I love America.

America is what made me who I am today.

However, I must apologize. I’m sorry. It was not out of love for this country of ours that I began my journey toward who I am today and who I will become in the future. I began my journey because I hated the United States of America.

I hated the hypocrisy of our country... The arrogance. I spent nearly the entirety of my teenage years contemplating a world without America; a world that, in my opinion at the time, would be far better off.

It’s easy to write me off as having been a young, foolish adolescent, blinded by my inexperience and naivete. I suspect that that’s the common conception someone gets when a thirteen year old talks about their hatred for the country that raised them.

Yet it was not out of lack of experience that I came to despise our nation, but rather a very defining one. It was an experience I had which most other kids did not. At the time, you see, I was struggling with inner demons like sorrow, loneliness, and unrelenting emotional pain. I was ten years old when I watched my father and my sister die. We were driving home from a family dinner in some fancy restaurant in Napa Valley, California. It was December 22, almost Christmas. My sister and I were asleep, our two month old baby puppy, Milano, sleeping in my sister’s lap. Suddenly, blackness. My first thought was one from my imagination. Had we gone over some huge bump in the road that jarred the car? I was immobile, suspended in the darkness of some foreign space, and unable to see anything. I felt cold, and like I was numb across my entire body. The only things I could hear were the ringing in my ears and the sound of my own voice as, in the midst of this darkness, I asked, “Hey, what’s going on?” Unable to get answers, I screamed as loudly as I could.

I was thirteen years of age when I went to a deposition in San Jose, California. The car accident that killed my family had been the result of a military fry cook named Daniel Sperle, who had been driving back to his base of operations high out of his mind on way too many antidepressants. We were suing the United States military for wrongful death and negligence, because they had allowed him to leave base while he was on drugs, had had prior record of his addiction and of emotional problems, insubordination, and depression, and had done nothing to help him, let alone prevent him from getting lost in his spiral of pain that inevitably led him to be on the road at that time. We wanted money to help compensate for what my dad would no longer be making, but more importantly I wanted to see some sort of justice. Anything. We lost. The sum of money we did get was so meager it was laughable, and Mr. Sperle walked away unemployed and divorced by his wife, but regardless a free man all the same. They would not punish him further for the lives he had taken.

The worst of it all? The government-hired lawyer that I met in the deposition to defend the US military said something to me which would reverberate in my mind for years. Have you ever screwed up? What? He must have been joking. That insult... Those words. Did he know nothing of what I had seen? The back of my dad, my hero’s head caved in with blood, his head hung over the steering wheel of our shattered BMW. My beautiful older sister’s once pristine face carved by the shattered glass of the windows, mutilated like Harvey Dent. My loving puppy, who in a time of crisis had jumped in front of me and shielded me from the broken glass of my own window, and died from his wounds so that I might live. And to look a child in the eye and call that a screw up was insulting, demoralizing. And that was from an agent of the United States government. From that moment on? I hated this country for letting such terrible things and people control it...

I hated our people. Our government. Our pledge which dared to say liberty and justice for all. Which dared to call us a nation under God.

I hated all of the bullies that picked on me for not having a dad... And everyone’s smiles to me became mocking laughter and scorn. All I could think was how badly I wanted to see everything and everyone suffer as I had suffered, die as my dad and my sister had died.

It was the darkest time in my whole life, and it went on for years. For a long time, my heart was full of nothing but hatred.

....Until....

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

He spoke a lot the way my dad would have. His demeanor, his calm confidence... His poise, intellect, and cool nature. This suave, energetic guy reminded me so much of the way my dad had been. Reminded me of my dad’s private ambition to someday run for Mayor of San Francisco. The Democratic nominee for the 2008 Presidential election, Barack Obama.

I was hooked. I was inspired.

In President Obama, I saw a man who truly believed in America, and in doing what he believed to be the right thing. I saw someone who was strong, a leader that genuinely wanted to help people. Each year that passed, I believe in this more and more. I started to believe more in our constitution and in our republic. I started to accept what America was supposed to stand for.

So I started to change, year after year. I began to adore our President and our history. While in 2012 I was opposed to feminism and didn’t believe gay marriage was an important issue, by 2013 I had started to change my mind.

And as I developed into the start of my adult years, I learned that this was what my dad had been all about. This was why he was always looking into politics. Because he believed in America, and what it could be, but was dissatisfied with what it was and what it had become.

I find myself feeling the same way now, at the age of 21, in the midst of this crazy, out-of-control election.

But for that same reason, I am here to plead.

Please. Vote for Hillary Clinton. Don’t stop reading! Not yet. I understand that you have many problems with her, and with our government. I’d like to apologize to you again. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you’ve had hardships, and that our government hasn’t been as attentive to them as it should have been. I’m sorry that it feels like your vote doesn’t matter, and that politicians don’t care about you. I’m sorry everything seems so corrupt and broken.

If you’ll take a second to listen, however, I’ll tell you why it isn’t as terrible as you think.

Certainly, Hillary Clinton is merely a continuation of today’s status quo. Voting for her is voting for policies that aren’t dissimilar from those of Barack Obama. But is that such a bad thing? Is it really? Under Obama, we have record low unemployment. We have a nation where people, regardless of color, gender, or sexual orientation, can enjoy the fruits of love. We live here at a time when progressive leaders are fighting for everyone to have opportunities to start a good life. Isn’t that what America is supposed to be? The land of tolerance, love, and opportunity for all? The nation founded to repulse the failures of its European predecessors? Is that not why our founding fathers wanted it to exist? Because the world they escaped from was one of tyranny?

