This diary is a joint effort by two Kossacks:
all about meme and
mxwing. We're sisters. We're Democrats. And we still can't believe we haven't woken up from this nightmare.
We've structured this diary as a conversation. It includes our memories of the lead-up to the election, as well as snippets of email we exchanged throughout the whole ordeal, and some remarks in retrospect.
We were inspired by Maryscott O'Connor and her cunning boxes to distinguish our separate voices this way:
all about meme is in yellow.
Warning: this diary is a little, well, long.
mxwing:
A year ago this week I went, in a matter of hours, from heart-soaring hopefulness and a sense that this bad dream would soon be over, to the bottom of the muck in the slough of despond; from being almost certain that the U.S. was about to get back on track, to despairing that my daughter would ever know what, exactly, I'd loved so much about this country.
all about meme:
The early exit polls were intuitively satisfying. That's one of the hardest things, I think, about the outcome of the election. We KNEW that we won, in our hearts and guts. And yet, we were told to distrust our own perceptions and accept that what we knew to be true was wrong. It was heartbreaking. It was also disorienting, but I think it was during those first few days I realized how deep America's troubles really were. Orwellian hyperboles weren't abstractions anymore -- they were wearing badges and cruising the streets behind tinted glass, stopping occasionally to frisk uncooperative librarians or bust up suspicious cookie parties. Blacklisted infants were barred passage on airplanes. Okay, I exaggerate, I think.
We Love John: Pre-Election Predilection
mxwing:
We travelled to DC twice last year, soaking up the history, hob-nobbing with ghosts, and furthering meme's liberal genealogical agenda. These trips (we made another one this past September, just in time for the
Propagandapalooza) have had a number of unexpected side-effects, one of which is this: I now take American history personally. The whole rambling, big-hearted American enterprise seems a lot more fragile now than I'd imagined -- it's not so much bound and bolted than held together by static electricity or a fading magnetic charge.
all about meme:
I think you get to a point where certain cliches start making sense because they're happening to you. "The personal is political" is a big one, and, because of the commutative property of sloganeering, "the political is personal" is also relevant. The fragility of our democracy started becoming clearer to me after Bush's Supreme Court appointment, and things I'd taken for granted suddenly seemed at risk. Somehow, if you're not alive for the turmoil that inevitably accompanies an uptick in human rights, you forget how we arrived at this point. We have a 40-hr. work week because people fought, and died, for the right. And, of course, it's in the interest of the powers that be to keep the bulk of the populace ignorant of their own history. I'm convinced that it's easier to strip rights from people who feel no ownership for them.
mxwing:
Four years after the surreal "election" of 2000, I imagined we'd be able to stash that fiasco in a memory-box under the guest-room bed, where I keep things I mustn't forget but don't want to be reminded of, like Watergate, and our mother's early experiments with soybeans.
all about meme:
It's okay to forget the soybeans -- really, it is. Just let it go.
mxwing:
I, like Carnacki and so many others, saw signs of good things in the numbers of Kerry/Edwards bumperstickers and yard signs. I was disgusted by the Not-So-Swifties, and I was on the edge of my seat during the debates.
all about meme wrote to mxwing on 9/29/04:
I'm a nervous wreck re: the "debate." Actually , it's not the debate, it's
the media spin that convinces everyone that what they saw was NOT what they
saw that scares me! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
<snip>
Lots of luck with your dinner party + debate. I'll be sitting in front of
my rabbit-eared Zenith with a megaphone and box of Kleenex.
Our man Big John started off a little shakily but soon gained his footing. Bush was peevish -- testy, even -- and embarassingly under-prepared. He also appeared to be "wired", and we're not just talking about that weird bulge in the back of his jacket.
This was the debate during which this rather delicious tidbit occurred:
KERRY: Jim, the president just said something extraordinarily revealing and frankly very important in this debate. In answer to your question about Iraq and sending people into Iraq, he just said, "The enemy attacked us."
Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al Qaida attacked us. And when we had Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, 1,000 of his cohorts with him in those mountains. With the American military forces nearby and in the field, we didn't use the best trained troops in the world to go kill the world's number one criminal and terrorist.
They outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, who only a week earlier had been on the other side fighting against us, neither of whom trusted each other.
That's the enemy that attacked us. That's the enemy that was allowed to walk out of those mountains. That's the enemy that is now in 60 countries, with stronger recruits.
He also said Saddam Hussein would have been stronger. That is just factually incorrect. Two-thirds of the country was a no-fly zone when we started this war. We would have had sanctions. We would have had the U.N. inspectors. Saddam Hussein would have been continually weakening.
By the time of the second debate, we were both feeling quite optimistic. Meanwhile, Bush's crazy-jaw action was becoming as obvious as his fake Texas accent.
mxwing wrote to all about meme during the second debate (10/8/2004):
Yo, Babe.
I just had to tell someone.
