A week of LJ depression
Nov. 8th, 2004 07:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gordonzolaOk, one last thing about the election before we resume our regularly scheduled journal. I find it a little hard to write about because I don’t think the results of elections are obvious until much later. I’m not talking about provisional ballots. I mean that when one is living it, it’s hard to tell if a political moment is a stepping stone for more political evil or its watershed.
Mind you, I can write that and still not find a positive thing about the last election. I was more depressed about California Prop 72 failing than Bush’s re-election at first. 72 would have required large companies to offer health care to workers and pay a minimum of the monthly fees. I can fool myself sometimes. It seemed so obvious, and there was so little media action around it, I assumed it would win fairly easily.
Which brings me to the tragedy of all this Kerry bullshit. How much money and how many volunteer hours were spent on his campaign? The unions should have made 72 their first priority election-wise.* It’s only been the major issue in every large union battle recently, including the grocery and hotel workers. How many lasting institutions or organizing drives could we create with the millions spent on a bad candidate in a doomed campaign?
And San Francisco is no better. All the bond and tax measures were defeated. For the first time in my life I can’t fault a Mayor for announcing lay-offs.** He said if these didn’t pass there would be more cuts and lay-offs and that’s what he’s doing. It’s instructive to remember why they didn’t pass. All had more than 50% of the vote but part of ‘80s "tax reform" made it a requirement that a two-thirds majority is needed to pass new taxes. When the Right Wing started their Reagan-era counter-attack, first they came for the schools. I’m still bitter, as every Californian should be that California’s public schools, once the model for the nation are so under-funded and so bad. Twenty plus years of starvation will do horrible things to a political body.
As for the national election, I wanted Bush to lose because, among other reasons, I think it sets the bar extremely low when a President can get caught, with really no disputing evidence, lying to the country in order to go to war and get re-elected. I don’t believe presidential elections are the source of any real political change, but I really didn’t need any more cynicism, thanks.
I mean, I have jokingly said that elections as a decision between which wing of elites in the Capitalist party gets to manage the War on the Poor for the next four years. Except I’m not really joking.. I think this framework explains a lot of US politics but not everything. Elections are a snapshot in time and of empowerment, and even if there are little actual differences in the candidates themselves, they reflect real power and societal perception of what is "acceptable". Those differences are important if just to show how far away from the society we’d like to live in we are at this given moment.
What’s especially depressing, but not exactly news, about this election is that there is no fantasy left turn by the vast majority in this country. I think that liberals and even the left, in lieu of organizing, envision an overnight transformation sometimes: that those Red State*** folks will have been secretly watching Fahrenheit 911 or listening to Al Franken and on election day will show up in force to vote in "their" own interest. Let’s just say that if that happened, it would be a historical anomaly.
Movements change politics. Duh. The theocratic right is many years ahead of the left in working on this. Of course, it does help that their leaders tend to get assassinated less, but still.
As for all the LJ posts, I will comment here to most of what I read. I love you all, remember, you wouldn’t be on my friendslist if I didn’t. Even if it may just be internet love.
To the Midwest folks beating up on California because it’s no better than anywhere else: In the midst of a huge ideological right wing takeover if it makes you feel good to remind us were all in this together, then fine. Honestly, it’s kind of old news that Prop 187 should have clued you in to years ago. However, I will take you more seriously when so many of your people stop moving here.
