I can't disagree with how you feel. I can disagree with facts but not how someone feels.
Personally I think the grass is greener on the other side.
I also see things as more dynamic than you might...I don't know. A representative is only in power for so long. Certain issues are supported for so long...etc. And if in 20 years gay marriage is all of a sudden legal in America, then what? That is an example.
To me a citizenship isn't just about one or two issues. It carries the weight of history. An American citizenship carries the strength of the longest experiment in the world - we are not descendants of an old empire, America did not have a king or dictator.
So I hope that whatever country you end up in, you feel like you belong and have a voice.
-Rudey
Quote:
Originally posted by Sistermadly
I just wanted to add: thanks for the reasoned discussion, Rudey. I know you don't agree with my position, but I get the sense that you're at least trying to understand it.
It's not as if I haven't been politically active. I registered to vote when I was 17 years old, and I actually voted in my first election before I was 18 years old (you can do that if your birthday is within a few weeks of an election). I've donated time, and money to political campaigns, and I've written letters, made phone calls... you name it.
But at some point I just realized that I'm not Fannie Lou Hamer. I'm not Martin Luther King. The political climate that made social justice and equality a defining value of America largely doesn't exist anymore. Politicians -- on both sides -- have shown that they will take any stance, no matter how radical, just to get elected. We don't look at people as neighbors anymore - it's a game of "us" versus "them". We find it so hard to look beyond party affiliation to try to find common ground -- our only aim is to dehumanize our opponent, because it makes destroying them that much easier.
There's a president in office who will make it impossible for my brother to marry his longtime partner of 15 years. When my brother finally succumbs to full-blown AIDS, his partner won't be able to visit him in the hospital because he doesn't have visitation rights. Legally, his partner doesn't have any right to the property they own together.
The president is poised to appoint supreme court justices who are "strict Constitutionalists" - those people who look at this document not as something that is flexible and open to intepretation, but as a fixed document that is unchanging. If every supreme court justice felt this way, Brown vs. Board of Education never would have been passed. Never mind that - I wouldn't have been able to vote, because the Constitution originally said that black people were only 3/5ths of a human being, and that women weren't allowed to vote.
Rather than looking out for its poorest and most vulnerable citizens, the president wants to take money for social security and invest it in a volatile stock market. Sure, it could work out for the best - but a lot of really poor people could end up in even worse financial straits should the market take a downward turn. I don't believe it's the responsibility of private investors or corporations to take care of American citizens - I think that's our shared responsibility.
I support the troops in Iraq, but I just can't believe that a majority of American citizens believe that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with September 11. I can't believe that people voted to support a war on a country that didn't have weapons of mass destruction, and that lacked the capacity to even build new ones. I can't believe that a majority of the American public thought that the deaths of 1100+ of their fellow countrymen and -women mattered less than whether gay people would be allowed to marry, or that stem cell research be held back to 'protect babies'.
So I sit here in Lotusland, shaking my head, feeling powerless to change the direction that the neoconservatives are steering my country in. I mostly feel powerless because I don't have faith in the Democratic party either. I'm just really tired of beating my head against the wall. How long should a person have to do that until she realizes "Hey, my head really hurts and it's bleeding and maybe I should just stop what I'm doing?"
American citizenship is a huge responsibility. I'm just honest enough to admit that these days I just don't think I'm up to shouldering that responsibility anymore.
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