Nu? So I'm Jewish...

And I was reading this post over at Phantom Scribbler's blog and some of the comments (about escape plans that other Jewish people were making, in case the fundamentalists get really out of hand) reminded me of something that my husband and I discussed after the November election.

We spent the whole day of the election at the polling place, handing out Kerry buttons and stickers, checking off names of Democrats who had come to vote (so we could call up slackers and remind them to come). We had 20 volunteers working with us (the other side only had 6, and half of them were imported from Fairfax County). It was a beautiful day, tee-shirt weather, and we were pumped.

Now, our county is a Republican strong-hold, but we had a great turn-out and even though we lost our county (and the country as a whole) to Bush, Loudoun's numbers for the Democrats were better than they'd been for the last 30 years.

The next day was a bummer, of course. What was especially depressing were the folks who said that now they wanted to move to Canada. As though that could solve anything here. Now, using Canada as an escape route if the Fundamentalists bring back the Pogroms is sensible, but leaving because you don't like the current administration is self-defeating. I think my husband put it best in an e-mail to my father...

"if there were no one opposing the majority, it wouldn't be democracy. To me, among other things, that means one has to be ready to lose a few if one is going to live in a democracy. We can take it. We've had four years of this fool and we can get ourselves through another four. There are limits to what a free people will let their governors do to them...

"Already today, too many...(people)...have been whining at me that, because
of an election, they feel they can no longer live within the borders of the
world's longest-lived current democracy. As though living somewhere else
were going to upset the Republicans even a little bit, or make it easier for me and MysteryMommy to raise Muffin Man in a better America than the one we live in now.

"I'm telling my wannabe-expatriate friends from the northeast that if they
want to move anywhere, it should be to Utah. Or Wyoming. Or Nebraska. Or Virginia. Someplace where the move could make a real difference, not a pointless statement."

So, folks, let's get noisy. Don't like Bush's nominees? Write letters to your Senator and Member of Congress and get your friends to do the same. Write letters to the Washington Post and the New York Times. Don't send e-mails to your friends and colleagues, send 'em to the politicians, the papers, and the pundits.

And two years from now, get out there and try to get a better person elected to the House or the Senate. Four years from now, work to get our guy (whoever that guy is) into the White House.

If we're noisy enough (and judging by our blogs, we are) we can head the Fundamentalists off at the pass.