To the wanna-be ex-pats: whining about moving is just aid and comfort to the enemy. Sure, the health care and social safety nets of Canada are attractive, in the US only something we can dream about which is the most pathetic thing about the state of US politics that I can think of. But no matter how much this is not our country, it still is our country. The first time I traveled outside the borders of the US I realized that I have no choice but being an American despite what is done in "my" name. While this is obviously a position of the descendent of immigrants, rather than that of a descendent of the kidnapped or conquered, it’s still my birthright. For good or for ill.****
To the Gavin Newsom bashers: Why, oh why, are you making me support a liberal Democrat using his own words? "Never apologize for doing the right thing." Anything else is just weak and you should be ashamed of yourselves. Of course, the bright spot for Democrats (not democrats) here is that you can find a way to blame this whole election on the Greens if you want. The argument goes like this: Matt Gonzalez, a Green almost won the Mayoral election in SF, actually out-polling Newsom on election day. Newsom, to consolidate power and neutralize the burgeoning Green movement in SF, legalizes gay marriage. This galvanizes the right (forget the Massachusetts supreme court for a second) and re-elects Bush. Those Damn Greens!*****
To the moral-voter spin-meisters: I know you aren’t reading my journal but what a bunch of hypocritical bullshit. It’s been said elsewhere but I didn’t want to leave it out. Letting the Right have ownership of the word "moral" is an assault on the dictionaries of the world.
The hangover in SF last Wednesday was pretty incredible. True, many had actual hangovers but the whole city was emotionally drained. It was quiet and empty. The stores and restaurants I passed looked empty. 8:30 at night looked like 3 AM. At one point I laughed at something funny and unrelated to the election and two or three people pointed out that that was the first laugh they’d heard all day. My laugh is exceptionally loud, but this illustrates the mood. Is this election more depressing than 1980, 1984, or 1988? Not really to me. It’s just a continuation. Which of course is a pretty depressing thought. Of course 12 years of Reagan and the other Bush probably permanently destroyed some of those nerve endings so I probably just don’t feel as much pain as I used to.
My advice: first things first, throw a party with friends precisely because we have nothing to celebrate. Then find some useful political work to do, work that is not connected to any major political party.
*I know some did at first. I need to call my friends and find out whether the had to shift their focus in the last couple of weeks.
**I can quibble with who gets laid off of course.
***It’s amazing to realize how the implications of the term "Red State" have changed since the early ‘90s.
****I only asked the Canadian LJers to marry me because I have an internet crushes on them. I don’t really want to move.
*****If you wanna find a bigger villain in the gay marriage world, try the white gay folks comparing Newsom and the marriages to Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. Now that’s insulting and alienating to the traditional constituency of the Democrats.
Mind you, I can write that and still not find a positive thing about the last election. I was more depressed about California Prop 72 failing than Bush’s re-election at first. 72 would have required large companies to offer health care to workers and pay a minimum of the monthly fees. I can fool myself sometimes. It seemed so obvious, and there was so little media action around it, I assumed it would win fairly easily.
Which brings me to the tragedy of all this Kerry bullshit. How much money and how many volunteer hours were spent on his campaign? The unions should have made 72 their first priority election-wise.* It’s only been the major issue in every large union battle recently, including the grocery and hotel workers. How many lasting institutions or organizing drives could we create with the millions spent on a bad candidate in a doomed campaign?
And San Francisco is no better. All the bond and tax measures were defeated. For the first time in my life I can’t fault a Mayor for announcing lay-offs.** He said if these didn’t pass there would be more cuts and lay-offs and that’s what he’s doing. It’s instructive to remember why they didn’t pass. All had more than 50% of the vote but part of ‘80s "tax reform" made it a requirement that a two-thirds majority is needed to pass new taxes. When the Right Wing started their Reagan-era counter-attack, first they came for the schools. I’m still bitter, as every Californian should be that California’s public schools, once the model for the nation are so under-funded and so bad. Twenty plus years of starvation will do horrible things to a political body.
As for the national election, I wanted Bush to lose because, among other reasons, I think it sets the bar extremely low when a President can get caught, with really no disputing evidence, lying to the country in order to go to war and get re-elected. I don’t believe presidential elections are the source of any real political change, but I really didn’t need any more cynicism, thanks.
