It’s a bit liberating really. I think that that’s how I’ll have to see it. I did my part. I voted my conscience. So my conscience is clear. Whatever happens now is none of my doing.
It’s a bit sad, too. Being excluded. I am along for the ride; an unwilling participant. Not completely unwilling, of course. I could always exile myself somewhere. Canada is very close. But the laughter from the joke hasn’t faded enough. Even though the joke itself is gone.
I suppose that’s what I’m actually doing. I am exiling myself. I grew up in Oklahoma as an Oklahoman. But the state’s values have drifted away from my upbringing. In the same way that I don’t feel I’m an Oklahoman, I’m just ‘from Oklahoma’, now, I’m ‘from America’. I cannot consider myself American when there is no ‘America’ left. At least not one I recognize.
America was the land of the free and the home of the brave. It has just proven that it has given in to fear and is afraid. Soon, I’m sure, It will begin giving up bits of its freedom. When libel laws are rewritten as promised the press will no longer be free. Free trade; gone. Free movement will cede itself to stop-and-frisk. Freedom of Religion won’t have a chance with extreme-vetting.
Of course, I do hope for better. That’s what we do; hope. But it will be a long two years before there’s even a glimmer. So, until then, I am a Democrat without a country.
This is a brilliant set of observations.
Indeed. Maybe the best part of this whole thing is knowing it can only last for so long.