In 2012

I've been saying for weeks that I have mixed feelings about the Occupy movement.  On the one hand, I share their outrage and I'm glad that people are finally out there en masse protesting the corrupt plutocracy my country has become.  On the other hand, I've been disappointed that I haven't heard specific requests.  Why didn't people attach a list of specific reforms of financial and mortgage regulations to Occupy Wall Street?  Because yes, there are lots of other things, but those were major contributors to our most recent crisis.  The lack of specificity has disturbed me.  What does outrage do after a while?

I have, therefore, joined others in the hope that the people who turn out at these protests will turn up at the polls in November.  A lot of people saw this moment coming in 1988 when just over 50% of eligible voters turned out for the general election.  (Frankly, looking at this data, I wouldn't get excited about anything after 1968, the last time over 60% of eligible voters turned out.)  I don't think it's a huge leap of cynicism to say that those low numbers reflect a perceived lack of good options.  (See: 1996.)  If we want a change in the system, we have to vote.

Or not.

I was not in love with Barak Obama in 2007 or 2008.  I wanted Gore, then I wanted Edwards, then I wanted Clinton.  I voted for Obama because he was the only Democrat left and I did not want McCain- or Palin.  I found his speeches about a post-racial and -partisan country fascinating but completely out of touch with the facts on the ground.  I didn't buy his hype and I don't care how many people were singing songs about him.

But you know what I did buy?  Explicit promises about closing Guantanamo.  The Bush Administration made me feel like I was living in a surreal movie that inverted almost everything about my country that I was grateful for.  Most of it can be summed up as the extension of executive privilege combined with dysfunctional nationalism.  We were an international embarrassment who flaunted the Geneva Convention and our own Constitution.  What I thought this president would do is restore our legal standing in the world.

He has not.  Guantanamo has not been closed, and Obama will not veto a bill that calls for indefinite detention.  I don't care if it's horse trading or cowardice- this is his watch.

Consider me done.  I am not going to fill in the box next to his name in November.  I am not.  I will write in, most probably, Hilary Clinton.  Obama had his chance with me and he has made the decision that my support can be taken for granted.  No, it can't.

I haven't believed in any one person for a long time (did I mention that I'm 39?).  But I have never come this close to not believing in the basic promise of our democracy.

Deb in the City