I mean, I have jokingly said that elections as a decision between which wing of elites in the Capitalist party gets to manage the War on the Poor for the next four years. Except I’m not really joking.. I think this framework explains a lot of US politics but not everything. Elections are a snapshot in time and of empowerment, and even if there are little actual differences in the candidates themselves, they reflect real power and societal perception of what is "acceptable". Those differences are important if just to show how far away from the society we’d like to live in we are at this given moment.
What’s especially depressing, but not exactly news, about this election is that there is no fantasy left turn by the vast majority in this country. I think that liberals and even the left, in lieu of organizing, envision an overnight transformation sometimes: that those Red State*** folks will have been secretly watching Fahrenheit 911 or listening to Al Franken and on election day will show up in force to vote in "their" own interest. Let’s just say that if that happened, it would be a historical anomaly.
Movements change politics. Duh. The theocratic right is many years ahead of the left in working on this. Of course, it does help that their leaders tend to get assassinated less, but still.
As for all the LJ posts, I will comment here to most of what I read. I love you all, remember, you wouldn’t be on my friendslist if I didn’t. Even if it may just be internet love.
To the Midwest folks beating up on California because it’s no better than anywhere else: In the midst of a huge ideological right wing takeover if it makes you feel good to remind us were all in this together, then fine. Honestly, it’s kind of old news that Prop 187 should have clued you in to years ago. However, I will take you more seriously when so many of your people stop moving here.
To the wanna-be ex-pats: whining about moving is just aid and comfort to the enemy. Sure, the health care and social safety nets of Canada are attractive, in the US only something we can dream about which is the most pathetic thing about the state of US politics that I can think of. But no matter how much this is not our country, it still is our country. The first time I traveled outside the borders of the US I realized that I have no choice but being an American despite what is done in "my" name. While this is obviously a position of the descendent of immigrants, rather than that of a descendent of the kidnapped or conquered, it’s still my birthright. For good or for ill.****
To the Gavin Newsom bashers: Why, oh why, are you making me support a liberal Democrat using his own words? "Never apologize for doing the right thing." Anything else is just weak and you should be ashamed of yourselves. Of course, the bright spot for Democrats (not democrats) here is that you can find a way to blame this whole election on the Greens if you want. The argument goes like this: Matt Gonzalez, a Green almost won the Mayoral election in SF, actually out-polling Newsom on election day. Newsom, to consolidate power and neutralize the burgeoning Green movement in SF, legalizes gay marriage. This galvanizes the right (forget the Massachusetts supreme court for a second) and re-elects Bush. Those Damn Greens!*****
To the moral-voter spin-meisters: I know you aren’t reading my journal but what a bunch of hypocritical bullshit. It’s been said elsewhere but I didn’t want to leave it out. Letting the Right have ownership of the word "moral" is an assault on the dictionaries of the world.
The hangover in SF last Wednesday was pretty incredible. True, many had actual hangovers but the whole city was emotionally drained. It was quiet and empty. The stores and restaurants I passed looked empty. 8:30 at night looked like 3 AM. At one point I laughed at something funny and unrelated to the election and two or three people pointed out that that was the first laugh they’d heard all day. My laugh is exceptionally loud, but this illustrates the mood. Is this election more depressing than 1980, 1984, or 1988? Not really to me. It’s just a continuation. Which of course is a pretty depressing thought. Of course 12 years of Reagan and the other Bush probably permanently destroyed some of those nerve endings so I probably just don’t feel as much pain as I used to.
My advice: first things first, throw a party with friends precisely because we have nothing to celebrate. Then find some useful political work to do, work that is not connected to any major political party.
*I know some did at first. I need to call my friends and find out whether the had to shift their focus in the last couple of weeks.
**I can quibble with who gets laid off of course.
***It’s amazing to realize how the implications of the term "Red State" have changed since the early ‘90s.
****I only asked the Canadian LJers to marry me because I have an internet crushes on them. I don’t really want to move.
*****If you wanna find a bigger villain in the gay marriage world, try the white gay folks comparing Newsom and the marriages to Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. Now that’s insulting and alienating to the traditional constituency of the Democrats.
