Why I'm Angry...

...and why I'm not going to "get over" it.

These are a few the things that I value deeply, and how this administration has repeatedly shat on them (note, these are only the things off the top of my head -- there are pages and pages and pages of information available on all of these topics):

The environment. This administration has turned back the clock on environmental protections since day one (remember the arsenic issue?), de-fanged the EPA, turned the Forest Service into the servants of big lumber, gone against the recommendations of scientists and ecologists in caring for the National Parks, approved and promoted the drilling for oil and gas in the Canyonlands and ANWAR, fought to have endangered species delisted prematurely, opened up roadless areas in the name of "fire suppression," sponsored Orwellian initiatives like "Clear Skies" while increasing pollution levels, opened fragile desert areas to off-road vehicles, prefers the council (behind closed doors) of oil and coal to alternative energy and environmental scientists when developing energy policy, and on and on. And that's just off the top of my head.

My gay friends. This adminstration seeks to enshrine their discrimination in the Constitution. It condones and encourages anti-gay rhetoric by the highest leaders of the party, and affiliates itself with religious groups that view gays and lesbians as less than human. Moreover, it -- and those it calls its base -- are proud of this. (And yet oddly hypocritical -- witness Mary Cheney.)

My liberal, pro-environment, gay-friendly church.Unitarian Universalism, which has been an established religion in this country for well over a hundred years, views marriage between two individuals as a holy sacrament irrespective of the gender of those individuals. By making marriage a point of federal policy, and by specifying that the only definition of marriage that will receive federal support, subsidy, and legal protection is between a man and a woman, this administration is denying me the free practice of religion. The same could be said for Reform Judaism, Buddhism, and Wicca, not to mention agnostics and atheists. Separation of church and state was one of the tenets on which this nation was founded, and this administration seeks to do away with it.

Human rights abroad and at home. Aside from setting a miserable example -- no more is the United States anything resembling a shining beacon of democratic freedom -- this administration has refused to sign the international anti-landmine treaty, or the treaties enshrining the rights of children, or the reproductive rights of women. It has pulled funding from the world health organization, citing falsely its fears of abortion in China to deny poor women around the world the information and medicine they need to regulate family size, reduce infant mortality, survive childbirth, and prevent disease. This administration -- indeed, the whole Bush family -- is in bed with Saudi Arabia, a nation that refuses to let women drive and continues to deprive them of the right to vote. This is an administration that approves of Vladimir Putin's decision to restrict democratic elections in Russia. This is an administration that encourages the brutal attacks on Palestinians by Israel -- attacks, which while not one-sided, are nothing we should be proud to associate ourselves with. This is an administration that endorses torture and asserts that it is no longer bound by the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners. This is an administration that has been condemned for its record by Amnesty International and similar organizations.

Civil liberties. This administration has embraced the so-called Patriot Act with a fervor, but less in the service of combatting terrorism than in intimidating the domestic population. It is now possible for a person to be detained indefinately, without council and with no charges presented, for being a "suspected terrorists" or even just a "material witness." If this person also happens to be a citizen of another country, even if here legally, he or she can be sent to nations known to use torture as a regular practice, or threatened with the same. At any time, investigators can demand the records of library patrons, and librarians are forbidden to even acknowledge that such a demand was made. Thousands of ordinary citizens have been placed on "no-fly" or "terrorist watch" lists, with no explanation of why, and no system of redress or correction should they have been placed on them in error.

Science and rational thought. No other administration has been as hostile to science as this one, to the point that large and respected scientific organizations have issued condemnations of Bush's policies. This is an administration that espouses the teaching of creationism on an equal level as evolution. This is an administration that has rejected the recommendations of scientists in the EPA and other national environmental organizations in order to cater to the demands of large corporations. This is an administration that uses the notion of waiting for "sound science" to deny the reality of global climate change, to lower standards for water purity, to permit increased levels of air pollution. This is an administration that pressured the FDA to deny over-the-counter status to Plan B over the recommendation of its board of doctors to appease the anti-choice segment of its political base.

