The counter on the left side of the blog says less than two weeks until the midterm elections. The netroots pundits are on the road headed to various places for the countdown. The email folder is filling up with last minute requests for more money. And my heart is in my stomach.
In 2004, I hadn’t much been so involved as this last two years. I think there were a couple of reasons. I wasn’t in love with Kerry. I didn’t yet know what I now know about the duplicity of the Bush Administration – the prewar intelligence, the ‘outing’ of Valerie Plame, the level of corruption, the war profiteering, the assault on the Constitution. It was there to know, I just hadn’t found it out. But I did know that I thought Bush was incompetent and leading us down a very wrong path. I also knew that when he came on television, I was transported out of the room by the sound of his voice. Cheney too. Three weeks before the election, I announced "news restriction" and didn’t watch any television news, didn’t look on the Internet. But on the night of the election, I watched. As the night progressed, I regressed, and by the next morning, I felt as low as I’m allowed to feel. Maybe lower. Thus came two years of political obsession.
I haven’t stopped watching the news this year. Superstitious, I guess. Maybe I caused it by dropping out last time. But I do have a plan. Tuesday, election day, we’re going to vote, then heading to a remote State Park on a mountaintop with a pop-up camper for two nights. I’m not taking a television set or a radio [though there’s one in the truck, dangerously near]. I’m going to try my best to wait until Thursday to hear about it all. It just matters too much to sit through it [I guess it’s why ostrichs hide their heads in the sand].
It feels personal to me. The first election of my on-my-own life was Kennedy in my first year of college. So my young adulthood was during the Civil Rights Movement, and the Viet Nam War, and Watergate, and by the time of the fall of Communism, I was on the other side of the hill. I guess my plan was to leave politics to the younger people like it had been for us and sit around kvetching about the high prescription costs during a rousing shuffleboard game. I think I was kind of looking forward to it, as a matter of fact [just kidding about the shuffleboard part]. Then, about the time I turned 60, Bush got elected and then the Twin Towers came down. And then Bush turned out to be the front man for a wave of whatever-you-call-it that was as bad as a Summer Conspiracy Thriller without the guaranteed payoff of a happy ending where truth, justice, and the American way prevailed. I guess it didn’t seem fair. I’d done my part. That’s just not how it works, I guess. But I do, however, claim the right to a couple of peaceful days before finding out if there’s a change in the wind. And it’s a mighty beautiful fall this year…
Anyone taking bets on whether we can stay away from that radio?
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