Shrubby is ON COCAINE. He is. I have seen (hmmm)
a very particular jaw movement specific
to someone who has just done a few lines. I'm telling
you, Shrubby is on coke. I thought I was imagining it,
but he did it in EVERY response. He is ON COKE. You
heard it here first.
More soon! Love,
mxwing
To which meme responded:
Just before election day, which was starting to look more and more like Bright Shiny Yellow Tuesday,meme wrote to mxwing:
I've been thinking about our victory celebration. We're
probably going to hang out with some other K/E volunteers on Tuesday night,
so we'll definitely share. Although, when we win, I will not be,
responsible for, my actions.
<snip>
So! I will be shocked if NM turns red. If it does, I'll be the first to
think the R's cheated. It feels very positive for big John. We had 17,000
people at the rally last Saturday, and LC has 75,000 people. Woo hoo! Gen.
Clark will be here tomorrow.
Have been cooking lots of food for the campaign workers, which is a really
fun way to volunteer, o'course. The staff is working their collective butt
off. (My daughter) is working 20 hours on Monday and Tuesday, getting out the
vote. Things are extremely organized, thank gad. I spent the morning
tabling at the farmers' market -- lots of high energy. It's such fun to
talk to people and shower them with yard signs and lapel stickers.
Well, must go make minestrone. Thank you so much again -- I promise we will
enjoy the Win Wine to the fullest!
And then. And then. Sunshine turns to howling wind and rain. Yellow turns to black.
Black Tuesday
all about meme:
It's hard to revisit the waning hours of Nov. 2, 2004. I remember trying to hold onto things -- like maybe at least my state would be blue, then maybe my county, or my precinct...I don't think I slept much, and when I called our mom on Wednesday morning, neither of us could speak.
mxwing to aam, Nov. 3:
I'm wearing black today, head to toe, and I've got two cold tea-
bags I keep pressing on my eyes, but then I start boo-hooing
again so I have to start all over.
How can we make this ok to live with?
<snip>
What I'm telling myself right now: if the shoe had ended up on the
other foot, we could very well be facing an armed uprising
(with a bunch of brand-new AK-47s!). Instead we have the contemplative
party (that would be us Democrats) talking about how to promote unity
in our deeply divided country.
aam to mxwing:
Hi, Bibby, (v. disjointed ramblings follow)
Another mourning in America. I think Steve inflated my face with a bicycle
pump while I was I "sleeping."
I'm grief-stricken. (My daughter) got in the car after school and said, "Bush winned!
Not John Kerry!" You can imagine my wish for windshield wipers INSIDE the
car.
Coping
all about meme:
I went through a several month period where I vacillated between despair and anger. I felt a disturbing paralysis -- after all the months and years of activism, protests, campaigns, and community education, Bush was still occupying the White House. I was mentally pacing, like Rilke's panther.
mxwing on coping:
I found myself trying to take the Long View. Unfortunately, in a country as young as ours, one can't step back very far before one starts stumbling over the uglier bits of our national furniture: legally codified segregation, robber barons, and a little thing some people call "The War Between The States". On November 5th, 2004, in a desperate bid to keep the grief demons at bay,
I did the inevitable. It (they) helped, for about an hour. It's painfully obvious that we are watching our future history unfold. Now.
all about meme:
I've always been interested in issues of war and peace, but over the last year I've become alarmingly fascinated by epic battles and stories of social upheaval and conflict. It's like I'm scrubbing some internal wound. I want to understand my country and why and how we got where we are right now. I feel a heavy responsibility as an American to make our country what it was meant to be. America is on a fault line, and it's cracking into pieces, through the bedrock of the constitution, the bill of rights and its founding principles of liberty and justice for all. What's missing is the public participation in what was designed as a people's government. We've lost the habit of citizenship, and it shows.
mxwing:
My daughter started kindergarten this year, so I'm suddenly thinking a lot about the critical importance of education in general, and of public education in particular. Meme and I went to public elementary schools during the moon-shot era, and we had great, enthusiastic, professional teachers. There was very low turnover among the teaching staff at our schools. And we had a history teacher who, in retrospect, was clearly a Civil War re-enactor (sorry to "out" you, Mr. Brower). But let's not go there. My point is, I've become increasingly aware that we, as a nation, can only reasonably expect a level of technological innovation proportional to our investment in public education. Period. If we rely only on the kids from wealthy families who send their offspring to tony private schools, well... Can you say, "subliminable"? We must make excellent, secular public education a top priority for all children. It naturally follows that we must pay teachers a living wage.
Now:
all about meme:
The Bush administration is finally being exposed for the cartoon that it is. I'm ready to fight again -- and I get immeasurable sustenance from Democrats standing up for the people of this nation. What Harry Reid did yesterday electrified me. I hope and pray we're getting our country back.
How about you? What have been your struggles, insights, and coping strategies this last year? Any insights? Advice? New Italian footwear?