Election Decompression

Well here I am, drinking my way through a bottle of wine. I don’t know. Is that sad? That I am so sad because of an election?

I have – clearly, if you read these entries consecutively – been mulling over the politics of late. Trying to wrap my brain around the determination of responsibility, of blame, of choice, of right and wrong … and believe it or not, in my own silent dialogue with myself, the contemplation of if the other side isn’t so bad in the end.

Well, my side lost. The other side won. I sat there, on my couch, nursing the first glass of wine, as I watched the percentage creep up to declare how many of the votes were tallied. And up to the last second I found myself taking in a breath of hope that maybe… maybe there would be a miracle. I tried to distract myself from the punditry by reading a book. But then… the news broke that Martha Coakley conceded.

I already felt the tears welling as the tallies started to accumulate and the odds in her favor diminished. I had a long day, the latter end of it spent driving through Boston in the rain… so I was hoping my senses were playing a trick on me. But they weren’t. This is what happened. Scott Brown won the Senate seat.

I don’t want to be a poor loser. I want to respect the other side. I have many friends, whom I DO respect and LOVE that voted for Brown. I don’t think them lesser human beings. I really don’t. So I don’t want to think that this… victory for my friends is a total fail for me. Because… they love me, right? They care about my wellbeing and my future and my world just as much as they do theirs… so they wouldn’t vote someone into office that would hurt that?

I admit my mind dizzies when it comes to financials. Some of my work life involves numbers, for which I supposedly have a clarity… but accounting always… well, I’m never really quite sure. I accept that. I took economics. But, I’m a bleeding heart. I don’t care about that gross domestic product. I see poor people hungry and I want to feed them. I don’t care about taxes.

Maybe… maybe I don’t… understand. I don’t push myself enough to know that. Not like I do about the cracks and crevices of Beauport or the trivia of my small town’s history or Shakespeare dialogue. So maybe… I’m missing something in the great spending debate of this country.

I accept that. Really, people, I do.

But I still cried.

Who knows what will happen in the next couple years? But… the thing about the Republican party, the Conservative movement… a huge chunk of American culture… that rips my heart to shreds… is that we determine any one person is more entitled to happiness than another. Okay, yeah, this has been writ in this blog before. But… I’m a begrudging sap for love stories. I hate saccharine. I hate pretentious and fake. But I love… real… love. And that makes me hate… the hate of love.

I know this wasn’t a referendum on gay marriage. I know … the way the media spins it… it was more on Obama. But… Brown isn’t tolerant. I wouldn’t have voted for him. I really felt all my tolerance to the other side curdle when I found he was quoted as saying the fact two women had a child was unnatural. Any man, woman, droid, dog that feels that way… feels the love of a mother to her child is unnatural doesn’t deserve power… at least power over where I live.

In my mind.

So I cried. I cried tonight when he won. Not because health care could die a quick death to oblivion. Not because he supports the BS tax cuts that got us into this financial shithole into which we’ve descended. Because… he thinks love can be defined.

Well, okay. He can think that. But the fact that so many of my fellow Massachusetts residents… my friends… find that tolerable… that breaks my heart. That any ONE human being on this planet can decide they are more worthy of LOVE than someone else… that sucks, man. And it sucks that it leads you to elect this guy, who drives a truck and poses in Cosmo. And yet… he is supposedly more heartfelt and compassionate than Martha. Seriously? Am I wrong about this?

NO.

I voted for Martha for so many reasons. So many that I won’t list here. And I can forgive Brown and his supporters for our many disagreements. But not this one. It makes my soul ache. I know elections are choice of battles to pick. Financial. Ethical. Regional. Social. But… I don’t know. For me, intolerance is a non-negotiable. Especially in the state where I live and have the freedom to love whom I wish … just because my druthers don’t ruffle the feathers of another minority.

But… as I nurse this last sip of wine for the evening, I’m not going to let this poison my soul with anger. I am going to fill my heart with love and build a community of tolerance and knowledge… and empowerment to go out and make the next election one that doesn’t make me cry.