Awake now.

I'm awake now - I'm wide awake
And I've taken just about all I'm gonna take
It feels like life just kicked me in the head
And it's time I got out of bed.

I wrote those lyrics about a completely different subject, but they pretty much sum up what I feel like right now. I hope the events of the past two days will be an awakening for a lot of people.

Yesterday was a miserable day, no question. I went around with a ball and chain composed of outrage, disappointment, sadness, and fear shackled to both ankles. I saw my frustration mirrored by lots of people. I also got a lot of "You just have to accept it, and move on. You did everything you could to get him elected, now you just have to accept that it didn't turn out the way you wanted. There's no point in being so upset."
Bullshit. There is a point in being upset. I don't have to accept anything I don't want to, and moreover, that sentiment is a bastardized form of the apathy that got us here in the first place, and I reject it. I utterly, whole-heartedly reject the notion that I'm supposed to accept the re-election of a president who was never elected in the first place. i reject the notion that I have to accept that I live in a country where my freedom is endangered while my tax dollars are supporting a crusade for freedom elsewhere around the world. So what if I'm in the minority in this country? Dissent has always been protected and encouraged here, and even if the jackass in power and his Congress and his Supreme Court spend every day of the next four years trying to silence opposing viewpoints, it's still my right, and I will continue to exercise it. If this administration continues their disloyalty to the American values I was raised to treasure and protect, then THEY are the unpatriotic ones, and I'm going to protest it at the top of my (substantial) lungs, with every ounce of outrage and grief and fear I can pour into it.

Just because they won this election and have seized enough control over the power structure to work around the checks and balances built into it doesn't mean that they have *my* power. They might be able to fuck with tax cuts and environmental policy and the Patriot Act and maybe even Supreme Court precedents like Roe v. Wade....but they can't change the Bill of Rights, and baby, I've read it, I know it, and I use it. And I dare them to try to stop me.

Through my depressed musings yesterday, I realized that I truly am a minority in this country. I'm a liberal, female, non-Christian. I support protecting the environment, providing for the people who genuinely can't provide for themselves, keeping the power and the money in the hands of the people (by which I mean the 95% of us who aren't making our living off investments), participating (not dictating) in global politics, furthering peace around the world (as opposed to fomenting rebellionand terrorism), and most of all and above all, I support freedom. I support the idea that every man and woman in this nation has the right to live according to their own personal set of values, restricted only by the line where their actions impact the people around them. All of this appears to make me a minority here. And that scares me, because this administration and the values that drive it don't appear to respect minorities, despite the appearance of diversity in the cabinet.

I also realized that I don't think I can continue to be a brick in the wall of the system forever. I can't work the day job and devote the rest of my time to working in support of my beliefs. It no longer serves me to serve a corporation that in turn (I'm sure) serves the administration that appears to have made it a goal to squash anything and everything that isn't in line with its views and policies and supporters ("You must support me" - blargh!). This tells me that I need to start thinking about how I can sustainably support the lifestyle I want without spending 40+ hours at a day job every week. That scares me almost as much as a second term of Dubya does.

What do y'all think? Impeach him now? Or just get ready for Hillary in '08?