swing states

[falcongrrl]

Here's an excerpt to a letter I wrote to a friend, just in case anyone wants to read my own words on the subject of the election. They're not great...the products of too little sleep and too much adrenaline...but they're mine.



The swinging states are internal ones. I alternate between being teary, sad, literally grieving, and in the next moment being filled with an impotent rage.

I can sort of understand how the rioters felt after the Rodney King verdict. You're not represented; there's nothing you can do, so why not just go smash something. Make what's outside of you feel like what's inside of you.

I've been crying off and on all day. Seeing an American flag flapping in the breeze brings tears. Seeing Kerry signs in people's yards. Seeing "Vote November 2nd."

And then there are the tears stemming from sheer frustration, inspired by the cars with the flag and eagle and the obligatory Republican sentiment. The bumpers that say, "God Bless America" or (worse somehow), "America Bless God."

And I don't know how I could've been so blind. Maybe I just didn't want to see. I looked around and saw a few Kerry signs, saw all my liberal friends, saw an articulate man next to a babbling buffoon on TV, and thought that we were winning. I really thought that Kerry would pull Florida, Florida and the rest of the US. Stupid...or just naively hopeful? You make the call.

I thought the polls were wrong, mere Republican machinations. When I saw all the lines of people voting, I thought, Here we go. This is our time.

How could I have been so completely wrong?

Was there more that I could've done for the Kerry campaign? Oh fuck yeah. Perhaps I should have been leaving the kids with someone and canvassing door to door every evening. But fuck that. Given the complete incompetency of this administration, I shouldn't have to go knocking on doors and telling people how to vote, begging them to consider the consequences. That's bullshit. They have the same access to the same information that I do. And they still voted for W.

My county went to him. My state went to him. My country went to him.

I don't even consider it my country anymore. It's just the place where I happen to live, happened to be born.

I don't know what to do. We keep joking about emigrating, but part of me doesn't think it's a joke.

I don't want my kids to grow up in a place where it's bad to be gay and okay to kill Ay-rabs, kill them overseas with new-kew-lar cluster bombs in spite of the Geneva Convention.

I don't want my kids to grow up with the Earth's ecosystems completely fucked because some imbecile decided to drill giant holes in polar icecaps.

I don't want my daughter to grow up feeling like the yearnings of her body are evil, that she's damned if she gives into natural biological urges, damned if she tries to be proactive and use birth control, damned if she doesn't use it and can't bear to face the consequences.

I don't want my son to learn that the way a man leads is through bluster and bravado and refusing to admit that he's ever wrong.

I don't want to watch four more years of that supercilious smirk on television. I'm tired of feeling like I'm living in the middle of an George Orwell novel.

Maybe tomorrow we'll wake up and it will all have been a dream.

Maybe.

I'm not holding my breath.

A+

Comments

sadness

[druwc.livejournal.com]

i share your grief. if it helps, orange county went dem.

Re: sadness

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

It does, actually. It does help. Thanks. :-)

C.