Women and feminist values. In addition to the above, this is a president who wants to seat anti-choice justices on the Supreme Court, who saw nothing wrong with legislation that banned late-term abortions without including a provision for the health of the mother, who believes that teen-age girls should have to ask permission of their abusers and rapists to have an abortion should incestuous relatives get them pregnant, who jokes about putting his daughters on leashes, who refuses to support maternity leave, childcare and equal pay provisions.

Perhaps some of you will be surprised by this list, or doubt these charges, and to you I say, this was all known well before this election. That you, with, presumably, internet access and a brain, did not know these things, says to me that you are irredeemably apathetic or fatally incurious, and for this I despise you. Others of you will have known about them and disapproved of the administration's actions, but voted for Bush out of fear. This says to me that you are cowards and lack the spine to stand up for the things you value. And so, again, I despise you. Finally, some of you voted for this man knowing full well of these things and approving of them. You are arrogant, bigoted bastards, and I want nothing to do with you.

Well, guess what? You've gotten the president you deserve, a man who is cowardly and arrogant and smug and mean and dishonest, who doesn't listen to anyone who disagrees with him, who feels no shame or regret or remorse for his actions over the past four years, who values loyalty to himself over honorable service and integrity, who lives in a bubble of ignorance and sees the world in simplistic terms and is proud of all of these things. If it were only you who had to live under his reign, I'd be grimly pleased to watch you go down into the pit with him. But it is not. You have pulled me and the things I love down into the filth with you.

I will never forgive this, and I will never forgive those who endorsed this wholesale negation of all that I hold dear, particularly in the name of "morality." There was space in my world for you before the election, but you've made it abundantly clear that there will never be space for me and mine in yours. From this day henceforth, every new victim of torture is on your heads. Every person detained without council indefinitely will see your hand turn the key in the lock. Every ecosystem that is damaged beyond repair I will lay at your feet. Every child who grows up malnourished and every mother who miscarries from exposure to environmental pollutants is yours. Every voice of rightwing hatred that spews unchecked from the airwaves is speaking in your voice. Every American traveler who faces the hatred of strangers abroad owes this misery to you. These horrors are your children, and believe me, I will not let you forget it.

Other posts worth reading (we really need to set up a clearinghouse, perhaps with an RSS feed, for this on-going discussion:
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here...

Important Addendum: Do not comment on this post until you have read my follow-up, A Note to Offended Readers

Comments

[butuki]

Your anger is distilling into something coherent. Let's don't forget it though and fall back into complacency. Nothing will change unless people are determined and patient. Let Mahatma Gandhi be our guide.

[Rana]

On that point, butuki: read this.

[Chris Clarke]

I deeply respect the fury of this post, Rana.

And yet to speak of mere tactics for a moment: if we don't change the minds of a few of those people you despise, nothing will ever improve.

I used to sell pesticides for a living. People can change.

[Rana]

You know, Chris, the rational and just parts of myself would agree with you. But you know what? I'm utterly fed up with this notion that it is we who have something to prove, that it is us who need to work to win people to our side. I keep hearing about how we need to move more to the center, or speak in more religious terms, or out-dubya Dubya -- and you know what? That's fucked.

I've been demonized, insulted, despised and dismissed by the mainstream for years, and I have little faith that it will shift my direction. Oh, maybe a little tiny bit -- and that is still worth fighting for -- but trying to see the other side's point of view has not worked. Bending my principles in the hopes of compromise has not worked. Reaching out and being tolerant of my opponents' beliefs has not worked. I'm tired of being the nice little person who yields for the sake of a few crumbs from the hand of the master.

I'm more than willing to support those who fight with me, but those others? It's time to call them on their shit and rub their noses in it, not plead with them to do the right thing.

