Wednesday, November 03, 2004
regarding the wonderfully supportive environment we have here in the social science building
I just walked by one of the TA offices, and the graduate students inside announced that they were talking about me and how I said that the election results make me want to die. Specifically, the graduate students were brainstorming about what would be the best way for me to kill myself over the outcome, both from my own standpoint (presuming I want something quick and painless) and from theirs (presuming they want something spectacular). One student even offered to lend me some computer cable that he thought would be particularly effective for hanging oneself. Thanks, kids! But alas, however, like Gloria Gaynor before me, I will survive, or at least will until my head ex/implodes (see previous post).
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6 comments:
dude, we are just trying to be helpful. and our suggestions were pretty humane. it isn't like we wanted you to be torn to shreds by dingoes.
Don't worry Jeremy, there will be so much dissidence in the next four years, Bush will be falling off his couch from "choking on Pretzels" every weekend
A note from the winning side - someone here said they hoped we wouldn't gloat too long. How can we gloat when 48% of people see things differently than we do? We have big problems that need fixing, like the environment, the economy, health care, and the mind set that brought down the twin towers with boxcutters is not going away during this administration or the next. Why wouldn't we seek compromise and healing? We know the ultra extreme elements on our side need close watching and must at times be literally stepped on. We hope you can feel and do the same with the ultra extremists on your side. Yesterday I saw on some pundit news show a young woman stand up and say she felt her nation had let her down. This kind of self-centered arrogance exists equally on both sides and it needs to stop. Given my age, life experience and the book learning I have had, I should be able to offer more advice than than this, but I can't. The air is cool between my wife and I - she is a strong Kerry supporter. I didn't have the courage to wag my tongue at her when Kerry threw in the towel and she had no harsh words for Bush, so I called my Uncle Carl, who is an old, salty, crusty bachelor farmer from up North - an FDR Democrat. I secretly hoped to hear him cuss Bush the way I had heard him cuss Eisenhower, Nixon and Regan, but he didn't. He told me, " you can lather yourself up with Bush's oil money or Kerry's ketchup money, but either way, boy, you gotta' go to work the next day - one man can't save or bring America down". The Civil War did not bring about our demise, nor WW1, or the long and bloody labor union movement, the great influenza that killed millions of us, the great depression, or WW2, the cold war, Korea, the upheaval of the civil rights movement, Viet Nam, Watergate. I was sure Clinton's second term would kill us all but it damn sure didn't, and neither will Bush's second term. We are better than that.
no, the "mind set that brought down the twin towers with boxcutters" is not going away, thanks to the neo-con agenda in iraq and elsewhere. the notion that there is currently a fixed/finite number of terrorists to be hunted down and killed is so naive as to hurt my head to think about it. yet, this is the basis of our foreign policy. there is nary a consideration of the idea that these folks are produced, not reduced, by our actions overseas. bush has *fostered* rather than diminished the terrorist "mindset" in iraq. it is no coincidence that iraq sits atop the second largest oil reserves on earth. if saddam had ruled tyrannically over the second largest tulip reserves on earth, i dare say we'd have shown less interest in him (both in prior decades when he was an ally to be armed, and today). mean time, genocide in darfur. if nothing else, we could at least be honest about our motives in the arab world. no child left behind; except those who represent "collateral damage"...
a sad note from the winning side - this nation is awash in blood, literally drenched in it and the stains long precede the Revolutionary War too - just ask the Native Americans about that. I am not proud of this nor am I ashamed of it but I certainly don't believe Americans are bloodier than anyone else is. Enlightenment can't be forced on a species that has a large brain, frontal vision, canine teeth and opposable thumbs. If you believe Bush celebrated his victory with bear baiting, cock fighting, pistol firing and dwarf tossing, then you believe that the species will consume itself into extinction. I don't.
I think that people who feel disappointed by the country after the election are responding to the idea that it was cultural values that drove people to the polls. It seems clear that banning gay marriage, and to a lesser extent, banning abortion were the motivating forces behind many of those that voted for Bush. If you are a women, or especially if you are gay, how could you not feel that those who voted for bush for those reasons think of you as a second-class American? That, for me at least, is where the disappointment lies.
-Greg
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