Amazon Trail
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The Amazon Trail Don't Lose Heart |
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by Lee Lynch
We are required now to work together for the good of our country. In the days ahead, we must find common cause. We must join in common effort without remorse or recrimination, without anger or rancor. America is in need of unity and longing for a larger measure of compassion.
-Senator John Kerry, Fanueil Hall, Boston, November 3, 2004
I appreciate the intent of Senator Kerry’s words. My question is, "How?"
How can I work together with an administration that utterly ignores the needs and desires of half its people? Where can I find common cause with men who not only wage war, but do so against the will of so many of their constituents? How can I swallow my anger at a so-called president who promises to destroy the twilight years of Americans who have trusted in Social Security all our working lives? How could I compromise myself so much that I in any way would support the looting of my country's treasury to make the rich richer while many of us do without decent health care?
People all over the world are mourning the outcome of our election. A friend in England writes that she feels "unsettled by the disappearance of a solid, democratic and more paternal USA, replaced by the scrap-yard canine bruiser who bites before a warning bark." Given the scrap-yard tactics of those elected, I fear democracy itself is at risk. Once, I trusted the checks and balances of our government to protect us from takeover by ideologues of any stripe. How naive.
The blame cannot be placed solely on the heads of greedy politicians. I've read over and over that the American people were duped, were seduced, didn't understand the issues, but I have been coming slowly to the dispiriting realization that we are being too kind when we excuse 51 percent of American voters. Could it be that there was not a lot of cheating, that they weren't fooled by Dubya for one minute? Could it be that they actually like him and, worse, think like him?
It's true that there are those who just don't think - like my neighbor up the block who votes however her son tells her to, like the voters who have been trained to hear communist when the word liberal is spoken and who see visions of depraved sex when the word gay is used. It is also true that a huge number of Americans drive SUVs even though oil consumption threatens the Alaskan wilderness. There are people the world over who do not bat an eye about the slaughter of one or 1000 Iraqis, who think the planet would be better off without people unlike themselves. I wonder if some Americans equate democracy with Christianity and see the invasion of Iraq as a holy crusade.
It's hard to adjust to living in a country half full of such people. I'm not about to move to Canada or Ireland or to become an expatriate in gay Paree; I'm not that adventurous and would go broke just moving my books - if Canada even let me bring some of them in. The U.S. doesn't have a monopoly on backwards attitudes.
But it's tempting to think about running away from conservatives who write anti-gay ballot measures that remind me just how stuck hets are on keeping gays down. Was it a surprise to anyone that 86 percent of Mississippi voters can't stand the thought of us marrying one another? Still, it's a splash of cold water in the face to look at these figures in black and white. The rigid right used our gentle people as a battering ram to get their candidates in. Even in progressive Oregon, 57 percent of our neighbors voted to lock us out of the county clerk's office if we're looking for marriage licenses.
My question remains "How?" How do I keep a smile on my face when talking to the woman up the street with her Republican candidate signs? How do I accept a Supreme Court whose appointees will be put there to keep me down? How do I heal when gay people have been so savagely used?
As much as I wanted a smart leader like Senator Kerry to win, when he asks us to "work together for the good of our country," I simply see no way to comply if he is asking me to play ball with Dubya's henchmen. I will support my elected officials in their effort to resist the bruisers in the White House. I will be a responsible citizen and make my defiant voice heard in this supposedly representative democracy. I will participate in every way I can to choose a more balanced government in an honest election.
"Don't lose heart," wrote Starhawk just before the November 2nd election. Unity with this administration would only bring me shame. My heart is in resistance.
Lee Lynch is the author of eleven books including The Swashbuckler and the Morton River Valley Trilogy. She lives on the Oregon Coast, and comes from a New England family. Her web page is at leelynch6.tripod.com
© Lee Lynch 2004