What a ride this election year has been for me. I've never before been so interested in politics. I suppose the Blacksburg town council election when the hedgepath homies were finally ousted started my interest. Maybe it's my age, my new (since last presidential election) parental role, my pregnancy hormones, I'm not really sure. In the last few weeks, I've recognized that the nastiness of the election process is really depressing to me. On election day, I was worked up about the sketchiness being reported in VA. I'm still on a VT student environmental listserv and got lots of frantic emails from them looking for help and scrambling to get students to the polls after the ridiculous polling location move. Now today I'm reading about the suspected scandal in Alaska. What? No Way? A state with Palin as governor, a convicted felon a longtime senator, and another senator with current enormous legal problems, why would one ever suspect?!
I suppose the process still sort of works, but it's difficult to come to the realization that our country's democratic system is really just as bad as the political corruption we read about in countries with dictators and ruling classes. My world politics class in college was 15 years ago, but I still remember the prof introducing some topic and talking about how all government systems are seriously flawed, just in different ways and some more than others. I wonder if my students will be shocked some day when they too learn something I told them in class is really true! E.g. wow, that Dr. Chewie lady was right, if I improve something that's not a bottleneck it has no impact on the current outcome of the line. Somehow that's not as dramatic as a political realization.
Despite it all, I'm beside myself that Obama actually got elected and appears to be taking office. I still really can't believe it. I keep wanting to give lil-m's african american teachers a high-five, but I haven't figured out the best way to do it yet. Maybe I can just train her to do it and shout gobama at the same time.
