I will say this: today has been the longest, strangest day of my life.
Today is November 3, 2004. It is a Wednesday. It is the day after an election.
This election was supposed to be the most important election of my lifetime. If John Kerry didn’t win the Presidency on Tuesday, the world would end on Wednesday. It is 10:07PM on Wednesday, and the world still exists.
I am going to try to be fair, but it is difficult. It is very difficult to not sling mud and name call. It is difficult to keep all of my negative emotions in check.
I am angry.
Why am I angry? Who has made me angry?
To be quite honest, those questions are unbelievably difficult to answer. My mind is reeling from the implications of this election, but that is not the source of my anguish. Today I was in Long Island … for most of the day, at least. I was supposed to be helping someone make a film. The film never got made. The shooting didn’t even start.
I fell asleep last night at 1AM in Long Island. To be honest, I don’t know where the hell I was in Long Island. I got off the train at Ronkonkoma and was picked up by the director’s girlfriend. But when I fell asleep George Bush was the President … and the likely President Elect. But since Ohio was in contention (yes it was, don’t even say it wasn’t –
it was), I decided to sleep, hoping that, if things went well, I would wake up to headlines proclaiming John Kerry to be the President Elect.
I woke up at 6AM. My job this morning was to drive into the city and pick up the camera since a scheduling error left half of the equipment in Manhattan yesterday. I had nothing to drink and nothing to eat, and the traffic on the Long Island Expressway was bumper to bumper for the two and a half hour ride into the city. I picked up the equipment, bought some cookies and a Snapple, and left for Long Island.
The traffic wasn’t as bad on the way back to – Ronkonkoma? – but it was still bumper to bumper every now and then. On the way back, I called the director to ask for directions to the location. He said that he would need to call me back; his girlfriend was in a car accident and he had to go make sure she was ok. A half hour later, I called him back and he gave me the directions, told me to go there, and that his girlfriend was being taken to the hospital and “it might be serious.”
I didn’t give a damn who the President was.
I finally got to the location around 12:30 and discovered that the shoot had been cancelled for the day – at the least, for the day. While we waited for two hours, the decision was made to cancel the entire five day shoot. My friend’s girlfriend was ok and would be fine, but she had a nasty concussion and the director wasn’t going to be able to handle the film shoot.
One of the other crew members arrived with the rental van and we loaded everything into it and sent the van into the city to return the rental equipment. The rest of us went on a four-hour Odyssey. We were lost in Long Island with no directions and a stressed out, hungry group of tired film students (and one really weird guy who tried to convince us that George Lucas was responsible for the conservative trend in national politics – honest to God, I couldn’t make this shit up).
John and I will have to register as domestic partners. We are going to lose our rights. At least three of the Supreme Court justices will leave or die in the next four years – it’s of high probability, at least. George Bush will install three Bible-thumping Christians and the progressive movements for gay rights, women’s rights, minority rights and the advance of science will be set back 30 years. We are so unbelievably fucked.
By the time we had retrieved the belongings of the two missing crew members and found our way back to the director’s house, it was 7PM. We were in the house for about ten minutes total.
I called my mom and congratulated her – her candidate had won. I told her about my plans to have lengthy discussions with John about how we would best protect our rights. We agreed that it was sad that John Kerry and George Bush are the two best candidates this country can put forth for a campaign to win the most powerful position in the world. It was the most civil political conversation I’ve had with my mom for many months. Then my dad told my mom that my grandfather was being taken the hospital for emergency surgery. He has had two surgeries in the past three months and apparently has an infection which requires an immediate operation. I didn’t have to say anything for my friends to know that I had to be back in Manhattan immediately. We were out the door in less than three minutes. At this point, I’m actually amazed. No one I have ever been friends with, aside from John, Bill, Dan and Angi, have ever been so concerned for me over something like this. We aren’t going to make the train, so the director is going to drive us into the city. More driving. I will have spent about 12 hours in the car today.
I called John and asked him to pack a bag; if I have to go home, I want him to come with me. He said that his grandmother had been taken into the hospital, too. She had surgery for lung cancer over the summer and suddenly was not doing too well. A CT/CAT scan revealed spots on her liver, and John said that a PT/PET scan tomorrow will reveal if the cancer has spread. This is unbelievable. This is the strangest day I have ever encountered.
When we got to Manhattan, I took the PATH train home and thought about everything. I was tired, and I had had a migraine for about three hours. When I got to the Exchange Place stop, I had an amazing rush of rage surge through me. I wanted to yell at someone. I wanted to yell out loud and call everyone stupid. I wanted to hit someone. I wanted to throw something. But I didn’t.
Why am I angry? I am angry because the world has changed. Not really, but this country has. People are saying, the election was close because the two candidates were the same. That’s not true at all. The truth is, the election was close because the two candidates were completely different – and the country was practically split down the middle over who they believed in.
Three million votes is not a wide margin for a victor. That’s three million votes. Votes don’t matter. There are 293 million people in this country. And the difference between John Kerry and George Bush was 1% of that population. The election that affects every man, woman and child in this country was split down the middle. That says something:
John Kerry and John Edwards were right. There are two Americas. One for George Bush and one for John Kerry.
Truth be told, I think I know who I’m angry with. I’m angry at the Democrats. The Democrats squandered away the desire to see Bush removed from office. A great deal of the country wanted to see someone replace Bush, but the Democrats pushed for John Kerry to be their choice. That was the flaw. That was the error. That was the mistake. There was never going to be a President Kerry. The more I reflect on that, the more I realize that I was deluded by my own hopes that George Bush would simply be defeated. And the more I reflect, the angrier I become, because there
was a candidate who believe the war in Iraq was wrong. He believed it before anyone else did. There
was a candidate who believed that the President’s social initiatives for education and health care were failing. This man was responsible for helping get every child in the state he governed for two terms health coverage. There
was a candidate who had a stance that was unwavering, and a voice that rang true and clear. His name was
Howard Dean – and the Democrats fucked him over because he represented dissent among the ranks. If anyone wants to pick any group of people to blame for the squandering of the mass desire to see the President removed from office, they should look first to the Democrats. They failed their supporters.
That is why I am angry. Today is November 3, 2004. It is the day after the Election of 2004 and the world has not ended. As a matter of fact, I think a new world is just beginning. I expect a realignment of the Democratic party, and a definite shift in attitude and policy. And if that doesn’t happen, then my anger will become an infinite sadness, because it will become apparent that the Party of Hope and Justice and Equality has simply become the Party of Foolish Dreams.
