Two Weeks Left: A Reflection

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 (and I still have trouble spelling it!) The Red Sox had just won the World Series for the first time in 86 years. The movie Garden State came out that fall, and the soundtrack was playing everywhere: The Smiths and The Shins and The Postal Service followed me everywhere I went. Jon Stewart and his team (almost none of whom are still on the cast now) were covering Indecision 2004, and it was my first year to vote.

They said "people are turning out in record numbers" and "young people are getting involved more than ever before." People talked about the winds of change, about making a difference.

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. Steph, my roommate, had driven all the way home to New Jersey during early voting to vote in her home state because she felt her vote would matter more down there.

I had 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.

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.

Three weeks later, when Thanksgiving rolled around, I just couldn't bring myself to stay in the U.S., the idea of a national holiday just depressed me, so I went to Canada. I was so dissolusioned. I felt like I didn't belong in this country. That I had nothing in common with a country that has been 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.