And yes, in a few weeks I may be more amenable to being a demonstration of the ideals we're fighting for -- a thoughtful, tolerant person who is open to those with differences of opinion -- but for right now, all I see is crowing about Bush's "mandate" and self-righteous pissiness that I'm not lying back and taking it with a smile on my face. Fuck that.

[mean regression]

i know, rana, i know. what a great post. if i was the type to do those mass email things, i would ask your permission to use it. people who tell you or any of us to get over it need to get over the quicksand covered mountain range that stands between them and their humanity.

100,000

people have died in iraq due to this obscene, illegal war. that's not something we should get over, it's something we need to stop from continuing.

[Rana]

If anyone wants to use an excerpt or the post in its entirety for the sort of thing MR describes, go for it!

[wolfangel]

The problem is that apparently the left does need to bring people to its side. Not yet (and not by moving to the centre!): there's time for mourning and raging first. But somehow these values need to be made clearer, because so many people said they didn't see what the left was going for, etc. Lakoff has discussed a great deal about how the right has been framing discourse, and so the left is behind. You might have been clear, and I might have been clear, but a lot of people weren't clear, and they voted for the side they at least understood.

I don't understand the premise of people who voted Republican, or people who (though not American) would have. I do not understand how they feel that they'll have a country left worth the saving they're trying to do in Iraq, but I try to take on faith that some people feel that the US will be totally destroyed if the war isn't hard-fought, and that the social policies they disagree with can be changed later, but attacks on the country can't. I don't agree, but . . . I don't know: in the end, I still don't understand it.

A while back John Scalzi wrote about how another 4 years of Bush wouldn't be so bad for him (and anyone els ein his demographic): he could afford private school, if it came to it, he could go to MA or Canada for an abortion, he has health insurance, etc. And I suppose that might be part of it, too (he didn't support Bush, it was thought argument).

Have you read Amp's post Measure in generations, not elections?

[Rana]

No, but maybe I will.

The idea that I will get by okay during another 4 years of Bush is not comforting. Once you've destroyed a wetland, it's not coming back. Once a person has died, they're not coming back. Once Supreme Justices have been seated, they are there for the rest of my life.

This isn't just about ME; it's about other things and other people that I have great fear for. Knowing that I personally will probably get by while all around me things I love are not is cold, cold comfort.

[wolfangel]

I didn't mean to suggest it should be comforting to *you*, I meant that it might have been part of why some people voted for Bush this time.

[Rana]

Ah. I can understand that, but I think it's damned irresponsible. If your life wouldn't change if one candidate or another gets in, then vote for the one who's more likely to stand up for the people who will suffer otherwise. Choosing one with a known track record of increasing others' suffering makes you responsible for everything he does; to do so while knowing that none of it will affect you personally is immoral. Ignorance or amorality: take your pick. Neither is good.

[Chris Clarke]

Oh, I utterly agree that it's fucked. And I'd never dream of saying to you that you're wrong to be as angry as you are. We've been dismissed and denied, and what's worse those of us on the left have gotten one barrel from people like Sean Hannity and another from capital-L liberals like Joe Conason and Michelle Goldberg. I'm also hearing that we need to appeal to the religious on their own terms and that we need to abandon civil rights for gays because it's not sexy enough (or too sexy). And yeah, fuck that. It's Sophie's choice, and it's being espoused by people with absolutely no sense of history, nor of, say, relevant quotes from Pastor Niemoller and such.

And all this, by the way, persuades me that we would have been utterly fucked if Kerry had won. Because people are equating victory not with making lives better for the downtrodden, nor with saving jobs, nor protecting wetlands nor civil rights. They're ready to jettison all those to get a Democrat into the West Wing. If Kerry had won, they would have congratulated themselves and gone back to doze in line at Starbucks, and the right would have steamrollered Kerry into getting 98 percent of the Bush agenda. Even now, there are hundreds of people who aren't as worried about battling the onslaught as they are recounting votes in Ohio, so that they can slip Kerry into the White House there to be utterly powerless amid allegations of fraud and weaseling.

