legionnaire

"I've said it before and I'll say it again; democracy simply doesn't work."

-Kent Brockman (Kenny Brockelstein), The Simpsons

For the first time in my life I'm ashamed to be an American. After the 2000 election we had just cause to believe that while attitudes in America were divided, that a screwed up system was responsible for Bush's election and that people weren't aware of the extent to which he would go to satisfy his ultra-conservative base. After this past election there are really only three possible conclusions I can draw, and they're all depressing. The first is that both a popular and electoral majority of Americans didn't bother to do the very basic homework required to learn about the destructive policies of George W. Bush. The second is that they knew about those policies but didn't care and elected him anyway. And the third, and most frightening for me, is that they knew about those policies and actively support them.

Regardless of which scenario is true, I now have to own up to the fact that as an American I represent a country that is either willfully ignorant of reality or actively supports someone whose beliefs are so antithetical to my own that I literally cannot comprehend how anyone could support them. And that makes me ashamed. In years past I've sort of chuckled at the supposed naivete of Midwesterns, or poked fun at the stereotyped rednecks in the South, but I never really believed it and I always felt like we were all still in this together as Americans. I don't believe those stereotypes today any more than I did three days ago, but I now have the very distinct impression that we aren't all in this together. That my world view and the values that I hold most dear: tolerance, rationality, reason, intellectual curiousity, and a desire to work together with other countries and cultures are not shared by a majority of the people in this country.

I watched the election with some SGNY friends and some non-SG friends at a bar in NYC. There were a few British guys there who I was talking to, and they asked me what I thought about the fact that Alabama had voted overhwhelmingly for George W. Bush. I had to admit to them that in all honesty, I felt like I have more in common with them, people from another country thousands of miles away, than with most people in Alabama. It's a sad feeling.

The last time I saw New York city the way it was yesterday was on September 12, 2001. It literally had the same air as that day - depressed resignation that maybe everything really isn't going to be OK in the end. We all had such high hopes and they've disappeared in a single day.

I don't know what the next four years are going to bring us, but I don't think they will be good. There is no real substantial opposition remaining any more. The America of the future will be a conservative playground, they can pass whatever legislation they see fit and be reasonably sure that the Supreme Court will uphold it. It doesn't bode well for the future of America, or the rest of the world.

But I refuse to give up. None of us can forget that even though Bush won with a majority, that more people voted for Kerry than voted for Reagan in 1984 in the biggest landslide in US history. All this means is that the tactics have to change, that the Democratic party needs to be either rebuilt from the top down or discarded in favor of something else that works. And the only way that will happen is if people remain committed to the same values and beliefs that they had on November 1st, but we learn to voice them more effectively. I still hope that most Americans haven't swallowed the conservative platform hook, line and sinker, that they haven't internalized hatred and fear and the narrow view that only American selfish interests are important. People can change, but only if we keep nudging them in the right direction. Now, more than ever, we need to remember that. We may not have the presidency, the Senate, the House or the Supreme Court, but we've all still got each other. And that's something.