Especially if you have the opportunity to see it in IMAX format. Aw yeah.
Thanks to Tully for suggesting the 11:30 (PM!) show, and to Dad for driving and joining us in the fun. You may have been the “oldest” there, but that makes you extra cool. Plus you bought us a soda.
Katil, if you’re reading this…hope you’re having fun in Hong Kong! Bring us back something good!
Turning away from the election, I look towards one of the best distractions around…my kid. Decker is blossoming into a small person with a big personality, and it’s weird to think of some of the things you have to teach someone that you might take as second nature. I gotta give him some credit - he can’t really “talk” yet, but he has to figure out some way to ask for things, and he’s gotten pretty darn good at it. He will pleasantly hand you his cup to ask for juice, he’ll come wrap his arms around you and push up with his feet to ask to be picked up (and then will lean in the direction he wants you to go, usually to a light switch), and will call to you if you leave the room and he is still in his high chair. (”Ah? Ah?”). I realize that he definitely hears what we’re saying, if even he’s not parroting back at the moment, so I have to be extra cautious about my language! I don’t want my kid in kindergarten cussing when he fumbles the paste! 
But back to the things you have to teach someone (or that they have to learn for themselves)… for example - if you put your face in the water, you’ll get water in your nose. If you run into a table, or do the passive protest thing on the sidewalk, it will hurt. If you pull your own hair, it’s not comfortable. If you throw your graham crackers onto the ground, they won’t fly back up to you so you can then eat them. And so on.
Happy Birthday, Trudi!
WARNING: While I had made sort of a pledge to myself to keep these blog entries upbeat and not really use them to express my political views, I simply cannot let today go by without writing down some thoughts about the election and its outcome. If you aren’t interested in what will likely sound like a bit of a rant, then please skip today’s entry. I will try to bring back the funny next time.
OK…deep breath…so Bush won. Bush is going to be our president for the next 4 years. Not only that, but now the house and senate are both Republican dominated as well. So, they can pretty much write whatever agenda they want, and even if the Democrats try to filibuster, it will be a no-go. I can’t even begin to express how devastated and hollow and just plain…sad I feel, but I will try anyway. You know, sort of like purging the bad humors out to let in the good. (And believe it or not, there are some good, but more on that later on).
I shouldn’t be too surprised that it turned out this way, and I even kept telling myself that Bush would win, so then I wouldn’t be disappointed if Kerry lost, but I’d be happily surprised if Kerry won. But during those last few days, and the beginning of the evening, I actually started to gain some hope. A bit of background - I have become a full-on political junkie this past year especially. Being home with Decker opens up some free time for me (well, not really, but I can definitely multi-task) and I’ve been able to read the paper more and have kept CNN on in the background a good deal of the day. (I know, many would argue that you don’t really get accurate pictures of what’s going on from networks like CNN, NBC, blah blah blah. Well, NPR doesn’t have a tv station, and I actually like some of the folks on CNN like Lou Dobbs, Anderson Cooper, etc. I hate the guys on Crossfire, but Decker does have a crush on Judy Woodruff, from “Inside Politics”, so there you go). Anyway. I got really really really really invested in this election, as so many did this year. I have been so disheartened to watch the direction our country has taken, and kept thinking that enough people were saying that Iraq is a mess and the economy sucks that folks would put two and two together and elect Kerry just so Bush and his policies would end. I honestly believed that even if folks would, as the pollsters were so fond of reporting, “rather have a beer with Bush than Kerry”, which to me is the STUPIDEST possible way for deciding who is the better candidate for LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD, that ultimately even the pro-Bushies might hold their noses and vote for Kerry. And while we’re on the subject - I LIKE John Kerry. I think he’s got amazing integrity, is extremely intelligent and well-spoken, and very mature and visionary. I couldn’t believe the crap that got thrown around about him, while so much stuff just bounced right off Bush. Let’s see…Bush and Kerry…both went to Yale, both were on debate, both volunteered their lives to their country in a dangerous place…NOT! Bush was an average student whose friends readily admit that social ties were much more important to him than grades! He failed businesses! Had a drinking problem! Skeeved out on legitimate National Guard duty! Which should have sent him to Vietnam! (It should have - when my folks were dating, there was a day where they were hitting traffic and mom was driving dad to the airport and he was getting very nervous because if he missed his flight, and therefore missed showing up for duty, he could very well be sent to Vietnam. He didn’t join NG to get out of Vietnam, but while he was in it, things over there started to heat up and they restarted the draft. I am so glad that he joined up when he did, although it seems so random that my dad was ever in the military, but I digress…).