It's not about electing a guy with a different stationery color: it's about getting the work done. And if we can keep from splintering this fractious coalition in the next month over who shoulda done what, we can get a hell of a lot of work done. (Especially on the environment. The environment was not made an issue in this election, and for good reason: a plurality of those people who voted for Bush think of themselves as environmentalists.)

I'm mad too. I've been angry since Jimmy Fucking Carter. People with my beliefs have been marginalized since the 1930s - though the marginalizers sure don't mind taking credit for our ideas. And yet there's something in the Joshua trees that asks me to forgive a certain amount of ignorance.

And I know you know all this. I'm trying to persuade myself as much as anything.

[Harrison]

Yes, those of us who voted for Kerry (at least the despised "elite") will probably suffer less than those who voted for Bush. But I'm out of sympathy. The only way they will change in when they suffer the consequences of what they've done, and how easily they've let Bin Laden use them as terrorists against their own country.

[Rana]

Yeah. The degree of HURT and BETRAYAL I feel compares in intensity only to the emotions I felt when (a) my grandmother, grandfather, and godfather died, and (b) when I left academia. I am so ANGRY because if I did not turn my grief and sorrow outward, it would eat me alive.

This time it's not a matter of nature taking its course, or finding myself in a field that has far more job seekers than jobs. It's people who I thought were otherwise decent human beings choosing to line up with the worst administration in my memory and trying to convince me that this loss is no big deal and getting insulted that I can't see it that way.

I disliked both Reagan and Bush I, but during those administrations, I had the hope at least that if I and others like me made enough noise, wrote enough letters, made enough calls, etc. that they would listen and bend at least a little. Not this administration. They have made it clear time and time and time again that people like you and me do not exist, are traitors, are not real Americans, and that it's their way or the highway.

And that a good proportion of Americans not only failed to see this but approved it... it's like a punch in the gut.

I honestly thought that people were better than this, and to be proven wrong makes me feel not only like a fool but a fool who deserves to be shot for having trusted my fellow citizens to do the right thing if shown the evils of this administration. So a not inconsiderable portion of my anger is directed at myself for being a well-meaning FOOL who thought people like these were worth engaging with, worth reaching out to, worth listening.

But I was wrong. Not only did they fail to do this, fail to see these things, but they are PROUD of their failure.

[butuki]

(Rana, Thanks for the link to Siona's site.... actually I've been keeping up with her deeply thought out posts for a few months now and have been commenting on what she has been writing)

One thing that stymies me, when I listen to Americans who are fed up with the American political system and want new directions taken in policies, is their continued dialogue within the confines of the Republican/ Democrat oligarchy. Why is it that all those supposedly informed voters don't seriously put their weight behind an independant and once and for all break the dualistic mold that has dominated American politics from the country's inception? You don't HAVE to choose between Republican and Democrat. For all of the American talk of democracy and diversity the whole system seems to me woefully outdated and entrenched. It has gotten so top heavy that when important issues start requiring people to think more loosely the system can't move. Americans lecture other countries about abuses of human rights or failure to uphold standards of decency, and yet it hasn't even gotten close (yes, I know about the possibility of Hillary Clinton, but I'll believe it when I see it) to electing a woman for president or allowing other parties a proper voice. I mean, even Pakistan has had a woman for prime minister, for Christ's sake! (it is quite surprising just how many so-called "backward" countries have long ago taken this step)

For all the people who are passionate about the environment, women's, ethnic, and gay rights, pro-choice, a good health insurance system, anti-globalism, community values, even organic food, why the hell hasn't the Green Party made any inroads? From my perspective America is one of the most conservative and rigid countries in the world, too set in dogma and self-satisfied self-congratulation to address any true social problems. Americans are still arguing about abortion! Gun rights! Gay issues! Health care! Global warming! It is almost infantile in its adherence to biblical logic; almost as if, like a brooding teenager, it refuses to listen to any kind of advice or insight that might upset the oversensitive tunnel vision.

