No, I’m certainly not happy that George Bush has won this election. While Kerry wasn’t my original choice, for me, at least, he represented a significant improvement over Bush and his cohorts.
No, what I won’t regret are my efforts to do everything I could to try to get Kerry elected. While visiting some regular haunts the other day I was shocked to discover that a number of bloggers who I personally admire refuse to participate in politics, considering it a waste of their time and effort.
Though, I, too, consider politics rather distasteful, I also consider it one of those necessary evils in life, like taking out the garbage or vacuuming the house. Our world would be a much worse place if some people, some very able and very special people, weren’t willing to get involved in politics.
While I managed to avoid doing much more than voting while I was teaching high school, I was disturbed enough by recent trends to get much more personally involved. I wrote political articles regularly for nearly a year even when I would have preferred to write poetry articles, or at least articles on more philosophical topics. I also contributed more money to Kerry and the DNC than I have contributed throughout the rest of my life. I probably should have gone door to door urging people to vote, but I was sure I lived in a city and state that heavily favored Kerry, not Bush, and that knocking on doors wasn’t necessary.
At least by doing what I could to defeat the Bush administration, I won’t have to feel guilty for all the mistakes that this administration will continue to make in the next four years. No, those will be the responsibility of those who chose to vote for this administration and those who did nothing to oppose it
. At least every time another group of soldiers dies in Iraq, I won’t have to feel that I’m responsible for them still being there.
Most importantly, working for the Democratic candidate allows me to feel free to continue to criticize Republican foreign policy, economics, and, most of all, environmental policy. If I’d sat back and simply accepted what was happening without actively opposing it, I don’t think I could feel comfortable attacking thier policies regularly.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t have to give more money to the ACLU and increase my contributions to the many environmental causes I already support. In fact, I’m sure that many of them, like Bin Laden and El Qaeda, will be secretly happy that Bush won because more and more people who are concerned with American freedoms and the environment will end up joining such organizations. Bush is just as much the Sierra Club’s greatest assest as he is El Qaeda’s greatest recruiter.