It's Wednesday morning, and I am bleary-eyed, bushy-tailed, queasy
and I have a migraine that defies my previous understanding of
pain. Would that these were the residual effects of a night rolling
amidst the bedsheets with an object of my afflictions. Alas, they
are but the sickly symptoms of a night spent glued to a handful
of windows on my computer screen, an ICQ intravenous device and
an email frenzy due to the united states presidential election.
My political feelings aside, the fact that I have the same feelings
I've had from a one night stand due to any of the three main men
involved last night is enough to make me feel worse than I already
do. On another level, it's really quite telling.
How things went -- and are still going on today -- says a whole
lot about our culture. It says a lot about how obsessed -- and
to our great detriment --we have become with competition and with
winning. It says a lot about how we value someone's "win," far
more than we value, judge -- or even examine -- their actual person,
and how they came to that win, be they a presidential candidate,
a political party or a television network. It says all too much
about how in our culture being the first in line, or being a "winner,"
is truly more important to most people than it is to feel accurately
represented by people and groups of integrity and character. It
says a lot about how apathetic we have really become.
I don't normally flow with the wave of what our country is doing.
I don't watch television, I don't care for the mainstream press,
and I tend to be more than a little behind on most facets of pop
culture. So, sitting up holding vigil last night with nearly everyone
else was more than a bit odd for me. Trying to follow the wayward
tide of the fickle media was dizzying (especially when my friend
working graveyard at a paper in Florida was telling me tallies
were not close to complete while CNN was screaming everything
was finished like a bunch of drunken frat boys).
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Seeing photos and hearing quotes from voters in either camp was
almost terrifying in its uninformed allegiances. There were times
when I couldn't figure out if I was following an election or a
football game, and unfortunately, I'd have to say that that wasn't
altogether clear to many voters, through the campaigns and the
election itself.
Regardless of who wins, a plague upon the electoral college, for
starters. It is unforgivable that in a country where we do not
need it anymore, and have not for quite some time, we still have
it in place. |
| Even Chris, working graveyard at a Florida paper where he knew
CNN jumped the gun, looks resolved to fate with his "buddy" Jesus
during the election madness. |
The electoral college forces strategic voting, rather than voting
of conscience and personal choice, in a nation where I think it's
safe to say at least half the population has no idea how to strategically
vote. There is no reason why anyone should feel they have to vote
for a candidate to keep another out of office. There is also no
good, sound reason why the American public should be forced to
choose between two candidates who represent two parties which
are virtually interchangeable. I think it's wonderful that some
Green supporters in swing states strategically voted. But I think
it's a crying shame that the system is constructed in a way that
anyone feels the best they can do is to support what is considered
the lesser of two evils. So, curse Ralph Nader as you may, but
we can at least say he and the Green party were right on several
counts: we DO need to escape the forced tyranny and apathy of
a two-party system, and both the candidates presented to us WERE
both unappealing, at least one of which was so because he was
so strongly forced to tread a party path for need of its campaign
dollars.
I don't feel that cursing and condemning a third-party or a third-party
candidate addresses the real problem this time around, the real
problem being that NEITHER the republican nor the democratic party
addresses, represents or fully supports a good deal of the population,
and notably, the actual left (as opposed to the left defined as
those who do not belong to the conservative right).
Katha Pollitt commented sagely in The Nation that, "It's perfectly fair to attack Nader...[B]ut it's absurd and kind
of pathetic for Toby Moffett and the "Nader's Raiders for Gore"
to wring their hands and beg Nader to step aside for the good
of the country--it would make more sense to beg Gore to address
the concerns of Nader voters. It would even make more sense for
them to address--since Gore isn't doing the job--the fence-sitters
who are moving toward Bush: pro-choice women, for instance, who
think Bush isn't serious about working to limit abortion (an illusion
not shared by the Christian Coalition, one might add), and union
men who are having trouble choosing between their guns and their
job protection."
I agree with Pollitt. Last night, in an all-female mailing list
mainly composed of urban, feminist, progressive and primarily
leftist women, a lone female "moralist" stuck her neck out to
say that as a business owner, how could she NOT support Bush?
Of course, if she's, say, a gay female business owner, a woman
who needs an abortion, or a parent who doesn't want their child
indoctrinated with "faith-based" lessons in their afterschool
care, there are plenty of reasons she couldn't support him and
his agenda (whether or not he can make some or much of it come
to fruition). That we have seen women voting for this man outside
the Bible Belt says a whole lot, and it may say less about how
strong a candidate Bush was than it does about how poor a candidate
Gore was, and about the state of our nation right now as a whole.
