Disappointed in America
Published 4 November 2004
Hi! You've stumbled upon a blog post by a guy named Ryan. I'm not that guy anymore, but I've left his posts around because cool URIs don't change and to remind me how much I've learned and grown over time.
Ryan was a well-meaning but naïve and priviledged person. His views don't necessarily represent the views of anyone.
During my weekend in Barcelona last year, I met an American on vacation from his home in Germany. During our short conversation he admitted that he had no desire to go back, and he would never live there again. I was shocked. Why would he have given up on his homeland? Sure, after two months overseas I could see some of the problems with our society, but I wasn't about to give it up—I wanted to make it change.
Walking home at 2 a.m. last night, I understood his frustration. Despair soaked through me. After returning to the states I devoured literature: Michael Moore, two books by Eric Alterman, one on Bin Laden, and even a failed attack on Hillary Clinton (await the review next week). I joined MoveOn.org. I watched the news. The more I read, the more I listened, the more disgusted I became. Corruption at the top levels of our government was lurking just beneath the surface, but so few people seemed to notice.
I fought. I fought with my cell phone; Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin's Washington numbers are now in my phone book. I fought with my words; to anyone who would listen I would extol what I learned. I fought with my feet; I attended rally and idea meetings, canvassed neighborhoods, worked on phone banks, I even applied to web and writing jobs at over 20 political and non-profit organizations, making it to the final rounds at PIRG GRFX. Anything that could make people see, I would do.
I felt like Lewis Black, frustrated to convulsions that others would not see the truth. Although I clenched the "Gore Vidal Future Ex-Pat Award" from my fraternity, I was determined to make a change. But as I watched the votes roll in, and state after state tinge with not-so-ironic red, the grim determination that had pulled me this far slowly began to seep away. How could I be a part of a state that wants to embroider our constitution with intolerance and religion? How could our country gleefully re-elect the worst president in our history? Why must we continually drag, kicking and screaming, the lower latitudes of our country into modernity?
Suddenly I was picking out villas near Hamburg.
This morning though, a heartening forward graced my inbox. As trite and obnoxious as I usually find them, this essay, Vote or Die? Not Exactly by Sean Gonsalves of the Cape Cod Times, put my rocky realization into perspective. Gonsalves writes:
Democracy isn't something you do every four years at the polls. The life of democracy depends on critical thinking and active participants in and outside of the political process, willing to organize and join democracy-building movements in between election cycles.
It seems a large segment of the population has confused consumerism with citizenship. Democracy is not a spectator sport and having liberty as consumers to choose between a variety of products doesn't have a thing to do with freedom in any meaningful sense of the term.
From whence came this idea that if only we elect the right person, the complex and seemingly intractable social ills plaguing our world will get the attention they deserve?
No matter who gets elected at the end of day, you, me, we, will never see the kind of change this experiment in democracy needs to survive, unless we do more than vote.
Perhaps this election is a good thing. The deeper into deficit Bush pushes us, the more hated and attacked we are overseas, and the more difficult life is for the common American, the closer we will become to change.
The majority of sanguine states last night-with the most notable exception Ohio-monopolize farmland over ailing suburbs. To the people of these states, urban problems mean nothing. Pollution means nothing. Social programs mean little. These are the issues of Flint and Detroit, of New York and New England-all of whom sported a bold azure. In a bizarrely Marxian sense, things must get much, much worse before they get better.
And when they do, those of us who held on, those of us who wiped the mud off our faces, we will be the grizzled generals directing the fray. The quiet, peacefully patient, who have always believed, will be ready, experienced and prepared to make things right again. All we need now is the rest of the country to wake up.
We have suffered a defeat, but we are not defeated.
-Eli Parser, MoveOn.org