There are people like you, Rana, and you, Chris, who have complex and deeply thought out philosophies and plans, with informed comebacks to every debated challenge on American society, backed by a passion and vocabulary that ought to move people. Why not gather all those others who think as you do, swallow a spoonful of courage, and step away from the present manisfestation of your political systtem? You are all talking about political reform, well, reform then! Take drastic steps and start something new! Stop wallowing in self pity and ineffectual complaining and DO something! Bush came to power and retained his hold because too many people are too afraid to rock the boat. As long as that is how Americans think then people like Bush will always ride the crests of the waves while you scramble around in the troughs.

People are horrified by the lengths with which Iraqis are willing to go to protect their country. The American military is surprised by their determination and staying power. But it is not really all that unusual. If a people want somethig enough they will find a way to get it. The question is, do Americans want a better society enough to fight for it? The coming four years will make that all too clear.

[Chris Clarke]

Why not gather all those others who think as you do, swallow a spoonful of courage, and step away from the present manisfestation of your political systtem? You are all talking about political reform, well, reform then! Take drastic steps and start something new!

Absolutely. And it needs to be far more than one more political party.

The right has ascended to power because they have a constituency in whose lives they are intimately involved. Already the "radical Dems" are talking in terms of "preparing for 2006," which means already they've lost. It's exactly the mistake they accuse Nader of. A movement is not something you show up for one day every two years.

[butuki]

Right, and it is the intimate involvement with its constituency that makes the right so effective. The thing is that there ought to be a representative political entity that is intimately involved with you, a group that shares all your concerns and feels as passionately about it all as you do. And there are so many of you out there. (the turnout for the anti-globalism protests clearly reveals this) Why do you find it so difficult to come together and speak out as one? If the Europeans and Australians can do it, why not Americans? I'm not saying that you would necessarily take the power that all of you would struggle for, but at least you would gain some control over your lives and seriously weaken the hold the right has. From outside the States looking in, it just seems that the right holds together with consistent arguments and philosophy, whereas the left is a shambles of catty infighting, no one willing to take a stance and no one willing to tighten their belt and suffer some hardship. It is no different from highschool, where the bullies always have their way. It is all very nice to pitch for peace, but if you really want to live in peace, you have to make sure the bullies respect you.

Sheesh! I'm not even American and it seems so obvious to me! If Bush wasn't such a personal threat to me and all the rest of us out here, I wouldn't even bother... just let the Americans figure it out themselves and mess themselves up in the process. But at what price? Such vehement tension as exists now cannot hold forever; the beast will want out, eventually.

It may sound trite, but the constant reference in the Star Trek series to the disintegration of world society in the mid-21st century seems like a very accurate prediction of what the world seems to be heading toward. My fear is that it is going to follow the plot of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series of books. Heaven help us if it does.

[Rana]

I'm thinking on this, butuki; I have a plan of action in mind, and I'll post on it when it's clearer in my head.

I believe I need to step away from the blog for a day or so. I'm posting things that should be said, and said with the same level of passion, but the words I've been using have had a higher proportion of obscenity than I'd like.

[Carrie]

I don't know how I got here but applaud your ability to make your point and freely express your anger. Good for you. And I agree with you on this completely but I am Canadian so my view is moot.

[Timothy Burke]

There are a lot of things I'm not very happy about right now. One of them, by no means at the top of my list, is the kind of thinking Chris exhibits. If I had a cookie for every time I've hear people on the left say, "Now is the time to really organize and stop listening to those damned liberals; now is the time to get angry and be our real leftist selves", well, I'd have Famous Amos beat by a mile.

Normally, I shrug it off as the basic price of effective politics, but this time, because there are other things I'm even angrier about, like the enormous danger I feel our whole society has just been plunged into, it sits very poorly with me.

