daisy in “the great gatsby” was p-p-paralyzed with happiness. my inaction, though, is a more garden variety paralysis. why am i not doing more to work for a kerry victory?
intellectually, i know what i should be doing. i actually did it for the clinton campaign in ’92 when i was in florida. i should be doing more than opening my checkbook, or in the modern version, whipping out my credit card and approving a sequential series of contributions that never happened.
i should be answering that email asking me to volunteer at a kerry phone bank. i’m sure they are calling people in swing states, as i live in new york and it would be locked up for whoever ran against bush. but then i start thinking. do they still do it the old-fashioned way, where you show up in a temporary bolier room and read the script over and over to people at dinnertime? ugh. i can’t face all those shiny happy pie-eyed volunteers. i remember those clinton groupies all too well. or do i just go to a training session, and then read the script in the comfort of my own home? i don’t have a land line. i can’t spare the minutes on my cell phone, unless i call nights and weekends when everyone is either preoccupied or not home.
i should call my sister, her husband, and my nephew. they live in florida. they should be voting for kerry but may not be. i don’t know if they are or not. that would be constructive. if they were bush voters, i could convince them of the folly of their ways. if they were kerry voters, we would have an all-too-rare bonding moment. i came out to them, for god’s sake. you’d think i could call.
maybe i should send an email to everyone i know and tell them to go see “team america”. that’s what i did this afternoon. the movie’s satiric look at the issues might open some eyes and change some minds. nah. everyone i have an email address for is voting for kerry already. and the few who are bush voters aren’t changing their minds. and besides, you could leave that movie and logically think maybe you should be voting for bush. i sure the hell did for a minute, until i thought about the supreme court. trey parker and matt stone are sneaky with that movie of theirs. i bet they are voting for bush. that’s why, in that salon interview, they told everyone to not worry about voting if they don’t want to. they are trying to suppress the vote on behalf of bush. those sneaky bastards.
it’s much more effective to sit here and kvetch, isn’t it? i feel much better now.
p.s.–pat buchanan ranted today on mclaughlin all about how we don’t know homosexuality’s proportion of nature vs. nurture, and anyway, it’s the behavior that people need to stop. love the sinner, hate the sin. that’s the way, pat, you sneaky bastard. thanks for reminding me of why everyone hated you in ’92. his antiwar stand is probably just good old expedient isolationist political postioning.
