic Party and vote for a third party candidate. You now so clearly represent the problem the Democratic Party has had over the last quarter century and are emblematic of why this party has lost power. You have falsely believed the country to be moving to the right, of becoming more conservative. In order to get the votes you believed necessary to be elected, you have moved to the right. However, you and the Democratic Party have it completely wrong. You are losing us because you are moving to the right. We are now voiceless in the political arena. We are disheartened and disgusted to see the Democratic members of congress tiptoe around the truth. Additionally, by moving closer and closer to the extremists in power, you display a weakness of conviction indicating you will not stand upon principal but will shift agenda with the perceived shifting electorate. This is why Republicans laugh at liberal politicians and why liberal voters hold their heads in shame every time their Democratic representatives praise the President or, as happened just this week, praise Senator McCain for removing habeas corpus protections for innocent people against abusive excesses of unchecked power. I sadly feel called upon to remind you that “suspects” are innocent until proven guilty however this seems to have either slipped your mind or been cast aside as inconvenient relic of 800 years of enlightenment, at least in an election year.

Bush, his administration, and the Republic leaders in the Congress meet all the criteria for fascists. They have no love for democracy, no respect for the Constitution, no compassion for their fellow humans, no respect for women and minorities, no concern for children or the elderly, no empathy for the poor and needy, they are thugs, thieves, liars and traitors. These insatiable corporatists are emptying the national treasury, selling off the commons, defiling the landscape, poisoning our children and are rapidly destroying the United States. Rather than calling for a General Strike against this attack upon our land and freedoms, rather than acknowledging the dark clouds of dementia swirling about this White, you kow-tow to the boy-king and abase yourself before his larcenous minions. This latest crown you have bestowed upon the "war time" President and his cadre of the soulless, this unrestrained power to seize anyone off the street, any street, anywhere in the world, on his say-so alone – or that of his appointed henchmen, to torture them and imprison them for eternity with no recourse to the courts, no protections against such horrors, and to absolve these abusers of humanity, these mercenary and merciless murderers of any legal consequences for their inhuman, illegal and immoral acts of violence and violation in advance, is the most radical, totalitarian, anti-democratic, inhumane, unconstituional, insane and immoral act I can imagine my Democratic representitive engaging in in my name and under the pretense of serving me.

Of course, we citizens still have habeas corpus. I feel so confident that this crop of criminals currently occupying my government will respect that as they have respected all of my other rights and protections.

So, thank you for so clearly crossing over to the Dark Side of the Force as you have made it so much easier for me to finally leave the Democratic party where it belongs, in bed with Naked Emperor.

Unfortunately, this just means I may never again see freedom in my country. I am in my 50's and the damage you are now complicit in inflicting upon my beloved America, and the rest of the world, will last for decades. If Sir Edward Grey will allow, the lights are going out all over the United States; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.