There are many of you who feel that Obama has done a terrible job because of the likes of Obamacare, but have you thought of the desperate people who could never have had healthcare otherwise? Who would have suffered horribly? It’s not as simple as getting a job. Some of them are wounded veterans who cannot find hire because of their physical or mental injuries. Some of them are people who randomly smoked marijuana once in their life and now can’t find employment. There are many distinct classes and kinds of people, and not all of them can afford healthcare, not because they’re lazy, but because they’re down on their luck. Isn’t it okay to pay a tiny bit more so that your fellow man or woman, your neighbor, that you are instructed in all religions to love, can have a little bit of assistance? Just a little bit of a break? And yes, I know times have been tough. It’s hard enough to make ends meet without paying more because of Obamacare.

Yet hasn’t Obama been fighting for a budget and an economy more geared toward your needs? He has not been negligent. He has been blocked. Time after time after time, Congress has blocked Obama’s agenda of helping people.

Historically, we have seen Democrats creating better economies (according to Forbes magazine). And, at this time, Obama has tried his damndest to create policies that will fix things. And you can’t deny that a lot of them are slowly getting better, bit by bit. If he hadn’t been so opposed by Congress, things would have moved a lot more quickly.

That’s how we get to Hillary Clinton. She will say whatever is politically expedient, that is true. She probably doesn’t believe in you as much as Obama does, that is also likely true. But it isn’t just Hillary. It’s the platform of the Democrats that’s behind her. A platform that will improve upon and continue our progress. The potential for a Congress that will do the same.

A lot of people are pointing to her being a criminal, but in calling her corrupt and saying we can’t vote for her because of that, haven’t we started to ignore the issues? Haven’t we started to ignore what she says she’s going to do, and what the actual platform says? I can tell you that the platform is fantastic, if you’d be willing to go to her website and look.

I can also tell you that I believe in our constitution, which says innocent until proven guilty. I think all of this corruption stuff about her is quite overplayed. Hillary has not been proven guilty of any crimes. There has never been any substantial evidence for convicting her. Benghazi wasn’t her fault. Republicans were the ones who blocked further funding to the embassy. Even so, she apologized and took responsibility when she was Secretary of State. Her emails were found by the FBI to have, out of tens of thousands, contained only about 107 with any classified info, all of which was overclassified, or in other words safe information that was only classified out of habit rather than anything else. Hence no criminal charges. Furthermore, only 3 emails were marked with the classified “C” and were still overclassified. Can you really tell me the email thing is that bad?

A lot of headlines demonize her with headlines like Russian money, pay to play, accepting speech money, and more. But how many of you have read the actual documents that created these events, so that you might get context? How many of you relied solely on headlines or random, biased articles? I’ve read a huge number of the publicly available documents, rather than relying solely on news outlets. I can tell you that I have found nothing to damn her. Nothing at all. She’s been prosecuted by the opposition for decades and they’ve found nothing! Long before she was a hugely powerful figure as she is now, she was being hunted, and they still found nothing.

So in the end, it’s all conspiracy theories and myths. Do some research into the actual documents themselves, rather than news summaries, and you’ll find, to your surprise, that you actually agree with me.

As I said. I believe in our constitution. Innocent until proven guilty.

And this is how we get to Donald Trump. As much as you dislike Hillary, how could you ever vote for him? I can tell you right now, my dad would have despised him. He wouldn’t have liked Hillary much either, but he would have voted for her. He would never have allowed himself to vote for a monster like Trump.

Trump, who has made hatred the cornerstone of his campaign. If you don’t believe hate is the lynchpin of what is Trump, then why is he endorsed by the KKK and by Neo Nazi factions?

And he admitted to sexual assault of women on tape. He admitted that he believes his celebrity status allows him to assault women, and that he has done so as well.

And forget all of that for a second. Just read the Republican platform, or look at Mike Pence’s political history. Pray the Gay Away is something you will find in both. And not only does it not “cure gayness,” but it leads to half of those stuck in that program committing suicide.

A lot of people will scream for hours about four deaths in Benghazi, but turn a blind eye to the thousands that were hurt by the Pray the Gay Away program and will continue to be hurt by it should Trump and Pence win the White House.

The Republican platform’s economic plan is unsubstantial. Compare it to the Democratic platform. The difference in detail is staggering. Go ahead. Go to Trump’s website and look, then go to Hillary’s website and look. You’ll see what I mean.

So how could anyone vote for Trump? Let’s ignore all of his scandals and everything he has ever said, and look only at history and platforms. HRC has a history of being found innocent. Trump has a history of discriminating against minorities, Pence has a history of causing the deaths of thousands of American kids. The Democratic platform has detailed plans. The Republican platform is extremely vague.

So, I write today to implore to you... Please.

Vote for Hillary Clinton.

Things have started to improve. Do you really want to enact policies that go in the exact opposite direction as economic and social improvement?

Vote for Hillary Clinton.

My dad was a great man, and the platform backing her is something he would have loved to see come into existence.

Vote for Hillary Clinton.

Because America is already a great country, and we shouldn’t trample it by allowing the sentiments of people like the KKK and the Neo Nazis hit the White House. We shouldn’t allow hatred to divide our nation and make it weak.

Vote for Hillary Clinton.

Because right now, it is her platform that represents what America has always been meant to stand for. Equality, justice, liberty, and the American dream of prosperity. A land of opportunity and tolerance. A country of love. A nation of greatness.

Vote for Hillary Clinton.

I implore you. For the sake of your kids and your fellow man or woman. For your neighbor, your family, and for yourself. Don’t vote for a man who has spent his entire life cheating the working class and who couldn’t care less about anyone or anything but himself, his fame, and his money.

Vote for Hillary Clinton.

Please. Vote the way great men like my dad would have.

And if you do? Then God bless you.