From a friend of a friend

A friend of mine in NYC sent this around in an email from a friend of his and I asked if it would be possible to post it because I thought it spoke eloquently for a lot of us. She wrote back and okayed it, adding the extremely interesting November 4th entry...

November 4, 2004.

I feel as though I should premise what I wrote below with the fact that, though I am ashamed of it, it was my first year voting. I’m 34 and for various reasons I had not voted before. Some of the strongest reasons are probably that nobody in my family had ever registered or voted themselves. My parents are immigrants who barely escaped a communist regime and who have lived their entire lives with the hopes of steering clear of the government’s radar, even after we immigrated to America and became citizens. Though I was raised in suburban America, when the doorbell rang, we were taught to lie down in the dark, away from windows so that nobody would know we were home.

I thought this background info might help give more context to my reaction to this year’s election. Maybe it was especially devastating for me because it was my first time out and I had hope pumping through the veins of my wobbly new voting legs. Perhaps in my greenness I felt more was possible when I only really had a 2-dimensional view of how all of this really works. In any case, it was a big deal for me. And though I was still a little shaky after pulling that lever and crying after I heard the results, I guess in the end, I still accomplished something if not in the outside world, then at least in my own little private world.

Many are saying that we’ve a lot to be proud of. Many are encouraging me to look at the upside… almost half the country dissents. We’ve mobilized and have organized in a new and useful way that can only help us in the future. I want to agree. And I hope once my shock and disappointment wear off, I can feel again optimistic. I do want to believe we are all really the same… with the same vulnerabilities, with the same suffering, and with the same possibilities. But for now I’m still gravely disappointed and in some odd way hurt. I think I will emerge from this soon though and be able to believe and hope again.

Today, November 3rd, 2004.

I had a dream last night that Kerry lost a tooth. I guess that was the omen.

Today, I woke up in a foreign country. In a way, my greatest fears came true. I was right. Most of America is not like me. People ultimately vote for the person they are most comfortable with, someone with whom they can identify, even if they know the person isn’t making any logical sense. It’s like in relationships where people gravitate towards those who meet their emotional needs even if their politics or lifestyles don’t seem compatible. I am realizing as I get older that people for the most part are not logical creatures. After today I am convinced that most of America is not like me. Most of America looks and thinks like Bush. They want “family values” more than they want civil rights or an economy that works. I have awoken to a rude reminder that this is not Europe. I know living in NYC I often forget this and think because I live in this liberal bubble, I am in Europe or somewhere similarly idealized in my head. Today I woke up to discover what my mother always told me... NYC is another country. I don’t know why after having driven across America more than three times I haven’t realized that I do not belong here... that what I think of as America, is only in my head or is actually only made up of a few liberal cities in the U.S. Last night and most painfully this morning I realized that most of what is geographically America is not like me.

My boyfriend thinks that people will see the mistake they’ve made once they realize how they’ve been lied to. But I don’t believe it. I think that people may or may not be dumb to the lies Bush tells. But it doesn’t matter. He represents what they want to cling to. What they prioritize as most important to them. They want the country they voted for. People are vain. They want something in their image to represent them. Most Americans want a marriage of church and state, a religious fundamentalist right wing country because they are for the most part, a religious fundamentalist right wing, conservative people who believe in imposing their exclusive morality on others.

I wanted to believe like the others who voted for Kerry that if only enough people had the chance to freely vote, they would choose Kerry. I even refused to go canvassing for Kerry on the principle of “free will” and that people are aware enough and have the responsibility to themselves to discover the better choice. I felt uncomfortable trying to cajole someone into voting a certain way. I wanted to believe, like the Kerry camp did, that the American people were intelligent enough to see the consequences of not voting for Kerry. I, like the Kerry campaign, was gravely wrong. It is against my beliefs to treat people like children when they are not. America is choosing a path that they want. I feel like I, along with other Kerry hopefuls, have deluded myself and been out of touch with the reality of the country I live in.

Now more strongly than ever, I realize I cannot leave NYC or that I can only live in a few cities that are like NY. I feel lost today. But in a way, I am found in that I know who I am not, and that not everyone is as much like me as I so crave to believe. On some basic philosophical level, I want to believe that we are all essentially the same. But today the differences are so glaring they are blinding my better vision. I want to be more optimistic than I can be today.

On some level I want to agree with my boyfriend that the pendulum will have to swing the other way. That most of America will have to learn their lesson and live out the ramifications of their decisions. They will get what they want and have to live in it. And perhaps my boyfriend is right, the tide will then turn after reaching a critical mass and most of America has changed fundamentally in their hearts. But today, I don’t feel like I want to suffer through that long process and spend all my energy and days fighting or trying to navigate through the system that is in many ways determined to damn me. Today, I want to live in the America in my head. The United States of My Own Illusion. I want to believe that NYC is my own little America. I want to live in a country that struggles to embrace diversity and tolerance, and to tell the truth. I want to live in a community that is not afraid to admit to the messiness of life and that, more often than not, the right answers are usually not so simple. I want to live in a country for whom compassion is not just a campaign slogan and only for the select few that are chosen by me, and where the social welfare of the greater public is a higher priority than individual power and vanity. I want to live in a different America than the one I woke up in today.