talktooloose

I'm trying not to sink into despair. I started the morning quite calm about Bush's victory. I predicted it have been preparing to blog my thoughts. But since coming into work, I've had my detached calm chipped away at, primarily by one of my closest friends who lives in Syracuse and sends the following list of misery:

-I foolishly stayed up most of the night watching the election returns
-my country is stooopid
-the dogs have been unleashed
-another 100,000 Iraqi civilians get to be blown up in the next few years
-the Supreme Court's elder justices who will retire or die in the next four years will be replaced by conservative hacks who will decimate the Bill of Rights
-I am spending the morning being trained in how to resist the Gestapo when they come to the library looking for terrorists (he's a librarian at the university and they may be compelled by Homeland Security to release patron info)
-My daughter and her (female) spouse's legal rights as a married couple have been nullified by the voters of Oregon
-I feel like screaming

Things that strike me this morning:

I have been living in a world of growing communication, social justice, rights and celebration of variety. I perceive the last 30 years, with the change in gender politics and in global vision, as astonishing social progress. What I've come to understand in this election is that while part of the population has surged forward in its thinking, a large part has staunchly dug in its heels. I guess this isn't so surprising, but I had thought that the "lagging" half was also progressing slow. In fact, they are doggedly determined to stay exactly where they are (the 1950s, I think). The divide between these two populations is pulling the seams of America to a breaking point.

I called Bush as winner as soon as Kerry was nominated. In a showbiz-obsessed culture, the man who most closely fits the type of President (fatherly, firm, humanly warm) is the one who wins. The victory of Clinton over Bush Sr. was more about that than about a move away from Reaganomics.

I think a Kerry White House would have been a shaky proposition. He couldn't pull out of Iraq safely or be seen to soften on the (*cough* *sputter*) War on Terrorism, yet the hawks would be working to sabotage him. And the doves would feel betrayed. The Democratic party is not decisive enough to stand up for its ideals (and those are what?) in the face of Right wing opposition.

Of course, a Kerry presidency would have put some brakes on the further erosion of civil liberties and environmental decimation. And maybe the world would have a chance to become more trusting of that rogue state of America.

If you are queer in America, if you are a voice against the corporate model of globalization, if you want to fight for pluralism and one world of peace -- I don't blame you for being afraid this morning. Your enemies are in power and with a strong headwind of moral machismo. But they are self-interested and that is their weakness. Any battle for love and peace is good and helps heal the world. Get to work.