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Watching this election unfold was like watching a house on fire.
If you're not a fireman, all you can do is know your house may
burn to the ground, or burn in part, some of it remaining intact
but blackened, but in either case, it isn't good. And in either
case, there's really nothing one can do, especially if you are
in a state where your vote is essentially meaningless because
of the electoral college.
I'm feeling hung over from my one-night-stand with middle America,
with the media, with a group of men with whom I'd rather have
my toenails pulled out one by one by than crawl into bed with.
The sad part is, really, that I don't feel any more disillusioned
or unsupported than I ever have. |
 |
| The author of this piece, however, looked like this into the wee
hours last night and hasn't improved much since. |
Look: I'm from two immigrant families. I grew up poor, with a
leftist parent. I'm a bisexual humanist female. I'm Wiccan and
Buddhist. I work in sexuality, sex education and pornography.
I'm an artist and an independent business owner. I'm largely self-educated,
and otherwise went to alternative schools. I'm self-employed,
and economically, I'm a commie, for all intents and purposes.
I'm nonviolent. My partner is a bisexual Native American art teacher.
So, someone like me is only going to get so supported in this
country even in the best of circumstances, and I'm not anything
close to the extreme end of the minority spectrum. Not by a long
shot.
But I do feel that I'm entitled to a system which lets me represent
my single voice wholly. I do feel I am entitled to live a life
in which I am free to make the best decisions for myself, so long
as they do not harm others. I do feel that I am entitled to do
everything in my power that I have the desire to do to give my
nation what I can to improve it so that I really AM living in
a country which allows for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
for everyone in it.
But a vote can't do that (and as of right now, it can't undo that,
either), and that has always been the case, not just this time
around. Only action can do that, and the truth of the matter is
that action can do only so much if I only AM one person with one
voice, and with one vote. The civil rights movement had nothing
to do with voting, and neither did the suffragette movement or
the ERA. It had to do with action, on the behalf not of the government,
but of the people it governs. The beauty of movements like that
is that, as we forget all too often, they represented a process
far more than a product, and it wasn't their "win" which forged
change, but their actions and their process towards that win.
We'd do well to remember that today. Pity enough of us didn't
remember that before today.
Political change shouldn't feel like a football game or a one-night
stand. It shouldn't happen in a single day, because it can't happen
in a day, no matter what they tell you on television. None of
us should feel we have to choose between the lesser of two evils,
and one of those two "evils," as they were, shouldn't be vindicated
simply because they get the gold cup, or denounced because they
did not.
I don't feel nauseated today because I don't know who won the
election, or because I think I might and I don't like it. And
I don't feel weary just from lack of sleep either, or a night
spent with unwelcome guests in my brain. I feel like hell because
I watched an ongoing illustration of a populace which treats politics
like sports, ideology like politics, and thinks political action
is about going to a toll booth and playing the world's biggest
bingo game.
My partner said something the other day which I'd wholeheartedly
agree with, and which I optimistically hope to be true: that a
party or candidate which does not represent us well may, as often
adverse times do, force us into action, and into truly speaking
out with our voices, not our ballots. Flatly, in this particular
instance, if that can happen, it may well happen no matter who
wins. We are either a nation divided, or -- which I suspect more
-- one who is utterly apathetic and uneducated about the choices
afforded us, and about what those choices mean.
Many have basically chosen to go to a bar, on one random night
out of four years, a night when we weren't in the mood in the
first place, and chosen to take one guy home with us to get into
bed with when there weren't any there who met our criteria in
the first place. I'm not saying we've prostituted ourselves, because
that'd actually be better -- instead, we haven't made a dime,
or reaped anything from this sordid affair. Nobody left us a few
bucks under the pillow, kissed us when they left in the morning,
or even bothered to put the damn toilet seat down.
What I have to hope is that the bad taste left in our collective
mouth will make us want to stop picking up whoever happens to
be lying on the Formica on any given evening, and realize that
we both need to work to open up our options, and say political
charades be damned and work on our own, as a people, to support
those issues which matter to us and which are vital to our rights
-- all of our rights, not the easy majority, or the rights of
the whitest guy with the most money in his pocket. Winning isn't
so great when it happens with just the flip of a coin, or when
we have to sacrifice ourselves to pay for the prize.
And the one-night stand that might have looked even marginally
attractive the night before often looks very different the morning
after. |
Copyright 2000, Heather Corinna. All rights reserved. The Morning After was also published at technodyke.com, where other feisty reactions to last evening's fiasco-and-a-half
can be found. |
