dilapidated enormity

so it the eve after the election and in my area, it's been anti-climatic and still. not so in other areas around the country. my sister called me this morning having a full fledged panic attack. the town where she lives (to borrow a phrase from the "street") showed its ass last night and into today. to what time period must we have travelled to let an appropriate celebratory response to the most historical, most significant vote in all of history be to shoot illegal handguns into the air and destroy our neighbors' property? seriously. and i don't get this at other times either: like the superbowl or the world series... what possesses people to think that getting together and breaking things, shooting into the air, and starting car fires is an appropriate way to show happiness? no, seriously. stop and think about it. what is the first thing a silent movie maker would do to illustrate happiness in an old black and white movie? have the protagonist pick up a vase and throw it across the room? or have him go take a baseball bat to his neighbor's car? i don't think so. we, as a society, do not condone violence. or at least we like to say we don't. we can get protective restraining orders against our significant others for throwing things in our general direction during an altercation. kids get expelled from school for throwing a book across the room. in an office, if you picked up your three-hole punch and lobbed it at the wall because you just got a raise, number one, you'd be fired. number two, you'd most likely spend some time talking to a shrink because the violent response you displayed is not natural. it is not cognitively appropriate. it is wrong. your synapses in your brain are misfiring. but at the end of a night of watching states turn from white to red or blue on the ice rink at rockefeller square, a group of ignorant asses (and yes, i am aware that using those terms is placing a judgment on people that i have never met) decides to go outside in my sister's neighborhood where she is raising two children, and shoot guns at midnight and dent the hoods of all the cars, and set off car alarms. what is that? my poor sister's kids woke up this morning to a new reality. and they hadn't gotten used to the old one. and it sucks.



and then, you have the near-suicidal other half who are already conspiring with each other to assassinate our newly elected president. 50 years ago, we would have rounded them all up and thrown them in jail. today, we have to politely stand aside while emails and text messages and forum boards and profile headlines incite political anarchy and murder. wait, you say, you are over reacting, delicate enigma: you are jumping on the outraged bandwagon. but i want to illustrate. and i don't want to be added to a government watch list for what i am about to write. but seriously, my sister told me that a friend of hers received a text message this morning (and i saw it repeated on a former friend's myspace page) and the text message said, and i quote, and they are not my words, and i am merely repeating what it said: "wanted: all hunters... your presence is requested in washington because a [not entering triggered word] is trying to get into the white house." the great thing about my kids and my sister's kids is that they think that a sometimes rabid black and white mammal is actually trying to enter into the property at 1600 pennsylvania avenue. so we don't have to explain it to them. but here's the thing... the two individuals i mentioned that received and posted that are in their 30s. that means, theoretically, they are old enough to know better. i would like to think that passing the 30 year mark means that there is some desire to grow up and behave better. what i am realizing, however, that no matter how old you are, you never grow out of being stupid.



there is a difference between stupid and ignorant. and this isn't an original thought either: i've had this discussion with lots of people, and at least the people i talk to and associate with tend to have the same outlook. ignorant people either don't have the mental capacity or have not had the opportunity to learn. they get a pass. stupid people are people who have had the opportunity to learn, usually multiple times, and choose to ignore whatever common sense and wisdom is present and proceed to behave in a manner in which goes against the common good. sorry, i got distracted at the irony there: ignorant people don't know, and stupid people ignore the truth. i think semantically, those words should be interchanged.



what i saw last night when i glanced at the country through the eyes of a biased media was a collection of the most refined and the most unrefined people i've ever seen. and i was shocked at the political affiliation of each group. the ultra-conservative group in phoenix. the ones who appear to be holier than thou, the ones under whose leadership we are suffering... that group actually behaved like a bunch of 6th graders all through mr short-armed puffy-cheeks' speech conceding defeat in the election. his speech was forgettable. but what struck me was the crowd booing and sobbing and carrying on like we had just sold all our babies to the gypsies. every time he mentioned our new commander in chief, the new most powerful man in the world, the man who may (or may not) actually do something to help: every time he said his name, the camera panned to the over reacting audience and focused on someone either booing or using profanity. even mccain said something about it. it was disgraceful. and i want to point out they were all in the biltmore on invitation only. they were hand selected to be in that room for that purpose. they all knew they would be on television, on the most historic night in our past. and they, like the town my sister lives in, showed their ass. multiple times.



now pan over to the party happening in my other sister's town. 10000 normal citizens, not hand-picked, not necessarily party members... standing in the freezing cold, almost bursting under the anticipation of the acceptance speech, the entire crowd fell almost silent during mccain's speech. no booing. there was, i am sure, the occasional outcry: i am not totally naive. but at least the producers of all the news shows were able to make it appear as if that crowd of what the other group would call "commoners" showed more respect and more poise and more grown-up-ness than the world would ever give them credit. that was interesting.



bottom line: stupid people upset my sister this morning with their dumb behavior. just because we elected a new president, and he happens to be a minority: that is no reason to forget how to behave. if he had been white, would he still be packing up his china and crystal today? perhaps. i would like to think so. in my perfect world, he would have been elected solely on his politics and not his pigment. i know that's not the case. i am not stupid. but it would be nice to think that at some point in our future, the people who walk this earth would be smarter than your average bear and focus on what really counts.



i am rambling: i am aware of that.



my kid was eight before it became apparent that people were different because of their skin. seriously. my kid came home and cried to me because a friend's mother would let her son play with my kid because my kid was white. my kid didn't get what that meant. it was the proudest day of my adult life. my kid is smarter than the asses that live in my sister's town. that makes me sad. because my kid isn't even old enough to remember bill clinton.



i am tired tonight. and sad. i am not sure what our future holds. i am excited and anxious at the same time (side thought: what is the adjective that describes the noun trepidation? trepiditious? microsoft word doesn't think so!). mostly i just want to get through the next few days and not have my sister break down.



i don't know if anyone is reading these, or if anyone ever will. but i feel better now having written.