okay, so..
I guess we should have known that america hasn’t grown up enough yet to recognize that being the playground bully isn’t moral – she’s only 250 years old, and that’s pretty young for a country.
And we should have realized that she hasn’t grown up enough to accept that everyone is free to love in their own ways, and that gays should have as much right to be married as straights. Again, she’s still a kid. Give her time.
Our generation will be in power soon enough. In the meantime, we can watch our parents continue their intolerence and stupidity, and learn carefully what they’re doing wrong, and make sure that we manage to do better. People seem to turn republican as they grow older.. if we watch closely enough, we can avoid that process.
I think the reason people turn republican is that the world beats them down. One or ten or a hundred times too many having things go wrong kills their idealism, and leaves them thinking ‘every man for himself’ – since that is basically the republican mantra. (I equate being republican with being a asshole for some reason. maybe it’s because so many of them are.. so selfish that they don’t even notice driving their SUVS is killing off the rest of the world, leading to wars over oil, etc, so narrowminded that they can’t accept any viewpoint that isn’t within 5 degrees of their own..
So, in order to avoid turning republican, we have to avoid being beaten down. Every time something really bad happens to us, as individuals or as a country, we have to manage to stand up and say, ‘no, I will not let this dampen my spirits, or darken might light!’
While it is tempting to just give up on the US, and move elsewhere – very tempting, since Bush may very well start WWIII – to do so would be to allow myself to be beaten down. And that way leads to becoming a republican.