Suggestions

I will take a leaf from nuqotw's book and apologize in advance for those of you who voted for Bush. Nothing personal. I just happen to (continue to) disagree with every single opinion that he's expressed, as far as I can tell.

Okay. Barring miracles from Ohio, Kerry lost. This means that the executive branch, and the judicial branch, are going to do things I consider scary. But our government has worked for centuries, and will mostly likely continue to work.

What I'm trying to say is, there's still a legislative branch.

One of the biggest lessons my school has tried to teach me in the past year and a half is that legislators listen to their electorate. They want to get reelected. They often want to represent their electorate. Sometimes, they have strong principles that they would like to stand up for. But for whatever reason, the words I keep hearing, over and over again, are: If you have a strong opinion, if you want to influence a bill, call your legislator. Send them letters with relevant statistics and arguments. They might not read it, but even if they don't, their staffers will, and my understanding is that the staffers are responsible for supplying the Congresssmen with arguments for the bills being worked on. If we send information legislators can use, they can use it.

I cannot stress this enough. Bush appears to have a way of convincing legislators that all of the US is on his side. He will take his one-state victory and claim a mandate and a landslide win. If we speak up, we break that spell, and we empower legislators to stand against him.

What I would actally suggest, given the severe limits on time that we all have, is to pick an issue or two, follow it, and bug the relevant Congressmen about it. Honestly, I'd suggest this to the Bush supporters who are socially liberal, too.

In conclusion, although I'm worried about a woman's right to choose and other assorted issues, I am not worried that the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage will pass. It's hard to pass a constitutional amendment, and even if Bush convinces all his Republicans to vote for it, I don't think he has enough Republicans to ram it through Congress. And gay marriage? This is an issue that mobilized people who don't otherwise think about politics. As far as I've been able to tell, the people who are against gay marriage are also likely to be active in the fight against abortion and other faith-related issues (though that's also a horrible stereotype). Many of the people who are active in the fight for gay marriage, and against the Constitutional ban, are otherwise uninvolved in politics. They have lots of time and passion to give to the fight. The gay marriage issue is generally more personally relevent to gay marriage advocates.

And I will quote from setissma's livejournal, who pointed out that "if we live in a world where we elect black senators, when 200 years ago, they were worth no more than dogs, then there's hope for change."

So, no, I'm not happy, but I'm don't think it's unreasonable to hope for the best, given the hand of cards that we chose.

In Which the Civil War is Discussed.

The roommate points out that Kerry carried the Union, and Bush carried the Confederacy.

Huh.

And the Union thought that they won the Civil War...

ETA: Just to be clear, I am not actually advocating that life would be better if only the North had lost the Civil War. Neither am I accusing Georgia, Alabama, and, yes, Virginia of doing something wrong. Though it's true that if the South's electoral votes had gone for Kerry, I would have been much more likely to bake them mandel bread.

ETA2: Apparently people are making this kind of statement with some seriousness. Weird.