The temptation I feel is to just say, "Fine. Go build your damned movement. Who's stopping you?" Because it's not exactly as if it hasn't been tried. and tried. and tried. People like you have been marginalized since the 1930s, Chris? (I'm trying to figure out whether you think the relative political success of Eugene Debs before that is the non-marginality that was ended by the New Deal). So what's your magic formula for ending that marginality? Instead of going into the Starbucks after electing a Democrat, throwing bricks through the windows of a Starbucks? I mean, what do you have in mind, exactly, that doesn't end up with an even more marginalized movement? Didn't we do this dance once before, and didn't it end up with the Weather Underground and George McGovern?

I do hold the voting majority responsible for what they've just done. I am very unnerved by the quite real hatred I feel coming from some of them--something that some people on the right are guffawing about, as if it doesn't exist. But anybody in the 49% who doesn't want to think seriously about how to bridge the gap between us and the next 10-15% up the line--or maybe even better, how to construct a viable truce that would soften the worst possibilities of the current divide--is just someone who is thinking of ways to make our situation even worse than it already is. If "true leftists" somehow manage to commandeer the central apparatus of the opposition to Bush so they can indulge yet another--there have been so many--"movement moment", then I know one thing for myself. In political terms, that's when I go down periscope for a long time and just hope to avoid everyone, because there really won't be anywhere left to call home.

There is no one left on the left, no extra share, no new voters, no untapped resources, no hidden force. We have as much as we ever will have, and it's almost--but not quite--enough to win a national election. It's quite far short of being enough to hold the Congress because it's so badly distributed geographically. That means one thing above all other things: the opposition will have to grow by adding some major new social constituency. When you want to bring some new group on board to a political alliance, you bow to their needs, sensibilities, and worldview. You are the supplicant. You don't make an alliance by moving farther away from your possible allies. The basic choice as I see it is you either figure out a way to connect with some new social constituencies in rural and peri-urban communities or you draw in suburban white-collar elites who presently vote Republican. You takes your pick. You have other groups in mind, let me know who they are. But you aren't getting anywhere just by being more uber-leftist and militant and tossing off the liberal millstone around your neck.

[Chris Clarke]

I think, Timothy, that you are imputing to me intent that I do not have.

Where did I say "stop listening to the liberals?" Where did I say I want to build an uber-left movement, or move further away from any allies?

I was talking about the notion that "it's time to rebuild and rethink for 2006." I work in an environmental organization, and we're looking at rebuilding and rethinking for December 2004. I'm betting I'd feel the same way if I worked at the ACLU, or a legal aid clinic, or a medical clinic, or the public grade school where my wife works. This is not some mythical Correct Line Of March: there are real people out there who are going to bear the brunt of this loss, and very shortly, and we have to do a hell of a lot more than just get ready for the midterms. I'm not talking the Weather Underground, I'm talking running for the school board or spending an hour a week volunteering in a classroom. You say it's been "tried and tried and tried"... I'm not seeing it.

I suspect that if you took the time to read some of the things I've written on the subject, including the most recent piece on my own blog, you'd have reacted differentlly to my comment. I want to work with liberals and conservatives of conscience and with people who don't quite know yet where they fit.

[Christoph]

Just happened across this, sounds cut and dry to me. And you can read my letter to president-elect George Bush on my site above. A few things to note on the side. 1) After another four years ppl are going to be pissed and at least the executive branch will fall from right-wing clutches. 2) We as liberal or 'leftist' or just CONSCIONABLE must not relent in getting the word out WHY this WHOLE GOVERNMENT NOW is unworthy of the American people's support. 3) the Right-Wing outlets (you know how they are) as well as their supporters will not STOP in their gloating and attacking the stance taken in 2), we can only ignore it and must not let it get to us PERSONALLY! 4) There is still a chance at the house, we have two years, it starts today. 5) Either way its going to be a long four years.