Friday, November 05, 2004
Post Election Blues from a Blue Person in a Blue State
For two days in a row I have picked up my daughter from school and she has been distraught. It is because of the political climate in our country now. I, too, have been distraught because I mourn the loss of civil discussion and perhaps the loss of any discourse more than I am sad about any particular candidate.
The first day following the election, my daughter was upset because her beloved teachers were visibly shaken. Her teachers have done a wonderful job of not showing bias but on Wednesday, they could not hide their feelings. You see, my daughter's high school is considered a "failed school" under Bush's "No Child Left Behind". It has been a wonderful public high school with good sports programs and a fabulous fine arts department. The test scores are always high and therein lies the problem. They could not beat their own test scores as required by NCLB so they have earned the label "FAILED"; it is absurd. One of the favorite math teachers is beginning the process of packing up and moving to New Zealand because he has had it with a loss of creativity in the classroom, the rigid requirement of test scores and the loss of rational debate in this nation.
The second day following the election, my daughter was upset because one of her best friends was saying how happy she was Bush was elected because his "moral values" are in line with hers and it will help spread those "values" to the whole country and the world. My daughter, believing in civil discourse because this is one of the "values" I taught her straight out of the U.S. Constitution (the First Amendment in case anybody wants to know), respectfully disagreed. She replied to her friend that 100,000 deaths of Iraqis and mostly women and children killed by our bombs was not in line with her own Christian values. The conversation was not pleasant and proceeded along the lines of "ending abortion is more important" than not killing non-Christian Muslims. Kaley's friend attends a large fundamentalist right wing church and their agenda according to this very bright girl is to end the pesky Constituional separation of church and state. They believe they are on their way.
I was upset a few weeks before the election because one of my issues is the proposed Wild Sky Wilderness which is accessible within 45 minutes of my front door. This plan had been worked on for years and was a wonderful compromise of local business people, logging groups, ranchers, environmentalists, and forestry people. Many of us "liberals" wanted more land protected but we worked out a compromise after civil discourse. The proposal passed the U. S. Senate. In the House, a republican from California who knew nothing of all of the work and compromise put into the final product in OUR state and supported by a large majority in OUR state said it "locked" up too much land and he led the charge to kill it. And after Tuesday, it is really dead and they are probably looking for oil there.
I was upset a few days before the election after a discussion with a friend of mine--an older lady. She was complaining how people said unkind things about President Bush. She doesn't like how the world says nasty things about him and particularly she is concerned that Canada disagrees with us. We should not be allowed to criticize our commander in chief during war she said and Canada should support us. She likes the idea of our government being controlled by one party because that will help to stop people--especially newspaper people-- from saying bad things about the president. I listened and asked her one simple question, "Hmmm! So you do not think we should have more than one political party in existence in this country? Interesting!? Very interesting!"
Yes, I deeply mourn the loss of intelligent argument, debate, compromise, and the extraction of great ideas from all sides. I grieve for the loss of civil discourse or perhaps any discourse at all. I cry for the loss of the beautiful "values" contained in the U.S. Constitution. Before the election, we were aggressively approached from behind by a young man on a motorcycle. We had out of town guests in our van and we were driving slowly to show them our neighborhood. He pulled up to the driver's side window; we naively assumed he was going to ask us if we needed help finding anything. Into my husband's face and in front of our guests, he screamed, "You F***ING Liberals!" and drove off. I guess he noticed my bumper sticker. Not long before that the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, said something similar using the same "F***" word to a Democrat on the Senate floor. Hmmm! Intriguing "moral values"!
The next four years will not end soon enough. My fear and my sadness is that the next four years may go on for decades to come.
For two days in a row I have picked up my daughter from school and she has been distraught. It is because of the political climate in our country now. I, too, have been distraught because I mourn the loss of civil discussion and perhaps the loss of any discourse more than I am sad about any particular candidate.
The first day following the election, my daughter was upset because her beloved teachers were visibly shaken. Her teachers have done a wonderful job of not showing bias but on Wednesday, they could not hide their feelings. You see, my daughter's high school is considered a "failed school" under Bush's "No Child Left Behind". It has been a wonderful public high school with good sports programs and a fabulous fine arts department. The test scores are always high and therein lies the problem. They could not beat their own test scores as required by NCLB so they have earned the label "FAILED"; it is absurd. One of the favorite math teachers is beginning the process of packing up and moving to New Zealand because he has had it with a loss of creativity in the classroom, the rigid requirement of test scores and the loss of rational debate in this nation.
The second day following the election, my daughter was upset because one of her best friends was saying how happy she was Bush was elected because his "moral values" are in line with hers and it will help spread those "values" to the whole country and the world. My daughter, believing in civil discourse because this is one of the "values" I taught her straight out of the U.S. Constitution (the First Amendment in case anybody wants to know), respectfully disagreed. She replied to her friend that 100,000 deaths of Iraqis and mostly women and children killed by our bombs was not in line with her own Christian values. The conversation was not pleasant and proceeded along the lines of "ending abortion is more important" than not killing non-Christian Muslims. Kaley's friend attends a large fundamentalist right wing church and their agenda according to this very bright girl is to end the pesky Constituional separation of church and state. They believe they are on their way.
I was upset a few weeks before the election because one of my issues is the proposed Wild Sky Wilderness which is accessible within 45 minutes of my front door. This plan had been worked on for years and was a wonderful compromise of local business people, logging groups, ranchers, environmentalists, and forestry people. Many of us "liberals" wanted more land protected but we worked out a compromise after civil discourse. The proposal passed the U. S. Senate. In the House, a republican from California who knew nothing of all of the work and compromise put into the final product in OUR state and supported by a large majority in OUR state said it "locked" up too much land and he led the charge to kill it. And after Tuesday, it is really dead and they are probably looking for oil there.
I was upset a few days before the election after a discussion with a friend of mine--an older lady. She was complaining how people said unkind things about President Bush. She doesn't like how the world says nasty things about him and particularly she is concerned that Canada disagrees with us. We should not be allowed to criticize our commander in chief during war she said and Canada should support us. She likes the idea of our government being controlled by one party because that will help to stop people--especially newspaper people-- from saying bad things about the president. I listened and asked her one simple question, "Hmmm! So you do not think we should have more than one political party in existence in this country? Interesting!? Very interesting!"
Yes, I deeply mourn the loss of intelligent argument, debate, compromise, and the extraction of great ideas from all sides. I grieve for the loss of civil discourse or perhaps any discourse at all. I cry for the loss of the beautiful "values" contained in the U.S. Constitution. Before the election, we were aggressively approached from behind by a young man on a motorcycle. We had out of town guests in our van and we were driving slowly to show them our neighborhood. He pulled up to the driver's side window; we naively assumed he was going to ask us if we needed help finding anything. Into my husband's face and in front of our guests, he screamed, "You F***ING Liberals!" and drove off. I guess he noticed my bumper sticker. Not long before that the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, said something similar using the same "F***" word to a Democrat on the Senate floor. Hmmm! Intriguing "moral values"!
The next four years will not end soon enough. My fear and my sadness is that the next four years may go on for decades to come.
// posted by Janet @ 7:51 AM
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