But no….the country apparently thinks that an affable moron who loves playing soldier (but not really) and espouses social views that set us back in the 1950s (if not further back) and has alienated the planet and has pissed away our surplus and has put our kids’ futures in jeopardy financially and environmentally is still the better candidate than John Kerry. Which leads me to the part of this rant where I am saddest and maddest and most concerned: all the pundits are now coming out and saying that basically Bush won because he was able to reach a huge number of folks who like his “moral values”. He carried all the south and a lot of the west. The map shows such a stratified country, and it’s amazing to see how lockstep the divide is. What I’m hearing is that people may have economic difficulties right now, and may think that Iraq is not going well, but they want Bush because they are Christian and want our country to follow a particular social pattern. I’m not trying to dog on Christians, but they are saying right out that Karl Rove went after the Evangelicals and church goers. THIS COUNTRY WAS BASED ON THE IDEA THAT THERE WOULD BE NO STATE SANCTIONED RELIGION!!!! These “moral values” that all these voters say are important include denying gays basic civil rights, denying a woman her fundamental right to control her own !@#$%^&* body, denying Americans the right to possibly find cures to horrible diseases and physical disabilities by doing research on CELLS (NOT PEOPLE! CELLS!)…It feels very over the top and reactionary to say this, but this morning as I looked at the electoral map breakdown of blue and red states, and I listened to how many anti-gay marriage initiatives passed, and how many Republicans are gloating and telling the Democrats now to get in line or prepare to get rolled over…I actually get sort of uneasy about the possibilities of some freedoms that I always took for granted being taken away after all. I grew up with Roe v Wade always being in existance…it could very well go away. I thought the days of Moral Majority and Jerry Falwell were over, but apparently I was wrong.
The thing that gets me most is that this now “majority” group (I’m sorry, but an advantage of 3.5 millions votes does NOT give you a majority or a mandate…there are more people than that in southern California alone, for pete’s sake) shows a face that claims to be full of “Christ’s love” but is in reality very much a heart of hate and exclusion and ignorance. My sister Tully had an interesting point - just because you vote that your gay neighbor can’t get married legally, doesn’t all of sudden make them turn straight or go away! It just really feels like the culture that “prevailed” in this election is one of souped-up machismo, arrogance, ignorance, blind faith without questioning, misogynism, racism, faithism (against Islam)…it makes me so sad.
Because - I brought a child into this world. I hope to bring one or two more. I want to do everything I can to ensure my son has the best in life, and that includes being safe, provided for, well educated, and open to the idea of the wonderful diversity in this world. I want him to grow up confident, loving, giving, civic-minded, all those hokey ideas that can help to create a good person and hopefully a good world. But I look at what he’s going to be facing, and I feel like it’s going to be an uphill climb. His dad and I can do our best to raise a good person who cares for his fellow humans, but he’s going to be receiving some very mixed signals from the folks who ideally should be people we can look up to- our leaders. Where are the Carters and the Clintons? Why are we stuck with Barney Fife as our president? Why can’t my fellow Americans who voted for Bush on moral reasons see that religion and policy should be kept separate? Early on, I had half-kidding predicted that the election would be split by cultural lines (I don’t think I actually believed it)…I am depressed to see that’s what actually happend. It’s so weird to see how it’s the urban, educated, diverse states that go for Kerry, and the rural, apparently not so educated and definitely not so diverse, go for Bush. What does that say about us as a country?
Ok. I promised at the beginning of this rant that there are some good things, and here they are.
1. How many people voted - clearly people mobilized and got out there. Democrats are mad, and I think they will continue to try for change.
2. Barbara Boxer won again! Yay!
3. Decker. This morning as I was watching the tv folks report that Kerry was conceding, he popped his little face in mine and gave me a kiss. And then demanded to be picked up and given some juice. Still, it helped me see that while things are pretty much in the toilet country-wise, things are extremely wonderful here in my little neck of the woods.
Congrats (and apologies) to those of you who read all this. There will be no repeats in the future - this is pretty much a one-time deal.
Democrats in 2008! Maybe Hillary? Would it be possible to actually see a WOMAN be president before I die? Who knows…