Public Address - Busytown (Home)

After the fall | Dec 16, 2004 15:38

Here in one of the blue states, I'm still wondering: who voted for Bush? Not many people in New Haven, which voted around 85% for Kerry. Not even my neighbours, blue-collar mortgage-paying Catholic Polish grandparents who were, as it turns out, deeply offended by the Republican talk of "moral values": "Morals are for the family to take care of," they protested, "not the government!"

And not, as far as I could tell, most of my students. They were all madly keen to vote, since most of them are in their first semester of university and had just hit voting age. A few of them couldn't vote -- some because, like me, they're not Americans; others because their voting papers hadn't arrived in the mail in time.

The day before the election, I polled them in a highly unscientific fashion about what issues they were voting on. (Don't worry, the sanctity of the classroom was not violated: they answered anonymously, to preserve their privacy, and the exercise had an explicit pedagogical purpose).

Sixteen Ivy Leaguers isn't, of course, a representative sample of anything other than itself – you'd think. But these intelligent, fascinating young people are from all over the country and from all over the socioeconomic and cultural map. So it was an intriguing exercise.

Despite their varied backgrounds, most appeared to be voting for Kerry. Why? In equal measures because he was the anti-Bush and because he seemed like a competent and intelligent fellow. On their list of issues, international respect was a major theme; they didn't want America to look stupid or mean, so they wanted a President who seemed to be neither.

Many were concerned about abortion and marriage: they were in favour of access to both (it's a demographic thing: younger people have no trouble identifying a need for safe abortion, and can't see what the fuss is about gay marriage, because, duh, what kind of dinosaur thinks gay people are lower-class citizens?).

Fiscal responsibility, the looming deficit, and the increasing numbers of people without health insurance were important too. Oddly enough, terrorism didn't make it onto the list at all. We also had a hard time remembering the signature issues from the last election, but managed to come up with "lockbox" and "fuzzy math" (how far we've come). It all led to a lively and impassioned discussion.

The day after the election, by contrast, no-one felt like talking. They were catatonically silent. It didn't help that Kerry was giving his concession speech while we were meant to be discussing how to construct a winning argument.

I did my best to persuade them that it's not the end of the world, even if it seems that way: they will get to vote for president again in four years, by which time they'll be twenty-two, and fresh out of college. A lifetime away, to their eyes, but it'll roll around soon enough. In the meantime, we get on with things, as my wise old Dad counseled me the day after the election.

It's taken me a while to get there, but sweeping up a yard full of leaves the other day, I came over all Ecclesiastes about it. To everything there is, undeniably, a season. There's a season for struggling to identify everything that's popping up; a season for getting the weeds under control; a season for planting a bean pyramid for Busytot to hide in and gorge himself on fresh green beans.

And now it's late fall, turning to winter: a season for tidying the yard, deadheading the perennials, and hunkering down to await the spring. And, now that the skeleton of the garden is visible, a season for taking the longer view.

I was raking and bagging the fallen leaves, when my other neighbour, Sophie, came out to do some yard work of her own. She and her sister are both in their eighties and both as thin and tough as twigs of witchhazel. They were born in the big white house where every evening they watch the Holy Rosary on television at a volume that can be heard from the street.

Her sister, who is poorly, doesn't get out at all these days, but Sophie was painstakingly raking great shoals of dead leaves into tidy piles (I've offered to help, but it's a point of pride for her to do it herself). She creaked her way over to the fence for a chat -- which took her a good minute or two -- and shook her fist at the three giant oaks in the next yard over, which were shedding leaves as fast as we could rake them.

"I shoulda pulled those things out when they were seedlings! Why didn't I just do it?" she said, and pointed out that there were two or three spindly baby oaks, barely a foot high, lurking under my hedge. "If you don't get to those now, one day they'll be eighty feet tall. And you'll be raking up the leaves! I won't be around to see it," she added, ominously (and somewhat redundantly), "but don't say I didn't warn you."

I don't think she was telling me to slip some Round-up in the Republican drinking fountain -- that's altogether too Ukrainian an approach (she's Polish, not Russian). But it did make me wonder about what we might be planting, now, that will grow up both to shade us and shed leaves on us. Suddenly the next four years seemed like four minutes; not a second to lose.

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Wakey wakey | Nov 25, 2004 17:10

Where were we? Oh right. So I had this totally freaky dream. I dreamed that in the middle of George W. Bush's 8-year term, they decided to have an election, just a sort of quick referendum on how he was doing. It seemed like a good idea to have him explain himself and make sure we were all with the program. (I know, crazy huh, but you know how logic gets all messed up in dreams).

