18 October 2008

after this, i am taking a break from politics

I really need to stop writing about politics. I read an article in the New York Times this morning that pointed out the fact that, this time around, Obama supporters genuinely believe that the country will topple off a precipice into disaster if McCain is elected, and McCain supporters genuinely believe that the country will topple off a precipice into disaster if Obama is elected. I am guilty of a bit of that myself, to be honest. I actually do think the country will topple into disaster if McCain is elected. I predict economic chaos, the rise of international terrorism, additional unnecessary wars, and fewer and fewer people able to access health care, if McCain gets elected.

I asked my friend I. in Canada if she would marry me if McCain got elected, so I could have Canadian citizenship (this is apparently something white people do - threaten to move to Canada if their candidate loses an election - but why not? it's a beautiful big country right north of us, and they aren't bothering with these silly fights about abortion and gay marriage while the country descends into nightmare).

Unfortunately, I. wants to marry a man. The good news is that I want to marry a man, too, so I was not too devastated that my first proposal ever was rejected.

Anyway, it was a joke. I would not give up my US citizenship. My grandparents and great-grandparents came too far and gave up too much for me to toss aside my citizenship like that. While there are many things I would change about this country, it is the country of my birth. It is one of my several heritages. There are few things as safe and comforting to me as a Dutch family dinner on a Sunday afternoon. At my friend S.'s parents house here in Gone West, I feel the same homecoming as when I walk on a red dirt road somewhere in Liberia, or when I fly over the glowing leaves of Michigan's remaining forest land, or when I curl up next to the fire at C. and D.'s house in the Netherlands.

This is the beautiful thing about this country: we all come from something. I come from farm country in the Netherlands and a college town in Michigan and a bustling port city in Liberia. My good friend from law school comes from a sharecropping family on the border between Texas and Arkansas. I read yesterday about a school in Wyoming that teaches kids in Arapaho.

We all come from somewhere, and it's no surprise that we disagree. I am as guilty as anyone of getting angry sometimes, but less and less as I become more confident of what I believe, politically. It is not a reaction to anyone else's politics: I simply know what I think.

And in the end, I know that it will not be such a disaster if McCain gets elected. Sure, I'll be unhappy. It may be hard to get out of bed the next morning to face a world of more of the same Bushie-ness. But we all come from somewhere and there is enough healthy disagreement to keep us all accountable, if we can listen to each other.

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