Ugh..
Sophie and I have been sick for the last few days. Fun intenstinal issues. The cures are often worse than the illness. I thought I might have had it licked last night, but then I woke up...
Bush wins..
America hates gay people..
Burr wins..
Americans are either stoopid or evil. Which is better?
I feel guilty. Could I have done more? I didn't do much apart from talk to people.
I feel embarrassment. I am American, how can I face the world?
I feel sick. My body appears to hate me as much as America does. Or maybe the diarrhea is some sort of unconscious response to this election.
I feel hot. It is eighty one degrees and rising in my office, sixty degrees and falling outside. Makes its a little hard to dress appropriately.
So I actually checked the APA website for jobs in Canada today. I don't remember deciding to do that. Didn't see any openings.
Somebody cheer me up
Went home sick today...
posted by Scholz @ 11/03/2004 08:59:00 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Stay and fight. We need you. I'm thinking about joining the Republican party as a hostile-takover move so I can influence their primaries.
-Karen
and amanda has started prefacing all of her social and political analyses with the phrase "as a fiscal consrvative" as in "as a fiscal conservative, i can only support single-payer universal health care. it just makes economic sense."
heh
lex
It's hard to think of positive things that aren't simply rationalizations, I know. I am sort of physically sick from this, too.
I like Stay and Fight.
I'm thinking of becoming a preachy atheist again. And here I was, going soft on religious types. I'm not even sure they should be allowed to marry any longer.
two more quick thoughts...
first, keep your light burning bright: we need you. if your own life is not directly affect by the outcome of this election (i.e. the federal funding for you job was reallocated to the war on terror, etc.) recall that the emotions are about things that are more distal, less personal, more symbolic to your own individual self and to your loved ones. i don't mean this in a polyanaish sense: for example, i am a peace voter, and though (don't breath a word of this to anyone ;) i'd of course perfer to see kerry in the whitehouse to bush, i (and the iraqis and the americans, and the others dying and being maimed in iraq) lose either way. i am still here, and i still have my struggle to forward. keep your light dancing.
second, about your understandible lamenting and mourning americans as stoopid or evil. remember that americans may also be both scared and ignorant (rememeber, what, was it f.a.i.r.'s study showing a stupendously strong correlation between fox-news watching and belief that saddam hussein planed 9/11, that wmds were found in iraq?--even accounting for selection). jeff talks a lot about trying to talk and understand people. and, perhaps it's an irrational article of faith for me, but i truly believe that's where change will come.
bonus quick thought! videlicet the second point: understand who the conservatives are, how they opperate, and how to effectively counter their interests while talking to people. a reading list:
"don't think of an elephant" by george lakoff
the conservative right own the majority of pr interests in this county and across the neo-liberalist globe (ah the irony of that phrase "neo-liberal"). one thing that the conservatives definitely are is brilliant with respect to issues framing andpersuasive rhetoric. lakoff addresses this, providing tools and concepts for the left to be able to fight on its own terms. from what i know of him he's slanted towards left-liberal, rather than radical progressive, but he's useful for both.
"other people's children" by lisa delpit
i think jeff and steve and amanda have read and/or heard my rant about the representation of class, region, race and education* but consider what it means to try and talk with people of very different political, social, class, age, etc. position. what does it mean for you to try and bridge that gap? what does it mean for them? a pedagogist, delpit takes on the blind cannonization of a single language of priviledge without resorting to a naive balkanization of language groups (like you all speak englinsh, we all will speak ebonics), treating all with dignity and just as importantly providing ways to facilitate one's own and others uses of languages in different settings.
and another plug for thomas frank's "what's the matter with kansas" for insights specifically into the red/blue divide and it's apparent contradictions with respect to self-interest.
* http://www.doyenne.com/personal/personal.cgi?386
viva la revolucion!
alexis
I feel your pain... if not your intestinal distress.
The only advice that I can give, and it's not the most reassuring advice in the world, is that the United States history is full of things we are not proud of, and if the people who were in the vocal minority then had given up, we would be worse off today.
Some Americans are evil, some are stupid, many are misled, misinformed, and afraid. This time around the good guys lost. Cue Rocky theme music... Apollo Creed is going to take us back to our roots, time to train. Adrian! Eye of the Tiger... sorry, I'm drifting off topic...
Chris Wright
I am going to grumpily agree with Jeff. (%*&$#(%*# those #$^)($*&^)ing Christians and their )($*)#$(ing "moral values".
No, really, I do think that we should be heartened that w/ all the media blitz, the attempts to frighten people and keep them un- or mis- educated, and the weasel that is Karl Rove, that the Bush team *barely* pulled it off.
For me, to think that only slightly more than half of Americans are mean or idiotic is a positive move from where I usually am.
I try to remember the MIB quote:
"Why the big secret? People are smart, they can handle it."
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
and there you are.
I'm sorry, did that not help?
Amanda
Seen that yet?
http://www.sorryeverybody.com/
Lukas
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