I spent so much of my life representing an unheard voice in American politics I’ve almost forgotten which stance I used to take.  The Presidental election cycles in my life started with the Bush v Gore debacle in 2000.  Remember Florida?  Jeb was running things there at the time.   So after obviously buying that election – a time when voter fraud was an actual threat, ironically enough, we had Dubyah in office.

Then THEY bombed the World Trade Center.  Red State Politics took over the nation.  Before that, the worst act of terrorism our nation had seen was the OKC incident.  As a high school student (and avid video gamer) I feel that Columbine was the closest event to parallel the depth of shock reached in 2001.  The difference with 9/11 was the source of the terror.  An ex-vet and couple of high school kids were much harder to demonize than some anonymous brown face on the other side of the ocean.  Everywhere I saw perfectly sane people adopt a blind hatred for a place they didn’t even know existed the year before.

The FEAR was stronger than ever before.  I doubt even JFK’s assassination instilled the American populace with such a unanimous voice – We must fight the Terror!  Living in relative safety our whole lives, it’s natural to react violently to such a wake up call.  A certain shade of sunlight was forever gone and we all knew that.    I wasn’t surprised – just sad.  Sad that so many people had to be hurt because of one day.  Despondent that no one will ever feel safe anywhere ever again.  Depressed that as a society we so readily jumped into war against another country.  Jaded by the ignorance of people crying out “Turn Iraq into a parking lot.”

It’s as if no one knew what kind of world we live in.  I already knew.  I was a nerd in high school.  That means I played around on the internet in the mid-90s.  While that means I might have played outside less, I also read more.  I had access to news sources that weren’t presented by one of the American networks.  Via Reuters and the BBC I had seen the terrorism that already existed overseas.  I knew there were places where people treated humans like shit on the regular.  I was already aware of how lucky I have it in this world.  I was sad when that stopped being true.

Today, I live in a place where voicing my opinion won’t necessarily be met with immediate dismissal.  Not only could I potentially find people that understand my perspective but they might just agree.  I let my political ideas atrophy while living in the South.  Much like date rape – it was easier to just go limp and let things happen to me.  Bitching about it just gets you a bloody lip.  Of course, I still won’t pay attention to the 2016 Presidential Election but I’m in a state where I might enjoy supporting some state-level candidates.  Here’s to consensual political ramifications!