Suzy Says

As you know, I generally avoid the political and serious on this blog, but I’m so horrified by yesterday’s election that I have to make an exception.

Maybe it’s because I’ve lived most of my adult life in California. Maybe it’s because I had what I now realize were astoundingly liberal parents, who managed to give us all open minds while making sure we behaved and made our beds. But I find myself completely unable to understand what my fellow Americans were mostly thinking when they voted yesterday.

Our President inherited a huge mess, which had taken many years to create. The country was filled with optimism. When he couldn’t fix all the problems within six months, public opinion turned on him faster than I’ve ever seen it turn on any President. It was completely irrational, but apparently people accustomed to high speed internet and smart phones don’t have the dial up, land line patience it takes to work through problems and get them solved.

Don’t even get me started on the repulsiveness of the Tea Party taking their name from a watershed moment in American history and tarnishing it forever with their arrant ignorance and bigotry.

But what I really, really do not understand is Democrats voting Republican in this election. That’s like me saying “This bottle of wine is disappointing. I think I’ll drink milk instead. Even though I hate milk.” Can anyone explain this phenomenon to me?

The Proposition to legalize (or at least decriminalize) marijuana failed, as did one to charge a meager $18 a vehicle per year when visiting state parks. California has some of the most beautiful parks in the world, and Californians apparently don’t care enough to spend less than they do at Starbucks on any given month to preserve them. No, they’d rather fill state prisons with minor pot offenders and spend millions to build more prisons to hold more prisoners*. Nice going, Golden State.

On the bright side, David Eyster won as our county’s DA, ousting the despicable incumbent who got Aaron Vargas his unjust sentence. And Megabucks Whitman didn’t manage to buy the governorship of California, despite spending $140 million of her own money. Why wasn’t there a Proposition to limit the amount of personal money a candidate can spend on a campaign? I guess it’s not surprising that a country where only millionaires can attain elected office is so conservative and has so many tax breaks for the wealthy and superrich.

Not even the Giants parade this morning can cheer me up. My only hope is that the same idiots who voted the Republicans in this time will get as disenchanted with them as fast as they did the Democrats, and vote the other way in the next election. Stranger things have happened.

*The US has less than 5% of the world’s population, but nearly 25% of its prisoners.As of 2008, there were 751 people in jail or prison for each 100,000. 21% of these prisoners are drug offenders.