And there was this really good Democratic candidate. Tall, smart, talky, nice smile, war hero. Actually, a bit too tall, a bit too smart, a bit too talky, but kinda cute, what with the smile and the hero stuff. He was Bush's good twin or cyborg nemesis or something – I dunno, some crazy experiment at Yale in the sixties that went a bit dodgy.

Then there was something about a papier-mache turkey in the desert, and it turned out Bush was, like, really a robot, and then we all wondered if that meant the war in Iraq was just a virtual reality game or something, but then it wasn't because all these guys in camo turned up, minus limbs and waving voting papers and explaining that American's biggest export was democracy and they'd found a new market for it.

And the other guy was stalking round the place going "I have a plan! I have a plan!" and sometimes "Friend? friend?" like Boris Karloff in that old Frankenstein movie, except his suit was a lot sharper. He had a cute sidekick who didn't say much but was winking at all the girls, and some of the boys even though he kept going on about how married he was. Tch. You always get those at parties.

Because, right, suddenly it was a party, and it was Election Day (you know how time gets all messed up in dreams) and all the kids came out to vote, and people were voting till three in the morning because they were so into it. That was weird.

And then the party was happening at my house but also on the TV (you know how place gets all messed up in dreams) and I don't quite know why, but Eminem was there and someone dressed as Osama bin Laden (I guess Halloween came into it somehow). Maybe it was Dick Cheney? Because I didn't see him anywhere else, although someone said they saw him upstairs going through my underwear drawer, but that can't be right. Maybe he was just perving at my old e-mail. Seems like the type.

And then someone put "I Will Survive" on the stereo because Cheney's daughter was a lesbian and Bush's daughters are, like, major fag-hags, and then we were all yelling at some guy in the corner who said that gay people can't be teachers, not until hell freezes over and the earth is round.

And someone was outside shouting "Don't leave the children behind!", and I don't know why, but a moose and a polar bear and a tiny spotted owl kept racing through the room going "What about meeeeeeee?" closely followed by some guy with what looked like an oilcan.

Oh yeah, and that guy who played Superman was there, and Arnold Schwarzenegger wheeled him in and they were both wearing T-shirts that said "I [heart] stem-cell research," which seemed like a good thing.

And everyone was chanting, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. It sounded like "Pour more beers! Pour more beers!" and Bush kept shaking his head and saying "But I'm the designated driver," and then he said "Oh, what the hell, one won't hurt." Over in the corner the tall guy had his head in his hands and was moaning softly. Too much cognac maybe?

All sorts of other freaky stuff was going on, but you know how all the details mush together and then fade away when the radio clicks on and the announcer reads the news.

Which was that Bush was still the president after all. Duh! It was all a dream!

So I went into university and taught my class as I usually do on a Wednesday, but for some reason the students, who'd all just voted for the first time, were practically catatonic and all my usual jokes didn't raise a smile.

I guessed at that point that it might be one of those dreams where you think you've woken up, but you haven't really.

Suddenly friends were talking about moving to Canada or New Zealand, in that loopily optimistic way that people used to talk about making it big in a dotcom and then retiring at thirty to write novels and work in soup kitchens and hike the old Silk Road.

Some actually cried. Some apologized, as if they'd personally done something wrong.

And there was Bush on the TV doing his first press conference, and he was speaking in coherent paragraphs, exhibiting confidence and even intelligence. Barely recognizable as the twitching, grinning clown from the televised debates. Almost a different man, in fact. Perhaps they'd reversed the results of the mysterious experiment? Or fixed his control panel?

He was talking about earning capital and planning to spend it, although it wasn't clear what on. (For some reason, this reminded me of our schoolyard con-man back in fourth form, who could make money out of nothing. One day he picked up a couple of dozen ice-cream sticks off the ground, marked them off in one centimeter increments with a pencil, and sold them as handy pocket rulers for 5c each so he could buy himself a Trumpet.)

But you know how there's always some magical thing hidden under your pillow that tells you it wasn't all a dream? In my case, there's a Kerry-Edwards sticker on my washing machine, carefully peeled off by old friends Matthew and Hamish who visited us the day after the election to do a couple of weeks' washing and to debrief on what it was like road-tripping round the swing states: exhilarating and infuriating in equal measure. And what it was like at Kerry HQ on election night: exciting, and then just grim.

Scrabbling around for consolations amid the post-election debris, the most we came up with was that Bush gets to clean up in Iraq. Even though it sounds like he's already fixin' to mess up in Iran.

Hmmm. You know that conventional wisdom about not switching presidents in the middle of a war? It makes you wonder, is Dubya like the guy who throws a match in order to say "Stand back, everybody, I've got a fire extinguisher!" (Pssst…. George! That's a flamethrower… the extinguisher is over there, next to the UN building).

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