I know politics are bad for my health. I know I am such a political innocent that somewhere deep inside I still believe I can help to change the inequities of the world even though time and time again I'm proven wrong. I know anger is counterproductive.
Despite all that, I can't stay silent. I feel such outrage at the outcome of the presidential election. Had Dubya won in a straightforward way I would simply be crushed and mystified, but I believed that our democracy was healthy enough to guarantee a legal election.
Sure, not all Americans vote. Sure, Nader might as well have been a ringer. Sure, a government operated by the straight white male who can buy the most advertising is not exactly a representative government, but it's better than being ruled outright by a corporate or military dictatorship. When I'm reminded by the press that Daddy-o Bush, as head of the CIA, was once in the business of rigging elections in other countries, and that the state that turned the tide is in the hands of Dubya's brother, then I have to accept the fact that we have a problem.
Aside from illegality, compassionate conservatism for the rich and bad news for queers, this presidency may have even nastier consequences. It is human nature to learn to live with a bad deal. The bitter humor I'd been seeing in the national press since December seems to be gone. Poking fun at pols in editorial cartoons is getting back to the lighter tone of business as usual. Even more sinister, I just read a quote from a working guy just getting off graveyard shift who has decided that it's only fair for the rich to get a bigger tax break than people with lower incomes, because the rich pay more in taxes.
What's wrong with this picture? Since when do we accept such extreme economic inequality? Since when does the person on the street think it's okay to give a break to a citizen with an obscene amount of wealth when another citizen is going hungry and the national debt looms as a huge interest-growing monster? Since we've been shoved up against the fiscal conservative wall and told to like it or lump it. Given a choice ( were we given a choice? ) between the crashing post-Clinton economy and the scraps the Bush dy-nasty proposes to throw us working stiffs as a solution ( the poor do not enter into the equation at all ) , what can a regular Jo do but take the bribe ( if indeed we ever see it ) and shut up?
We can prepare.
Right now I feel pretty paralyzed by the turn of events. I feel helpless against the rich white boys and their appointed hench people. John Ashford was a ridiculous choice for Attorney General and he's in despite the loud and large protest. Unions have been immediately and directly punished on no less than four fronts for their pro-worker stance. The rape of the Alaskan Wilderness seems inevitable—doesn't big business usually get what it wants in the end? The most we can hope to do is slow it down and agree to compromise, although I have never been able to understand a willingness to compromise our sacred earth.
It's not a second too early to look forward. I have got to get it together to do my part to reroute the balance of power. I need to join all the battles I can before the monumental unmandated arrogance of the current administration bulldozes the America I know. We may be able to withstand some damage, but we'd better put up every barricade available to minimize it and then topple the bulldozer in 2004.
We can stand around and complain while our rights are eroded by too-powerful conservatives working their will on our lawmakers, or we can turn the tide in every election coming down the pike. We need to elect gay-friendly, earth-friendly, truly socially compassionate politicians to run our towns, counties, states and nation. This doesn't happen by magic. It happens when I can plunk down ten bucks a month to a viable political party, or when thousands of us give $10 each to the lesbian and gay Victory Fund. It happens when I lend my body to demonstrations and my pen to the million articles that must be written and my time to distributing lawn signs.
I'm a scared middle-class queer. There are people in Washington who will stomp on my rights and mess with my Social Security and do worse to Americans with fewer privileges than I have and if it takes throwing myself in front of the bulldozer to change this, then so be it. See you on the frontlines. Again.
