An Open Letter to Obama

This is from one of the teeming American people, underrepresented, who came out in droves to elect you. You're the first presidential candidate who won with my vote. My first experience with elections was voting for a candidate who won the popular vote, but was not elected president. I have watched with scorn and contempt these past 8 years as concepts such as habeas corpus, civil rights, separation between church and state, foreign policy negotiations, and peace were summarily ignored by the ruling elite. I have watched the presidency turn from a position that should carry some sort of dignity into something that other countries mock alongside us. I have watched the decline of America.
All this sounds grim, and it was. I say was because honestly, until yesterday, I didn't realize there was another way for the world to be. It's only the renewed spirit that is permeating the air that causes me to realize what a prison we had put ourselves in. You ran on a campain of hope for the future, and when I look around me now I see that hope in the air, in the joy in others, the open way that people are speaking to each other. You have brought hope, at least to a blue state.
I hope this carries over to conservatives, gives them something to rally behind besides what has become the status quo. I hope they can see you as a man of faith who does not act to exclude, but to embrace different ideas and creeds in the hope that together we can forge lasting bonds and a stronger nation. We need each other for balance, and to exclude one side is to risk an uncontrolled spiral, a descent into darkness. Moderation is key in all things.
History has a way of making idealists into martyrs, though, and I worry. Maybe it seems silly for someone who doesn't know you personally to care, but I see your family up there with you and I worry that they won't see you at their graduations, at their weddings, in the same way that JFK was not there, MLK, Jr. was not there. History has taught us to fear the lone gunman, yet there are more guns in this country than college graduates.
Perhaps this letter has gone on too long, but it is a time of change, of uncertainty, and that cannot be summed up into short sentences. But it is also a time of hope. Thank you for that.

Wishing you the best,
LH