I remember the last presidential election vividly.
I had just moved back to the U.S. and had just started my freshman year at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. The Red Sox had just won the World Series for the first time in 86 years. The movie Garden State came out that fall: The Shins and The Postal Service followed me everywhere I went.
Jon Stewart and his team at The Daily Show (almost none of whom are still on the cast now) were covering Indecision 2004.
It was my first year to vote.
Steph, my roommate, drove all the way home to New Jersey during early voting because she felt her vote would matter more down there. I crawled home on Monday after a four day Halloween bender at Hampshire College, and voted on Tuesday afternoon, in the miserable drizzling cold of a November in New England. Briefly, it seemed like we had a chance.
I remember staying up to watch the election with my roommate. There were election watching parties going on all over, but we opted out, largely because we both just had a feeling it wasn't going to go our way.
As soon as it was obvious Bush had been reelected, we just turned off the lights and lay there, talking about we felt excluded, pushed aside by all those big bossy red-states trying to impose their "values" on everyone else. I felt like I didn't belong in a country hijacked by stupid close-minded xenophobic religious nuts. I still feel that way some times.
But I refuse to let them ruin America for me. The truth is, I love this country for all the things they hate about it. I love Massachusetts and California for allowing gay-marriage. I love Colorado for decriminalising marijuana possession. And I'm thankful for organizations like the ACLU and Amnesty International and the NAACP who are working to keep America fair and safe for everyone.
And I mean everyone, even the people at the Yearning for Zion Ranch - even they have freedom of religious expression. Separation of Church and State, and limited government, is not just for me or people who holds views like mine, it's for everyone.
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2 comments:
I strongly agree with the things you are saying about limited government. I do believe in personal liberties.
The thing that concerns me the most is that the "big bossy red states" used to be the ones that supported limited government. Some say that the Republican Party was founded on limited government. It is interesting to me how both major parties have moved so far left.
I was just reading about how both parties used to have both a left and right wing. There were both liberal and conservative Republicans, and the same with the Democrats. Don't you think that Ronald Reagan began the shift in the Republican party toward big government and higher taxes? It's funny because all the Republicans want to follow in Reagan's footsteps, and that's what has brought the party low.
Sarah Palin as the next party leader would just be another step in the wrong direction of uneducated, xenophobic, religious nuts. Which parts of America is she saying are the "real patriotic Americans"? We are all Americans, even if we disagree. We don't have to distrust each other's patriotism.
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